denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
Denise ([staff profile] denise) wrote in [site community profile] dw_maintenance2013-04-20 11:46 am

Heads up: Replying from comment notification emails will be changing with next code push

Monday night/Tuesday morning's code push will include a change to comment email notifications designed to make it much (much!) easier to reply to comments from the email notification. I wanted to give everyone a heads up ahead of time so y'all don't worry when you see the change!

As it stands now, replying to a comment email notification requires you to a) have HTML emails enabled, b) be able to load a Dreamwidth web page by submitting the form (so it doesn't work if you read the email while you're at work if your work has Dreamwidth blocked, for instance) and c) be logged in as the account you're trying to reply as. This causes problems and annoyance for people who use text-only emails (like me!), for people who are trying to reply somewhere that they can't load Dreamwidth itself (which kind of defeats the purpose of comment notification emails in some cases), and -- most often -- for people who have multiple Dreamwidth accounts, who have to log in and out of different accounts all day. People have developed all kinds of workarounds, including browser extensions that will do the logging in and out for you, but not only is that still kind of annoying, those browser extensions have a really annoying habit of losing your login cookies, and of course they don't work if you're not on your own computer.

So [personal profile] fu has completely overhauled the process of replying by email. After our next code push, the reply form will be removed from notification emails entirely. Instead, you'll be able to reply to a notification email inside your mail client, just like you'd reply to any other email, and your reply will be posted to the site.

You can read the FAQ -- How do I reply to comments from email notifications? -- before the feature goes live, but some questions I anticipate:

Do I have to do anything special in my email reply?

Just reply to it the way you'd reply to any other email. The only requirement is that the text of your reply must come before all the quoted material. (In other words, you need to "top-post" your reply text.)

Do I have to set anything up first to make it work?

If your email client is set up to send emails from the same email address you've confirmed for your Dreamwidth account, you don't have to do anything special to set things up ahead of time. If your email client is set up to use a different email address -- maybe you forward your Dreamwidth comment notifications to a different address than your confirmed email address, or are using the example+foo@example.org email format as your confirmed email address (to sort your emails locally) but send email from example@example.org instead -- you'll need to set whatever email address you send email from as an authorized email address for email posting/commenting.

How do I set the subject for my comment?

To change a comment's subject, change the subject of the email. If you leave the subject alone, the comment will have the same subject as the comment you're replying to (or no subject if the comment you're replying to didn't have one).

How do I set an icon for my comment?

To pick an icon other than your default, add "post-icon: keyword" as the first line of your reply. For instance, if the text of my comment is "I am happy!" and I want to use the icon keyworded "happy", the text of my reply email would be:
post-icon: happy
I am happy!
> Quoted text appears here

What if I have multiple accounts with the same confirmed email address?

Replying to a comment notification email will always post the comment as the account the notification was sent to. For instance, even if [personal profile] username and [personal profile] username2 have the same confirmed email address, if I receive a notification email to [personal profile] username and reply to it, the comment will appear from [personal profile] username -- even if my browser is logged in as [personal profile] username2 at the time.

Can I reply to a comment email as an account other than the account that received the notification?

No. For security, the reply will always be posted as the account that received the notification. If you need or want to reply as another user (or anonymously), you'll have to follow the link to reply at the website, same as before.

So how does it work?

After the code push, each comment notification email will have a unique reply-to address that includes information about what comment it's replying to, plus a secret authorization token to identify you. When you hit 'reply', your email client should use the reply-to address, which will make sure the email gets to where it's going. (If your email client isn't set up to use the reply-to address rather than the 'from' address automatically, you'll need to either change that setting, or remember to always use the reply-to address instead.)

If you ever accidentally share the reply-to address with someone else, that person might be able to reply as you under some (rare) circumstances, so it's important to keep the reply-to address secret. If you ever accidentally share it with someone, you'll be able to reset the secret authorization token on the Mobile tab of Account Settings. Resetting the token will mean you won't be able to reply to old comment emails anymore, but new comment emails will generate a new secret authorization token for future use.


Again, this will not be live until the next code push, but if you've got any other questions in advance, let me know! I think that as soon as you see it, you'll fall in love with it as much as I have -- especially if you're trying to juggle multiple accounts. :)
callmewing: (=0)

[personal profile] callmewing 2013-04-20 10:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah, okay, a cache clear did the trick. Thanks!
ephemera: (Made of Win)

[personal profile] ephemera 2013-04-20 10:04 pm (UTC)(link)
Awesomesauce! (You in the icon to be considered in the plural ;) )
pauamma: Cartooney crab wearing hot pink and acid green facemask holding drink with straw (Default)

[personal profile] pauamma 2013-04-20 10:35 pm (UTC)(link)
The only requirement is that the text of your reply must come before all the quoted material. (In other words, you need to "top-post" your reply text.)
What happens if you don't do that? Does your comment get rejected, truncated, mangled, or ...?
ninetydegrees: Art & Text: heart with aroace colors, "you are loved" (Default)

[personal profile] ninetydegrees 2013-04-20 10:40 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't think I quite understand how amazing this is yet but I'll savor the anticipation. ) Thank you Fu and thank you D!
kate_nepveu: sleeping cat carved in brown wood (Default)

[personal profile] kate_nepveu 2013-04-20 11:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Way, way cool. Thanks.

[personal profile] alexbayleaf 2013-04-20 11:23 pm (UTC)(link)
BEST! Thank you :)
ozqueen: (Default)

[personal profile] ozqueen 2013-04-20 11:25 pm (UTC)(link)
UGH DREAMWIDTH I LOVE YOU SO MUCH.




Thank you all for working so hard to bring us such awesome new features! ♥ I love you more and more with each update you give us!
material_guy: (Golf Clap)

[personal profile] material_guy 2013-04-20 11:42 pm (UTC)(link)
The e-mail reply bit is a feature I never knew I wanted but imagine soon I will feel unable to live without. Well done.
amielleon: John from Homestuck, doing his victory dance. (Homestuck: John's Victory Dance)

[personal profile] amielleon 2013-04-20 11:48 pm (UTC)(link)
This sounds amazing and will also make it easier to fire off responses when internet connections are questionable, and save post drafts in my email naturally, and everything. This is super thoughtful of you, thanks!
deathboss: (Emotion - Show me your love)

[personal profile] deathboss 2013-04-21 12:10 am (UTC)(link)
Hahaha that is way too adorable!

Once again, thank you so much for all the hard work you and everyone else involved has been doing!
kirathaune: (fezzesarecool)

[personal profile] kirathaune 2013-04-21 12:14 am (UTC)(link)
SQUEEE!!!

I am blocked from posting comments to DW at work (strangely enough, they didn't block LJ), and this will be SO AWESOME!!! I won't have to wait until I get home and be all behind with comments!

THANK YOU, [personal profile] fu! YOU ROCK!!
kerravonsen: fireworks: "Yay!" (Yay!)

[personal profile] kerravonsen 2013-04-21 12:49 am (UTC)(link)
YAAAAAAAY!
Yet another example of Dreamwidth giving us really useful features that we didn't know were possible.
ruriair: I will post these there eventually so. (Ӽəʜɑɳσʀт : kyuunort)

[personal profile] ruriair 2013-04-21 01:05 am (UTC)(link)
To pick an icon other than your default, add "post-icon: keyword" as the first line of your reply.

So what if you're one of those "pretentious hipster" kids who has ★ᴄᴏᴏʟ fancy ϝσɳϯ i.e. stylized text for keywords that (usually) can't be manually typed out, especially not on a phone? Have your keywords in a handy cloud storage thing so it's possible to copy and paste them into the e-mail? Or is it time to redesign your keyword set?
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)

[personal profile] azurelunatic 2013-04-21 01:09 am (UTC)(link)
If the icon is the important part, maybe add a second, phone-friendly keyword to each icon, instead of changing the whole keyword set entirely?
emiri: (Default)

[personal profile] emiri 2013-04-21 01:24 am (UTC)(link)
Holy shit I've been looking forward to this one for AGES. Awesome!
madderskies: (♠ i am awesome!)

[personal profile] madderskies 2013-04-21 01:30 am (UTC)(link)
Thank you for all your hard work :) I was wondering about this before but I'm glad you guys are addressing it!
pixelzomblina: (Default)

[personal profile] pixelzomblina 2013-04-21 01:32 am (UTC)(link)
Will you ever think about making an app for smartphones? :)
ruriair: (Һɑɲyʯʯ : dolled up)

[personal profile] ruriair 2013-04-21 01:33 am (UTC)(link)
Icons are important for most rpers to convey the mood of their character's reply, and the stylized text is a trend I've usually seen with them. I personally never had too much trouble just using the site itself through my phone so I don't foresee needing to change anything - but I know there are rpers out there who have 100+ icons of fancy keywords. A second set isn't a bad idea if they want to get crackin' on it, I guess.

But, what I'm also asking is: if you took the "copy and paste" route, would the process honor all the fancy characters/stars/etc. or is that something that hasn't been tested and could possibly spontaneously combust because "this star is not part of any alphabet known to mankind"?
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)

[personal profile] azurelunatic 2013-04-21 01:35 am (UTC)(link)
I have a paid account and subscribe to notifications for my own comments; I assume that comment-by-email will get notifications just the same as comment-from-web.
fu: Close-up of Fu, bringing a scoop of water to her mouth (Default)

[personal profile] fu 2013-04-21 01:40 am (UTC)(link)
Truncated. Anything from the first line of quoted text (or that looks like a signature) gets chopped off.
fu: Close-up of Fu, bringing a scoop of water to her mouth (Default)

[personal profile] fu 2013-04-21 01:41 am (UTC)(link)
Me too :D
fu: Close-up of Fu, bringing a scoop of water to her mouth (Default)

[personal profile] fu 2013-04-21 01:42 am (UTC)(link)
Hey you submitted a suggestion along similar lines didn't you? I'd been itching to have this for a long time, and that was one of the things that made me stare at code until it happened!

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