Since this is requesting specific changes, moving to S&I.

Except in the case of the most popular messaging app on the internet, facebook messages. They are useful for long form, and short communication which is what we were going for.

It was actually previewed in the "new" layout though, which is where most of the negative feedback came from (since those topics always ended up being 80% about the new layout and 20% about what was being previewed) and we haven't picked it back up to move to the existing site since then.

[edit]

Anyway, on the actual topic - unfortunately sMail now has the distinction of being one of the oldest systems on the site. And as we slowly make our way through old systems we can start to really modernize how they work, which includes making it so that these sort of errors pop up at the top instead of making you lose your message. We don't have a timeline on a sMail rewrite right now, though.