[Enhancement]: Option to display server name alongside the icon

SwiftcordApp / Swiftcord

A fully native Discord client for macOS built 100% in Swift!

https://swiftcordapp.github.io/Swiftcord/

GNU General Public License v3.0

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[Enhancement]: Option to display server name alongside the icon #155

Open now-its-dark opened 1 year ago

now-its-dark commented 1 year ago

Hi there, This is an awesome project, thanks! So happy to see a cleaner and more optimized option for macos :)

One the most personally aggravating design choices in the official discord client, is the lack of an option to permanently display the server name as a text label alongside the icon for the server— in the case where someone has joined many servers, it can become quite difficult to keep track of them simply based on an icon, particularly in cases where the icons change or are very minimalistic / visually unmemorable.

It would be amazing to see this option added to Swiftcord!

Other Category

Core UI

Sjmarf commented 1 year ago

Interesting idea! I might look into implementing this sometime.

Sjmarf commented 1 year ago

Update: this is quite difficult to do well without MacOS 13+. I was unable to find a good enough solution. Here's what I tried:

Using a HStack to arrange the server bar next to the main content. This is what we are doing with the regular server bar right now. The problem with this is that the server bar with names would be neither resizable nor collapsible.
Using a HSplit to arrange them. This doesn't work well because it adds resize handles to the regular server bar, which isn't good. It also doesn't solve the issue of collapsibility.
Creating a 3-column NavigationView does exactly what I want, except that it's got a minimum column width. This makes the regular server bar too wide. I was unable to change this minimum column width.

If anyone has any better solutions, feel free to have a go at it. If not, I think we should wait until MacOS 13 where NavigationSplitView is implemented, which solves this problem.

cryptoAlgorithm commented 1 year ago

@now-its-dark thanks for the suggestion. As @Sjmarf has mentioned, it appears to be difficult to harmoniously implement always-displayed server-names, so I'd love to hear about potential UI designs/mockups from you :D If they are feasible, we might consider implementing them in the future.

now-its-dark commented 1 year ago

Hi @cryptoAlgorithm, it seemed like the main issue was more a limitation of the current Swift UI until the next update. If there is an interest though, I do have some concrete thoughts on how to accommodate an expanded server list view and the dm list view, without creating clutter. I'll try and mock something up tonight :-)

cryptoAlgorithm commented 1 year ago

@now-its-dark sure, I look forward to your mockups. I think it should be possible to accommodate an expandable server list with the current version of SwiftUI, I think the issue is that we just don't know how to make it look good and "discord-like"

now-its-dark commented 1 year ago

Hi there! I had meant to follow up on this sooner, but got rather sick shortly after.

The concept I had in mind looks something like this: Chat and Server List are two distinct components of the Discord experience and imo, they should be treated as such in the UI. A tabbed navigation between the two seems like the most straightforward approach.

The attached mock is using the stock Discord UI- I had hoped to adjust it to match the Swiftcord UI when sharing this, but the issue mentioned on bug #167 has been happening for me, so I'm unable to get past login, in order to screen-cap it and use that as a reference.

My thinking was that the two views would be decoupled in such a way, that the last server or DM to be viewed would be the one presented when clicking the respective tab, so you could easily jump between the last viewed for either one.

cryptoAlgorithm commented 1 year ago

@now-its-dark thank you for getting back! Apologies for the issue you're experiencing, a temporary fix has been posted in Swiftcord's Discord server and will be incorporated in the next release.

As for the mock-ups, I kind of dig the Servers/Friends tabbed design. Widening the sidebar seems worth it to combine DMs and servers this way. However, since I'd like to keep the overall sidebar width (server + channel list) roughly the same, do you have any ideas how to incorporate the channel list into your existing mockups in a way that doesn't significantly increase the total sidebar width?