MessagesArea

The MessagesArea is a block that appears in the DetailView. The wireframe below is obsolete, but shows a decent rendition of the MessagesArea indicated by Sharing conversation item and Status info below:

The MessagesArea provides a log of message exchanges between Chandler users when Sharing is enabled. Basically, the messages that you type will be shared along with the Item. This area is composed of three blocks. The upper block is the MessageLog and it shows the actual messages that have been shared, contained in a visual frame indicating how many messages are present. Also inside the frame is the MessageEntry block, which is an EditText block allowing you to type in a new message. The lower block is the MessageStats which displays date/time information about when the last messages were exchanged.

• MessageLog - ( Sharing conversation item above) is a static text block with several lines of text that, along with MessageEntry (below), has a labeled frame around it. The labeled frame says "messages" followed by the number of messages in the frame. The text appearing inside the MessageLog is a set of tuples, with each entry being a name in gray text followed by the message in black text. The message lines wrap and indent to keep the sender names leftmost. When the number of lines exceeds the size of the block a scroll bar appears on the right to allow scrolling.

• MessageEntry - this EditText block allows the user to type in a message to send. It appears when the user clicks inside the labeled frame, with "me: " to the left of it, acting as a prompt for the user to type. When the user types the key the new text is entered into the MessageLog. Text wraps in the MessageEntry area, but no scroll bar appears - if you want to see the lines that moved up you need to move the selection up there (the text auto-scrolls to keep the beginning of the selection in view).

• MessageStats - ( Status info above) is a block that has two static text lines: the first is the LastChanged line, which has a small icon, the text "last changed" followed by a short date/time block, followed by the word "by" followed by the short name of the contact that made the change. The second line is the LastSent line, which simply states "last sent" followed by a long form date/time block indicating when the last Message was exchanged.

Questions:

• Do the MessageStats really describe the sharing interaction? It is updated to reflect any change in the shared item, and any sharing of that item, right?
• Does "Last Sent" get updated even when you only send "to new"?

-- DonnDenman - 09 Jun 2004