[Canary] The new chat update should have its own mode

FireController#1847
  • Edited

I originally posted this in Discord Testers, but I was told to post it here, so here I am. It's a moderately sized review of the new redesign of the chat.

Coming into this with an open mind is, obviously, difficult to do, however I do feel like the new redesign could be classified under "fixing something that didn't need to be fixed." I don't want to discredit anyone's work, because obviously lots of work was put into this and I can see how a lot of people would like it, but is there a certain point where we're just redesigning things because we want to, or because we need to?

I have mixed feelings about the hovering and the little popup on the right. Could the user not simply right click on the message? I assume in a browser they couldn't, but what exactly is it's purpose? As little as it may seem, the effort it takes to move the mouse over to the right to click those buttons is completely overruled by the effort it takes to right click.

On one hand, I really like when I hover over a message, I can see the exact box that that message is contained in. It helps me know why I might otherwise not be able to delete that one image, or why one message was deleted instead of another. On the other hand, I see it serving little to no purpose other than some visual feedback that, ultimately, wasn't needed. Though, I can see how some people would enjoy it.

The #1 thing I can see this entire update working very well towards is accessibility. Knowing what message you're hovering over, being able to access the buttons without visual feedback, all of these things are extremely helpful to people who can't otherwise navigate Discord the way it currently is.

Overall, though, I don't know. The entire thing feels like a mix between compact mode and comfort mode. Maybe it would be better being a mode in-between. I don't know what I'd call it. Obviously having everything be an option is not always a reality, and for sure if I was forced to get used to it I could. When I am not hovering or trying to interact with a message, I notice no difference whatsoever, so ultimately it wouldn't be that difficult to get used to. But in the end, it's like I said in the beginning, are we just redesigning it because it needs to be redesigned, or because we want it to be redesigned? From my knowledge, I've never heard anyone complain about how the chat itself looks in both compact and comfort mode.

32

Comments

5 comments

Date Votes
  • Frolo

    friendlist in compact mode is completely unusable. i hate it

    6
  • Narthorn
    • Edited

    Feedback on the UI changes, for Cozy (non-Compact) mode only:

    • Messages highlighting on mouseover: extremely good
    • "new messages" red bar no longer displacing messages: good
    • Hour/minute timestamp showing up left of all messages on mouseover: good
    • new mouseover menu: nice (but i will probably just rightclick!)
    • quick reaction icons in the mouseover menu: no opinion
    • Removing <hr> line between messages from different people: very bad
    • Removing <hr> line between messages from yourself that are >10mins apart: very bad
    • Spacing increase between messages: bad. 

    The horizontal dividers give a really useful, at-a-glance way to visually parse what happened when in a chat. Getting rid of them is a strict downgrade.

    Given that, the spacing increase between messages makes it harder still to visually group together messages sent by the same person.

    10
  • Johnyknowhow
    • Edited

    I agree on the spacing increase being a very negative change. It makes the whole UI look more cluttered, even if you can now change the spacing between message groups using the new setting. I don't mind that too much, as it would allow you to kind of make the UI look like a compact/cozy hybrid of sorts, with as much text density as possible while still seeing profile pictures and such. 

    All we need is another slider, "Spacing Between Messages" to complement the new "Spacing Between Message Groups" slider. 

    4
  • Pip

    Highlight? Unneccessary and ugly. I have a mouse cursor to show me what I'm hovering over, thanks. Moving my cursor through the Discord window shouldn't cause a bunch of flashing highlights, even if they're dark.

    Hover Menu? The old menu was out of the way, didn't block actual text, and didn't show a bunch of glaring bright emojis every time I hovered over a message. This is awful.

    Quick Reactions? Useless unless you respond to everything with the same three emotes. Ugly and jarring compared to the rest of the UI thanks to how colorful and stand-out emojis are. I don't need or want to see my reactions all the time. If I want to react to something, I'll open the reactions menu, thanks.

    Spacing? Remember how "cozy" mode is supposed to be... you know... COZY? It was good before. Nothing about this new mess is cozy, it's in fact actively stressful to look at thanks to how terrible it is. The line spacing between concurrent messages is WAY too large. The line spacing/lack of lines between messages from different people or different times is WAY too small. It's just... Bad. VERY bad.

    6
  • Pika

    I dislike the emote quickbar they have added to the right, the other changes I don't really have a problem with. I think the UI should definitly offer a "disable" button for the quickbar though, and tbh that shouldn't be too hard to implement

    0

Please sign in to leave a comment.