Modern XMPP project discussion - 2024-04-16

Holy cow the new Conversations looks horrible. What were they thinking?

Screenshot?

And which version? ✏

bard, did you mean to say "Holy cow the (not so) new Material Design 3 looks horrible. What were they thinking?", perchance?

No, it looks great, and I can't wait for Cheogram to upgrade 🥳

same

Generally I like it, but have the own bubbe colorless and input field too, as before, would be nicer for me. There are now so many different colors. The link colors are also the same general color as the chat bubble z making it low contrastz I guess that at least will change.

if it uses the newest material guidelines it gets colors dynamically from the system so it makes sense the many different colors

havent installed to make sure tho

Does anyone have a screenshot of this new conversations version?

But surely you can have fields where you force a color?

The conversations channel is full of it the last days latex

Where is the conversations channel:

https://gultsch.social/@daniel/112212389314127287

Here xmpp:conversations@conference.siacs.eu?join

yeah thats material you. looks great to me :D altho a bit unfinished but its beta

Oh here the bubbles have too much padding

Or well, inner padding

On some screenshots it looked right

Not this one though

A but more white/Grey as before would make it less rainbow, now it's a bit like your first power point presentation, where you use all effects you can find

you can turn off material you from the settings i saw in the conversations channel. is it still colorful with that?

Yes

The it uses colorful what Daniel chooses

But honestly, material you doesn't mean every button needs to have a color. No app does that

The colors are ugly and less readable, but also all the rounded corners are very unfortunate. There's still no black/amoled theme also.

Yes there is

There is amoled black. I want my Grey back.

Hate total black, hurts the eyes

Hate non total black, hurts the eyes :P

Menel, where is amoled black?

I don't see any theming settings...

> if it uses the newest material guidelines it gets colors dynamically from the system so it makes sense the many different colors Yeah, I got used to it in a week or so, and recently I made it better by tuning the colours to my liking with this https://f-droid.org/packages/com.drdisagree.colorblendr/ (and the best part is you don't have to keep the service running once you configure it). I made a simple pic with the desired palette, set it as wallpaper, tuned the colours in ColorBlendr, changed the wallpaper back, froze the app, and it stayed like that.

The dark mode looks black to me. Before it was nice dark Grey. Look at the chat overview in dark mode

it's definitely a gray here

Menel, https://uc.xmpp.zombofant.net/9009df4d-b287-43c4-ba2e-df5b27845921/DSCF5552.jpg this is dark mode.

that is most certainly not black :)

then again, this is also android 10 so maybe quirky

https://share.snikket.de/8HPfXGUzaCV0leOrNq--LKKx/Imagepipe_3.webp

not black either

more like a dark grey green

https://share.snikket.de/SW4TXFmHpVEMtmozka6cYtch/Imagepipe_3.webp

dark purple green

Old C/ cheogram

yeah, it's darker, but it's not black

And the first is conversations now

Well, much too black, indistinguishable for me. And hard to focus on text in the dark, as is with amoled black. ✏

I see, if I ramp the light to max, I see it's not completely black. Well

So worse of both worlds

:|

I still think the old MD 2 was better and should've stayed like that for a few more Android releases, but MD 3 makes the apps a lot more unified in general thanks to Monet (dynamic colours) and the guidelines in general. Still, I wish there was a way to make padding thinner in some places and make some UI elements less roundish.

Old C design is perfect as is because I'm so much used to it, but it can't stay like that forever, I guess.

> And hard to focus on text in the dark, as is with amoled black. What do you mean? White-on-pitch black is perfectly readable for me even on close to lowest brightness.

for most people its not. including me. i think its even a no-no for basically all design guidelines out there. (im not saying there shuldnt be an option. there should be)

I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, for sure

But I love having that as an option

for sure

Regular dark / grey should still be there though, they're not interchangeable

i swear i saw somewhere that for the terminal too its bad for your eyes but cant find it :/

Plus there still are (and will be) many non-amoled devices and pitch black is just not good there

Obviously it depends on the person. But the explaination is, in darkness, the pupils dilate, and with a very open pupil, the maximum sharpness is reduced. You must sqint to increase it again

MSavoritias (fae,ve), I use dark GTK theme for and dark terminal theme here on my system (Solarized Dark FTW!111 for terminal and Gruvbox for Vim specifically), but never a "simply black" theme. But that's my computer, and the phone is a totally different thing with a totally different screen and totally different usage habits.

well the good thing is we dont have to guess what colors are good. there are a lot of accessibility contrast checkers online that can help to see if the contrast between background and forground is good

gruvbox is amazing. i use it a lot too :D

Menel, hmm, interesting. I only felt the reduced sharpness a couple of times or so, and it only happened after staring for hours and hours straight without switching to non-black apps when I was in a faraway place with no electricity ( -> no lighting or internet ), having nothing better to do than reading some really long articles I saved for later. The vision got somewhat blurry and focusing didn't work as it should, but I never felt that if there was some other light source, even if a rather faint one. Plus, I don't usually use the phone in darkness _that_ much to feel it. Or maybe I'm just in denial and trying to convince myself the irreversible damage has not been done yet :)

It's not a damage, it's just exhausting. And as we see, it's individually different inconvenience.

More user-configurable settings would be nice.

I love high contrast black bg + white text, small bitmap fonts where possible.

and clean sharp square edges

I really like that Conversations' new design has the "Start chat" text for the FAB. Some less attentive/tech savvy users either miss it or ignore it, and wonder how to talk to people whose names they don't immediately see.

That said, I've also been wondering whether it might not be better to do away with the contacts-chats split, and just show all 1:1 chats at all times, with inactive chats getting buried at the bottom, and with a filter box to find contacts quickly. 🤔

a seperation between 1:1 and group chats would be better than seperation of contacts-chats imo

so yeah the UI you say may make sense

MSavoritias (fae,ve), huh, why?

I don't see how 1:1 vs. group chats is a sensible separation. public vs. private chats, maybe, but not 1:1 vs. group.

hmm. sure. private vs public chats would mkae more sense

im just thinking of ways that one screen of endless chats can be fixed

I've never seen that as a problem in practice

I use the contact list / bookmarks tab as a search when I want to talk to a specific person

so I can agree with contrapunctus on the point that it'd make sense to just merge them and have an easily accessible search at the top

just the search could help too yeah

ah element has that seperation thats where i have seen it

1:1 and group chats

jonas’: > I use the contact list / bookmarks tab as a search when I want to talk to a specific person Holy shit, same here 😭️

telegram doesnt. but it has folders

ah wire has exactly the UI that is said

one list of open chats and a search bar

but also a seperation of conversations with new messages

hmm seems element is the only one working like that

so maybe my idea was bad

a bottom bar would be nice tho

This raises a different issue...what kind of users to cater for. Some just rarely open their XMPP client, and don't spend much time in it when they do. Thus, they are never too familiar with the UI. They often also don't seem to read or really notice the UI all that much. An exact replica of WhatsApp/Telegram interfaces might do better with them.

i would say generall following design guidelines is nice. there is almost never a good reason for a custom UI.

i just wish the age of rounded corners goes away quickly again.

custom as in completely the developers thing

jonas’: Why's everyone so bothered by that? Round, square, rounded square...I don't really seem to care 🤔️

fugata, lucky you

What drives me up the wall is silently missing history thanks to Schrödinger's Chat. Or a community periodically going silent because everyone got disconnected and nobody has realized it yet. ✏

Anyone here uses XEP-0258: Security Labels or can tell me an example use case? ✏

> I use the contact list / bookmarks tab as a search when I want to talk to a specific person I guess I would if it was more accessible. Currently I'll go look in the main view because I have certainly talked to that person not so long ago. And the endless list of open chats isn't really an issue most of the time. Also I don't do much public chats on C because typing and following chats on mobile is meh :x

Hmm, has C lost the "don't follow autojoin flag"?

Yes

:((((

I think this is now the emotional support group for people affected by the Conversations changes

I'm not joined there on mobile, (at all, actually), too much activity

> ah wire has exactly the UI that is said > one list of open chats and a search bar > but also a seperation of conversations with new messages and folders too

and archive for chats you don't need anymore as well

> but also a seperation of conversations with new messages for "new messages" in conversations list they also do this, at least on desktop > 2 missed calls, 4 pings, 3 replies, 37 messages iirc on mobile there's something similar

> This raises a different issue...what kind of users to cater for. Some just rarely open their XMPP client, and don't spend much time in it when they do. Thus, they are never too familiar with the UI. They often also don't seem to read or really notice the UI all that much. An exact replica of WhatsApp/Telegram interfaces might do better with them. fugata, yes, the Element or Wire UI is not exactly familiar for casual users. Even Conversations is more intuitive IMO.

> What drives me up the wall is silently missing history thanks to Schrödinger's Chat. Or a community periodically going silent because everyone got disconnected and nobody has realized it yet. fugata, what do you mean?

> I think this is now the emotional support group for people affected by the Conversations changes Haha, yes.

> I think this is now the emotional support group for people affected by the Conversations changes What's a good place to discuss the state of XMPP in general?

Here? xsf@?

> i just wish the age of rounded corners goes away quickly again. I don't mind rounded corners in general, but I do mind dearly that not two elements agree on how much rounding there should be. Like, right now, there are 6 visible controls (avatar, message bubble, scroll down overlay button, message composition box, send message button, attach/options drop down menu) and I can almost hear the cacophony of them disagreeing

> I think this is now the emotional support group for people affected by the Conversations changes 🧡