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matrix-org / matrix.to

A simple stateless privacy-protecting URL redirecting service for Matrix
http://matrix.to
Apache License 2.0
893 stars 189 forks source link

Confusing UX when links are opened in Element desktop #211

Open haasn opened 3 years ago

haasn commented 3 years ago

Describe the bug I had a very hard time figuring out how matrix.to was supposed to interact with the Element Desktop client.

To Reproduce

  1. Go to any matrix.to URL
  2. Click on "Continue" (under "Element")

Expected behavior Something like this: discord

Notice how it clearly points out that it "beamed" the invite link to the desktop app, and explicitly asks me if I want to use the browser instead as an alternative.

Actual behavior element

Nowhere on the page did it say that it already (silently!) sent the link to my Element desktop client (via the element: protocol handler). If Element is minimized or on a different workspace, there's zero indication that it received any invite links, so unless you have the foresight to manually check the Element client it's easy to miss the fact that the element: handler already got invoked. In particular, nothing about this page gave me the impression that it had already sent the info to the Element client.

(Even worse, for this specific link (which was for a group), the link did not actually do anything in Element, presumably due to me having opted into the spaces beta, so even when I manually checked Element to see if it had received anything, nothing was different!)

As a result of this bug, and the very misleading wording of the site, I'm presented with the (wrong) impression that I still needed an extra step to actually open the link. In fact, given the presence of the "Download for Linux" button, I had thought the issue was that it didn't recognize that I already had Element installed - otherwise, why would it be asking me to download Element?

If I had to rewrite this dialog from scratch, it would read something like:

Success

\<URL> was forwarded to the Element Desktop client. You can now close this tab.

Not working?

  • Download for Linux
  • Open in your browser instead

(And I would make the "Download for Linux" button white, not blue, otherwise it gives the misleading impression that this is the button I'm supposed to click, when the reality is that what I'm supposed to do is close the tab)

bwindels commented 2 years ago

We're planning to make changes here, coming soon

(And I would make the "Download for Linux" button white, not blue, otherwise it gives the misleading impression that this is the button I'm supposed to click, when the reality is that what I'm supposed to do is close the tab)

Perhaps, but the reason for the current behaviour is that we can't tell whether the user has the app installed or not. Agreed the current balance can be improved though.