August 25: Connect Cards
Hover over a person's name in group chat, 1:1 chat, or feeds to see their connect card. You can click on the buttons to either send them a message or follow them. Let us know if you have questions. Thanks!
I like this new addition, makes it a lot easier to connect 1-1 instead of having to open another page for their listener profile. And not to sound ungrateful, because I am thankful that new updates are coming out to make things easier around here, but I would love to see an August update where it fixes the 1-1 chat message order. It still screws up for me.
Thanks for the feedback.
We are aware of the message order problem and are not neglecting it. It's trickier than it looks but we are definitely trying to fix it, and we will. I'll keep everyone posted when we isolate and squish that bug.
Just a small-ish observation: at times, the biggest hurdle to fix in code is the smallest issue. You make a change here, there, thinking: "Ah I got this bug now!" and it just messes up the entire thing :P
ain't that the truth
Amen! Having worked on code, and web design long b4 wysiwyg, I completely empathise with the idea that something can seem tiny on the surface but be a beast underneath.
yes, @paidir - the iceberg metaphor comes to mind
Also, in forums!
Would it be possible to make it so you can create a PM or follow from the connect card in a new tab or window? When in a support room and you click on the calling card to message someone it transports you away from the support room and then you have to open a new tab and re-enter the room. This would make the feature a lot more user friendly to be able to message the person without booting oneself from wherever one is. Thanks.
It is hard for us to do this right now, @PenguinPower31, and because the buttons aren't normal links opening them in a new tab isn't possible the manual way.
as we rebuild the site and the chatting system I hope we will make it much easier for multiple or tabbed chat windows, persistent chat windows, etc., but I want to be honest that this is not something we can quickly whip up in the next week or so.
Good to know, @Krinkthemellowunicorn - it's easy to visualize how we want things to work, but I (and I'm sure others) are often blissfully unaware of the insane amount of coding and problem solving that it takes behind the scenes to make what seems simple actually happen. Would love to eventually see that tabbed chat approach you mentioned, but I can appreciate that it isn't a quick thing and there are a lot of competing priorities.
Yes, your empathy is appreciated. This is already quite a complex ball of wax.
I really like this one! It means you can access people much more easily. Just my personal opinion, but I wonder whether you could include a mini-profile, i.e amount of star ratings and the most recent review. The reason I say this, is because it may not be much use for members if they only see a name and listener rank. They'd have to go to the full profile, which demeans the purpose of connect card in my opinion.
Otherwise, fantastic! :)
We have played around with including other "micro content" on the card and the format might permit that, though things like reviews etc are going to tend to not fit (star ratings might be a good candidate).
And, yes, it's true people need to click through to see more info, but we don't want people *not* to go to profiles and find out more - we just want a convenient way to do things like follow, send a message - when appropriate - and get a teaser of more info.
Your suggestion is good and we'll keep listening to feedback to see what the ideal card content turns out to be.
I wonder whether it would be a good option to allow people to personalise these teaser connect cards, because that's a valid point about not wanting to reveal too much, potentially lacking appeal to go to the profile. Withe personalising it, it depends on what the aim of it is. If it's purely for connection and as a teaser then perhaps not, I'm unsure.
Good point also about the reviews not fitting, we must be realistic and practical. That's it from me for now :) Also I'm impressed at how quickly you responded haha
yeah, magical unicorns are fast like that :D
If it's not obvious, too, I'd like to add that you can still click on the listener or member's name on their card to go to their full profile.
Thanks for this update!! Makes things a lot easier!! :)
Amazing new feature! Keep up the excellent work tech and management team.
Can this be done on both the app and the website?
@VC, yes we are in the middle of a major re-design of the Web and apps and this will also be included on the app.
This thing is great! I am happy you thought about this.
It helps a lot in the forums as well. When you see someone's name and see they made a huge post you can just hover their avatar and see a minimum of information about them. Awesome!
I would like to suggest something about this.
Why not mention your position as in Founder/Moderator/Dev/Team Leader/etc in these cards as well? For those were this applies of course.
Some of us could really use this information if we need to get quickly to the root of a problem.
good idea, @cristiana33 - as i noted to @zedda upthread, we will continue thinking about what "microcontent" belongs on the card, and the idea of somebody's role in the community sounds like a good candidate.
I definitely like this new update! Makes it easier to follow new people in the rooms and in 1-1s :D Only thing is that I think it would be better to just have that when we hover on the name because pictures are big and just moving the mouse pops up a lot of these and it can be annoying in the chat when they do not disappear
interesting observation, Eagle-Eye @Ace13 :D
what do others think?
in chats, should we trigger the connect card only when you hover on the username and stop doing it when you hover on a profile picutre?
that is a very good point ace :) as a slight move of a mouse could cause the card to pop up. and half the time the card doesnt fully show (i can message screenshots) when you hover over the DP.
