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The currently open view (Inbox/Sent/Updates) is highlighted in light blue for navigational visibility.
Figure 9: Messages tab
The user can choose to compose a message either by clicking the "Compose" button the messages tab or by clicking the "Message" link on the "My Posts" tab. In the compose view (Figure 10), three fields appear at the right of the webpage: To, Subject and the content of the message. If the user gets to the page by clicking one of the "Message" links in the "My Posts" tab, the "To" field is already prepopulated with the appropriate recipient. If the user instead has got here using the "Compose" button, the "To" has an autocomplete drop-down with names of posts a user has created (if user wants to message followers of posts), and with names of posts he/she is following (if user wants to message the creators of a post he/she is following).
The user, then, fills all the information necessary to send a message and he/she can send the message. Also, a user can discard a message, if he/she decides not to write a message. We enabled this after the paper prototype to increase user control and freedom. If the user discards a message he/she is redirected to the “Inbox” folder in order to be consistent with applications such as Gmail.