Messages on the left side when fullscreen

[AOmelaienko]

Just. WHY.

[telegramdesktop]

Shortly: usability is much better than before (when incoming/outgoing messages were very far from each other). It is not that good by design, but much better to actually read the conversations, in which you participate.

Perhaps you can discuss it here: #1578

[AOmelaienko]

There's not so much of discussion there to speak of, to be frank.

Besides, even if I've personally never had any issues with reading message history on widescreen, I fail to grasp the thought process which tied that new implementation with 'history being more readable'. At least the old version had good design.

Perhaps that particular UI touch should be implemented with some kind of configurable user choice, rather than 'as is'?

[telegramdesktop]

@AOmelaienko it doesn't seem like that big deal for me, more what user is used to. For example, if from the very beginning the layout was as it is now and everyone got used to it, and then suddenly changed to the previous -- with throwing messages to the different sides of a huge window, everyone would be much more angry about that, I suppose. Well, it is still being discussed.

I still can't understand why anyone on earth uses large (or even fullscreen) window for Telegram Desktop, it will be not good anyway -- there is not enough information for a large window, so it always will be bad looking (without some complete redesign), but comparing this two screenshots I'm sure the new way is better than the old one:

[AOmelaienko]

@telegramdesktop Well, that's actually not 100% either. Personally, I didn't find any changes in readability with that centered view, it even somewhat worsened for me — but that last one is perhaps due to personal perception nuances. I also feel that I need to emphasize again that previous UI implementation had better graphical design.

Other than that, edge-aligned messaging area view is probably not the best for desktop readability, even if it's pretty and even while it certainly is a sound design for mobile apps. And, frankly, neither «try some other window size» nor «here, have some padding» addresses this issue in general. I hadn't seen anyone including @dlussky from #1578 express their opinion on that matter (trying to implement readability improvement with centering message history), but at least there is clearly at least one person that didn't like that solution very much (i.e. me).

The reason why I repeat that is to emphasize that toying with padding neither addresses readability issue, nor does it absolutely improve aesthetic perception.

Even if that is only an interim solution, I still think that it would be better to provide users at least with 'padding/no padding' option from UX viewpoint.

[telegramdesktop]

@AOmelaienko I'm sorry, I didn't understand you quite well.

"I hadn't seen anyone including @dlussky from #1578 express their opinion on that matter (trying to implement readability improvement with centering message history)"

The very text of that issue states the problem of reading the history in the old design and suggests right the solution that was implemented (because from our point of view it is the best solution for this problem without a huge redesign).

[AOmelaienko]

@telegramdesktop I meant opinion on the solution provided, not on readability issues with old design.

[dlussky]

@AOmelaienko well, I'll try to describe my point: it's really hard to search through large history, when you need to constantly move your eyes from left to right edge. So that was my issue with the old design. As an example of what is easy to read on a wide window I attached a screenshot from another messenger - Viber.

From the design standpoint I don't think this new look is really good, but it ain't no worse than that old one) But it seems to me that max-width could be a little bit more, so that the overlapping part of multiline messages would be 1/3.

I mean like that:

______________
incoming     |
--------------
 <1x> | <1x> | <1x>
      ______________
      |     outgoing
      --------------

[dlussky]

@AOmelaienko oh. I get it now)
Well, I partly gave my opinion in that last comment, and overall - I like this change, now I can finally read through history quickly) Also, I really love it, when you can customize something like this, so of course I would prefer if there was a setting like "Message container max width" (that you could set to 0 or 9999 for that old behavior)

[telegramdesktop]

I'll try one more option in 0.9.21.dev

[dlussky]

@telegramdesktop thx)
Also, http://www.xkcd.com/1172/ =)
*no offense, @AOmelaienko )

[AOmelaienko]

@dlussky None taken at all. Also, I second your offer on overlapping/non-overlapping ratio. EDIT Not that I would prefer it to some UI customization.

[JuanPotato]

@telegramdesktop As this is related to this issue, I thought I may ask it here. If I wanted to edit the max width for the container of the message where would I need to edit? Would a line in style.txt suffice or should I look deeper in the code if I wanted to make my own modified telegram with a size?

[telegramdesktop]

@JuanPotato There is possibility there will be another logic done for that, please wait for 0.9.21 dev version.

[telegramdesktop]

Well, 0.9.21.dev is out, I think this will be the solution for now.

[brawaru]

wow. WHAT?
May be make possible users to change this setting?
I liked centered messages, but... messages on one side, oh 😞

[telegramdesktop]

@DaFri-Nochiterov Ahha 😂 this changes almost nothing at all comparing to the way they were displayed all the project lifetime :) just when the distance between incoming and outgoing becomes too large we display outgoing the same way. I can't understand, how this can be unacceptable for anyone, cmon.

[JuanPotato]

@telegramdesktop Going back to my previous question as you have said that this is the solution. What would I need to change to go back to either of the two previously implemented designs?

[telegramdesktop]

@JuanPotato Well, in current master branch there is historyMaxWidth param in style.txt which handles the width of the messages history container after which we use left-aligned design for all messages.

[mahdiG]

This is crazy! Conversations are difficult to read. I don't think I had problems reading histories before but now I have problems reading typical conversations. :|

[mahdiG]

THIS is hard to read because the resolution is really high. The solution is simply to zoom in.

[brawaru]

THIS is also hard to read!

[telegramdesktop]

@mahdiG @DaFri-Nochiterov What are you both talking about? How is it possible, that now something is now harder to read than it was before? I simply don't get it. All that was changed -- in the wide icons all the conversation is not aligned in one way, all messages go one after another. I simply can't see the problem.

[JuanPotato]

@telegramdesktop I think they may be complaining because if all the messages are on one side, you can't quickly distinguish other messages from yours (except by icon of course) but then there is the problem of the entire right side being completely blank, which imo doesn't look too great. It doesnt bother me however as i mostly just use telegram on half my screen.

[telegramdesktop]

@JuanPotato That's not the problem, because bubbles of outgoing messages are still green, so easily distinguished.

[PandorasFox]

I've got some amount of feedback; I've been gathering my thoughts for a couple days.

The only thing difference I can see between my messages and messages from other people (on my laptop, at least) is that there's the read/sent/pending notifier. That's not great for at a glance.

The difference between #effdde and #ffffff is very weak, especially in environments with bad lighting / bad displays. That's a 7% difference between the colors, which again, in environments with bad lighting or on displays with weak color accuracy near white, this is not sufficient. If anything, make it a much darker shade of green (maybe swap the indicator colors and the bubble colors when they're aligned like that?).

There's also no difference for stickers, other than, again, the indicators for read/sent/pending. It's not intuitive at all and is pretty annoying.

For an example, my laptop is 1366 * 768. I use a tiling window manager on it since I either just have a fullscreen window on a workspace, or a couple terminals - it's hard to have multiple windows on one monitor. Everything was perfectly usable at 1366*768; could the cutoff be set to windows 769 pixels wide?

I'd argue that the old version is much more usable and intuitive with 1366*768 displays.

Also, if we're concerned about usability with larger displays - what about the sticker selector? Could that at all also be modified to take advantage of all the extra space on the right half of the screen when hovered? As it is, it's pretty difficult to use on larger displays (ever since the gifs were added, there's only been 4 different sticker packs visible at the bottom, and I have quite a few sticker packs - it's easy to miss some while scrolling).

Personally, I prefer to keep my windows fullscreened and just tab between them on my desktop. Occasionally I'll snap one window to take half of a monitor and another window for the other half, but I didn't really have any concerns with readability when Telegram spanned my entire 1080p monitor. I personally feel that of the two solutions, centering would be better since it keeps tdesktop more in line with the mobile client (in that messages are each on their own side) - this is splitting the UI between mobile and desktop and I've been under the impression that was something that telegram was trying to avoid.

If the messages were to be still have the left/right style but have the message container left-aligned, and then an embedded sticker selector in the remaining part of the screen, there'd be less wasted space and the sticker selector would not suck on desktop, while also maintaining readability. An embedded sticker panel that takes up the full height of the window (similar to the conversation view) would have the benefit of pushing the messages closer in together, while also helping the sticker selector not waste nearly as much space on larger displays.

Also, lastly:

I can't understand, how this can be unacceptable for anyone, cmon.

I can't think of any messaging client that I've used that has aligned incoming and outgoing messages to the same side of the screen. Even skype at least kinda does this - they do it really badly, but still. It's definitely better than only using color/icon to differentiate between my messages and someone else's.

[AOmelaienko]

I didn't think that it could be much worse than centered chat with huge margins, but here you go.

1. Low incoming/outgoing message bubble background color difference. Also this difference gets visually even lower while chat background image is mainly green. Contact images are not much help either, especially since not everyone has them. Delivery check marks on the right doesn't do any good either.
2. It seems to me that very message bubble design concept does not sit well with color differentiation. Spatial differentiation was much clearer.

There are messenger applications which utilize color differentiation with better effect, but all of them use hight-contrast colors and none of them has message bubbles.

I must emphasize again that implementing such design experiments while leaving disgruntled users with no other option than 'deal with it' is a poor practice. UI configuration options are not inherently evil, you know.

[zoharlevin]

this needs to be changed back or given an option to choose. doesn't make sense that i should be minimizing to the exact moment when the messages look normal again, just to be able to use telegram and not get pissed off.
it looked totally fine to me before this ridiculous change.

[marcovr]

Hey guys, finally some good news!
Looks like the long awaited checkbox is coming.
fc9d75b

[telegramdesktop]

Please check out the latest 0.9.25 dev version from the bottom of this page:

https://desktop.telegram.org/#dev-version

It adds a checkbox "Adaptive layout for wide screens" below "Tile background" checkbox that can disable the new layout. It is visible only if you have a large window (with the new layout) already.

[legorian]

Thanks a lot! Having one of those laptops with a screen at a 1366x768 resolution that with only a small viewing angle makes the green bubbles almost white, and sometimes icons looking too similar at first glance, this makes my life much easier again. It was a hassle to always find the maximum width of the window, instead of just bringing it to full screen. Keep up the good work!

[emadgh]

Hi, I really loved the new style, all in one side , that's really easy to read messages,
Seems in 0.9.26 you changed it for screens that are bigger than 1366 😞

It would be really good if you could make it optional if the user always want it or just adaptive. eg.

Thank You

[ghost]

Wow this change really made some users unhappy. I feel as a developer you shouldn't be forcing users to use the format you feel is best for them, since well we are the ones using it.

I prefer the centered, but just make it optional. It doesn't even take that much effort on the developers side. Same as the dark theme that was forked. The work has already been done. Just implement it.

[z3ntu]

Uhm... Question: Does this option still exist in v0.10.19 ? I can't find it anymore...

[Pablohn26]

@z3ntu yes it does

[gilbertw1]

@z3ntu: the option only seems show up if the current window is high enough resolution for the adaptive layout to kick in.

[z3ntu]

Wow... That's really weird/bad behavior to show options based on the window size...

[PandorasFox]

Not entirely. Ideally it'd be grayed out and have a tooltip/explanation why, but it's better than a nonfunctional checkbox.

[gilbertw1]

To be fair, I do think it is pretty poor behavior. I normally set this option as part of my install process, however I have to wait until the window is large enough on a particular screen to change the setting. I think it'd be even worse to show the option and not allow the user to change it.

I can't really think of any precedent for this behavior and can only imagine the devs are worried about the option confusing users who don't have the window large enough to trigger the adaptive layout.

Updating to a new version via the arch user repository regularly triggers a re-login requiring me to reconfigure my settings, and having to wait until a arbitrary condition is met to change a setting I want set everytime is a consistent source of frustration.

A similar analog would be an SSL enabled option that you couldn't set in app until you were already connected to the internet. If you're setting the app up offline the option is nowhere to be found. However, once your online and can now toggle the setting, the app has already connected insecurely. The stakes aren't as high here, but the user interaction is equally as poor.

[fsolatan212]

is there an easy way to increase the width of the left column with list of chats in Telegram Web? I need less space for the messages, but more space for the list and summary. I'm using Chrome on PC.

[stek29]

@fsolatan212 why the hell are you spamming with this question here?

[fsolatan212]

I just asked a question, I'm not spamming. if you don't want to answer, just ignore, otherwise it's a problem that I have and need the answer.

…

On Thu, Dec 22, 2016 at 10:10 AM, Viktor Oreshkin ***@***.***> wrote: @fsolatan212 <https://github.com/fsolatan212> why the hell are you spamming with this question here? — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1587 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AXjwIDwCFh49UyPOMtPQHg-kBw4xe5aXks5rKpLLgaJpZM4HWXIU> .

[PandorasFox]

The proper place to ask would be on the webogram repo, or on one of its forks' repos, and not here.

[stek29]

@fsolatan212

1. You're asking at wrong project report
2. You've asked it already at Webogram repo, but asked in other places too without even waiting for answer

[mklishevych]

It's funny that telegram considers my 13" macbook as 'wide screen'... Just updated to latest version (1.0.2) and suddenly my messages moved to the left. Already found an option in preferences to disable that, but you should probably reconsider screen sizes that fall into 'wide screen' category.

[scorchio]

@telegramdesktop wrote that

I still can't understand why anyone on earth uses large (or even fullscreen) window for Telegram Desktop

Personally I use Telegram in fullscreen most of the time; I prefer to have a kind of "distraction free" environment for chatting. I realize this is very subjective, but probably a lot of other people are doing the same and it would be nice to know how the application is actually used. This raises a question: do you have any kind of statistics on the window size vs. resolution of the Telegram application? (If you don't want to collect information like that in the application, you could do polls or whatever.)

[johan-wq]

I use Telegram full screen on a large screen most of the time. And I HATE having all the chat on one side. I know what I typed - I don't want that to get in the way when I'm reading. If I do want to know what I typed, I want that easily accessible instead - by having it far off to the right.

Now, what i do want is a bar to the right with my stickers since I use them all the time.

[OnkelTem]

Guys, it's impossible to grasp and the topic, so let me just ask: how to make the message area to allocate 100% width? I just don't get why it's not set like that by default. If I need a smaller width - I would just make the window narrower.

[stek29]

@OnkelTem You can't now.

Full width is almost never used together with message "bubbles".
Maybe one day TDesktop would have bubble-less option, which would also take 100% width.

Anyway it has nothing to do with this issue. It's closer to #2060 I think.

I'm locking the issue.
Just a recap for anyone who stumbles into it: there's a setting which is shown when bubbles are on left side and it allows to disable this behavior. It's labeled "Adaptive layout for wide screens".