Update (Version 1.5.0)
The mention feature has been fully implemented.
Originally Posted by
BenFenner Existing use of the MENTION tag works now. This does not mean that mentions work, or that a user will be notified if you manually create a new mention tag. Those are two parts of the system that I will get working later.Well, later is now.
I was not looking forward to working on this feature, as I knew it would be a lot of hard work. It ended up taking a bit longer than expected, but wasn't maybe as hard as I'd feared. I guess that's because I settled for a little less than I normally would.
The main issue with the feature that may or may not ever be fixed is that the drop-down menu placement for searching users to mention is not great. I wanted it to drop down where the text cursor is, but that's actually way harder than you'd think. For now, the drop-down menu hangs out in the top-left corner of the text entry window. We'll see how that goes.
You can manually mention people in posts by typing the MENTION tags and getting the username inside correct.
However the much easier way is to type the "@" symbol into the post, and a user search drop-down menu will appear (to cancel it you can press the escape button, or click in the text box outside of the menu). You can then continue to type to search the list of users until you've found the one you want to mention. Click the user's name, or use the arrow keys and the enter key to select. Once a username is selected, the MENTION tags will automatically be added around their username. (If you press enter without selecting a username, the top name in the list will be chosen.)
When the post is saved, the user will get notified via e-mail, and using the newly finished built-in forum notification system.
All users now have links to their mentions in on their member profile page as well (same as with likes).