I currently have a UX problem that I have seldom seen done well (or at all)...
I am developing a messaging feature for a site (a messaging system for business, think Yammer), and I am in the wireframing stage right now.
After working out all the basics, I realized that I didn't have an answer for one thing...
When a user replies to another user in the thread, how do you display that? Yammer says "John Doe in reply to Bob Smith" and you can hover over the "in reply to" to see the previous message (see the example below). Keep in mind I want the user to be able to reply to any comment within that thread but I need to keep things small, because the messaging for this site is just a feature, not the feature.
There's the solution that you just right justify/offset that response directly under the message in which you are replying to - but then you could have a endless chain effect if a user just keeps on replying to a message then someone replies to that message and so on...
Hopefully this all makes sense and sorry if it has already been asked (or if it is obvious). I am not a UX professional (yet), so any help would be greatly appreciated.