hiqua
commented
3 years ago Closed janvotava closed 2 years ago
hiqua
commented
3 years ago 
janvotava
commented
3 years ago Basically #5314
I don't think so.
lstor
commented
3 years ago I want to object this too.
I have reduced cognitive capacity (not reduced IQ 🙃) due to a TBI a couple of years back. Any unnecessary cognitive load exerts me and is detrimental. The earlier colors let me quickly and easily identify each contact. While this is a small and seemingly innocent change, my brain is now working high gear to try and discern which conversation is with whom. Even if I changed my color in every conversation, my brain would still be exhausted by subconsciously trying to figure out why the colors are reversed.
In this state, Signal is literally unusable for me. Which is sad, because it's the only way I keep in touch with friends and family.
Please either revert this change or make it optional.
csavard-sudo
commented
3 years ago Yeah, I think this change was intentional.... but I don't think it makes sense. I would much rather the custom colour apply to the other person in the conversation (that's what should happen in a group chat as well??)
briancw
commented
3 years ago Turning every other person to grey in group chat is a serious backstep. I find it much harder to follow group chats now.
mchangun
commented
3 years ago Same here. This must be a bug and not a feature.
DeathOfBalance
commented
3 years ago I agree with everyone else, this is awful. No point in colors if they don't help distinguish between different people.
derNarr
commented
3 years ago I was a little shocked about this change as well. Hopefully, this becomes at least configurable (preferrably to the old colour sheme as this has settled in my head). Same person should have the same colour in all (group) chats. Myself, should be a high contrast black on light grey or white on black (depending on the theme).
Overall the desktop app (Linux here) and the Android app work very well! Thanks!
derNarr
commented
3 years ago The changelog does not mention this change https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/releases and it is inconsistent with the Android app version 5.12.3, which still shows the"right" colours for the "right" people.
The only (related but in this respect in-transparent) change mentioned is "Become a conversation artist. Use the new color selector to turn every chat into a masterpiece."
derNarr
commented
3 years ago In the commits for the upcoming release there are already a bunch of changes that are related to the chat colours. I don't fully understand, if they aim for restoring the old behaviour with some additional customization options. But if someone has a little bit more time and digs into it and figures out, if the upcoming release will have the old colour scheme restored, let us know here. Thanks!
Here is the diff: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/compare/development...v5.4.0
firdimigdi
commented
3 years ago This must surely be a bug as it is not like this in the Android version. Colours apply to the other party's chat messages and are carried over to group chats. Group messages on desktop right now are a bit of a mess as there is an arbitrary colour applied to the name of the sender that is not relevant to the chat colour selected for that person.
Morodar
commented
3 years ago It confuses me every time I switch between Android and Windows.
Added screenshots, same group chat, same position.
lstor
commented
3 years ago There are several reasons why this change doesn't make sense.
Signal is great, but there are still some useful features to work on. Changing chat colors is not one of them.
gfrcsd
commented
3 years ago I hear the Android version being mentioned. In the beta, the colours have already been changed (in line with the desktop app). I am really hoping this is rolled back, it is not a move in the right direction.
dofranko
commented
3 years ago I have already downloaded Android version (non beta). It's like on desktop. It's awful (in my opinion).
derNarr
commented
3 years ago Is there any document that describes the reasoning behind this change? All the reasons here echo my own believe that, I do want to have colours attached to other people consistently over devices and different groups. My own messages should be there but not attention grabbing and therefore in a boring black and white.
Is there some way to take part in the thought process behind this change?
https://community.signalusers.org/c/ux/28
https://community.signalusers.org/t/making-signal-prettier-ideas/24376
https://community.signalusers.org/t/proposed-new-signal-ios-design/13733
My impression is, that the whole change follows the two discussions above. I have not read them fully, but do hope for making an optional switch to the old im IMHO better design decision.
Morodar
commented
3 years ago @derNarr Seems like an iOS vs Android design thing?
Still, it doesn't make sense to me that I can change my color for each contact. A global default color for my bubble would be okay, but I definitely want my color per contact back - this was really useful for group chats. 😅
jjdelc
commented
3 years ago This is the closest to an official rationale on why this change was made: https://community.signalusers.org/t/beta-feedback-for-the-new-color-changes/33048/100
the fact that I have lots of contacts means that many of my groups have color conflicts where 2+ people have the same color. This happens consistently enough where I can never truly use color as an indicator of the speaker. I’m always subconsciously looking at avatars and names regardless.
This is why other apps do not do this. There simply aren’t enough distinguishable colors. And even if there were (and this is subjective, I know), conversations end up looking like a confetti explosion. It can be a lot! Especially from the perspective of a new user switching from a different messaging app.
Having a color per contact does not scale when you have too many contacts, you're bound to have two contacts that are red and you will have to rely on name or avatar to tell them apart.
dofranko
commented
3 years ago But why delete previous feature we were used to? They could let us (for example) decide which one use per contact/group.
DeathOfBalance
commented
3 years ago Having a color per contact does not scale when you have too many contacts, you're bound to have two contacts that are red and you will have to rely on name or avatar to tell them apart.
The adding of possible color gradients addresses this issue. Now if only the colors were applied to incoming messages...
lstor
commented
3 years ago This is the closest to an official rationale on why this change was made: https://community.signalusers.org/t/beta-feedback-for-the-new-color-changes/33048/100
[...]
Having a color per contact does not scale when you have too many contacts, you're bound to have two contacts that are red and you will have to rely on name or avatar to tell them apart.
But having everyone be the same color (except from arbitrarily colored names) doesn't solve anything, it just makes it even worse. There are many solutions that are a lot better. For example keep the old system, but apply identifying name coloring only when there is a color conflict and/or only in group chats. Or follow @vaporwave9's suggestions, with stripes, fully customizable colors or other tricks.
I find the thought "It isn't optimal in a singular (edge?) case, so we completely ruin all the useful cases and introduce another solution that is also not optimal in said case." very peculiar.
derNarr
commented
3 years ago This is the closest to an official rationale on why this change was made: https://community.signalusers.org/t/beta-feedback-for-the-new-color-changes/33048/100
the fact that I have lots of contacts means that many of my groups have color conflicts where 2+ people have the same color. This happens consistently enough where I can never truly use color as an indicator of the speaker. I’m always subconsciously looking at avatars and names regardless.
This is why other apps do not do this. There simply aren’t enough distinguishable colors. And even if there were (and this is subjective, I know), conversations end up looking like a confetti explosion. It can be a lot! Especially from the perspective of a new user switching from a different messaging app.
Having a color per contact does not scale when you have too many contacts, you're bound to have two contacts that are red and you will have to rely on name or avatar to tell them apart.
First, thank you for digging out these quotes. This explains some of the reasoning, even if I don't follow it completely. Here is why:
I fully agree that it is not possible to have one single colour per contact. The Signal android app has 13 predefined colours at the moment. I have roughly 180 people in my addressbook who use Signal as well. This results in 14 people having the same colour, if I distribute the contacts on the colours evenly.
This sound really bad, but is it?
The colours mainly have discriminative value. I don't want to confuse people. With two thirds of my address book (120 people) I don't write regularly and colour does not matter for them. I do now, when I write with them as it is so rare.
We are left with five people sharing colours (60 / 13). But even for the the number of messages I exchange are very uniformly distributed. There is one person, with which I exchange half of all messages I write. Then there are some smaller groups with usually three to five active people. All these is below the 13 different colours. So (nearly) all of the relevant people which whom I exchange regularly messages and which cover 80% of all messages I exchange fit into the 13 different colours of the Android app.
In the last years there have been two occasions where there was a conflict in colouring people, but this could be mitigated easily by changeing the colour (or nowerdays by giving a different background to the chats with the person with is in the smaller number of groups).
Overall, in language and in life having a pareto / zipf / power-law distribution is pretty common and allows us to code information very efficiently with a limited amount of signs (colours). Being able to easily and prominently distiguishing between 13 family members and 13 working coleagues and 13 friends will cover most peoples social lives. At least for me this was very useful and very convenient.
literal-0x4e
commented
3 years ago A close friend of mine asked for fully customizable colours. Would it be possible to expose a box to enter HTML colour codes? https://htmlcolorcodes.com/
Yes, this please. FWIW, when I first started using signal I was very confused by those predefined colors and spent a good half an hour trying to figure out how to define my own colors until I figured this obvious feature isn't there and instead we get a handful of shades of red, green and blue. Even a random run off the mill internet forum in early 2000s had more color options than this haha Heck, I had more distinct colors in the nickname I used on Q3 than total colors provided by signal and Q3 came out in last millennium. (note: I don't consider the slightly more muddy variations of the same color as provided by signal to be distinct)
simonflick
commented
3 years ago Even though the background is grey, the names are now colored in group chats. WhatsApp and Telegram do this too and I think it is an elegant solution to the problem of "too few colors for too many contacts".
But now having your own messages in such a bright and saturated color is quite distracting. It should be more subtle (again WhatsApp and Telegram are good examples here). So basically I vote against reverting to the old state.
not-night-but
commented
3 years ago Even though the background is grey, the names are now colored in group chats. WhatsApp and Telegram do this too and I think it is an elegant solution to the problem of "too few colors for too many contacts".
How is this a solution? It's the exact same "problem" you are just applying the colour to a different section of the message.
jjdelc
commented
3 years ago Telegram and Whatsapp have their "gray" tone not a solid dead personality-lacking black, it has a blue/green shade. They are shaded dark/light colors. And the fact that they come with a default wallpaper makes the default conversation and groups look much less dead by default.
That aside, even though Signal was the odd one out giving proper character to each chat window (originally even the title bar of the contact was colored, so it felt like a different interface with each person) it gave the proper "personality" to each contact with their own color. I was never in a large enough group that it became a problem.
Maybe... maybe if the dark theme wasn't so desaturated, the lack of color/personality wouldn't feel as dead as now.
literal-0x4e
commented
3 years ago Maybe... maybe if the dark theme wasn't so desaturated, the lack of color/personality wouldn't feel as dead as now.
#define RANT
or maybe, if instead of copying other s***ty apps, it would actually let the user customize colors and such to their liking, we wouldn't even need to hold this discussion in the first place.
#undef RANT
Anyway, I wouldn't care what the default is – if it comes to that, copy other apps if you may, as long as I can customize it to whichever way fits me, the user the most. Sure, good defaults are important, but there is no good reason to impose artificial restrictions on color selection. Color selection not just in the sense of which colors can be chosen, but also in the sense of "what gets colored in which color" I should also note that the current artificial limitation on color selection potentially does not play along with the more rare variants of color-blindness, something that could be amended by allowing full customization.
klikevil
commented
3 years ago
- [x] I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates
Bug Description
Chat colours are applied to my messages instead of incoming ones. It's an inconsistent behaviour with the previous versions. Now my messages are highlighted instead of replies from my contacts.
Steps to Reproduce
Install Signal 5.4.0
Actual Result: Chat colours are applied to outgoing messages. Expected Result: Chat colours are applied on incoming messages.
Platform Info
Signal Version: 5.4.0 Operating System: macOS
Also effects windows desktop client 5.4.1
Turning every other person to grey in group chat is a serious backstep. I find it much harder to follow group chats now.
Also hate the new thing, i already immediately complained via email after the update made my client look like shit. This needs to be fixed immediately, make it optional for the custom chat colors applied or DO NOT APPLY THEM TO MY BUBBLES. Everyone that is saying it makes zero sense to color only your bubbles a certain color is right. I want the color that everyone else has for my messages as it was previously.
The color picker is a FUCKING eye sore.
Pardon my language.
literal-0x4e
commented
3 years ago We just want to have a mere choice to either opt into classic (incoming) or modern (outgoing) message colouring. Please just add a button to switch.
even better: have per-contact colors again, with the addition of "self"-contact: this way any "mode", including a somewhat "mixed" mode can be painlessly emulated.
simonflick
commented
3 years ago Turning every other person to grey in group chat is a serious backstep. I find it much harder to follow group chats now.
I agree with everyone else, this is awful. No point in colors if they don't help distinguish between different people.
Even though the background is grey, the names are now colored in group chats. WhatsApp and Telegram do this too and I think it is an elegant solution to the problem of "too few colors for too many contacts".
How is this a solution? It's the exact same "problem" you are just applying the colour to a different section of the message.
This needs to be fixed immediately, make it optional for the custom chat colors applied or DO NOT APPLY THEM TO MY BUBBLES. Everyone that is saying it makes zero sense to color only your bubbles a certain color is right.
To help recognize contacts there are 3 elements:
I think this design is very effective. But this is only my opinion so I looked at a bunch of other apps to see how they handled this problem:
As @lstor pointed out some people have good reason to reverse the design so making it customizable is a great idea. But it could be argued that the default should still be "Your own messages stand out" to ease the transition from other apps.
Gradients or even simpler: Use stripes if a colour is used twice. You effectively double the total amount of distinguishable colours by that.
I'm not sure if I understand it correctly but striped message bubbles would be very hard to read.
or maybe, if instead of copying other s***ty apps, it would actually let the user customize colors and such to their liking, we wouldn't even need to hold this discussion in the first place.
Maybe the devs should copy Telegram as it has fully customizable colors 😃
jjdelc
commented
3 years ago Your own messages stand out
Yup, but in those cases your bubbles stand out the same color in all chats. They follow a global theme.
Maybe the devs should copy Telegram as it has fully customizable colors smiley
This has been added recently to Signal. You can customize colors to be any color or even use gradients for the(your) chat bubbles.
literal-0x4e
commented
3 years ago This has been added recently to Signal. You can customize colors to be any color or even use gradients for the(your) chat bubbles.
'cept the "self-contact" is the only contact with a customizable color. Every other, actual, contact is now forced to the same color, which is the root of the problem. in other words, "Thank you, new feature! But our fix is in another castle!"
simonflick
commented
3 years ago Yup, but in those cases your bubbles stand out the same color in all chats. They follow a global theme.
They also follow a global theme on my Signal desktop app. Or is there a bug?
This has been added recently to Signal. You can customize colors to be any color or even use gradients for the(your) chat bubbles.
Yes but it is actually a bit restrictive because the color picker is hue, saturation, lightness with the last one being locked.
klikevil
commented
3 years ago Yes but it is actually a bit restrictive because the color picker is hue, saturation, lightness with the last one being locked.
And it's still only for our messages, just give me my old color back from 5.3, i want classic color layout back, i've been trying to roll back but the source is dependency hell in yarn/npm better-sqlite keeps failing to build.
josh-signal
commented
3 years ago Yes but it is actually a bit restrictive because the color picker is hue, saturation, lightness with the last one being locked.
I can explain this bit, we want to ensure that white text is always legible on whatever color you choose so we have a fixed lightness table mapping depending on what hue you pick.
klikevil
commented
3 years ago Yes but it is actually a bit restrictive because the color picker is hue, saturation, lightness with the last one being locked.
I can explain this bit, we want to ensure that white text is always legible on whatever color you choose so we have a fixed lightness table mapping depending on what hue you pick.
Please just add an option to toggle the previous way it was before in preferences.
[EDIT] For those of you that have been completely F'd over by this update ( @janvotava (I know you're using mac but you may want to look in to finding an old packaged version as well) , @literal-0x4e , @dsm6069 , @derNarr , @dofranko , @Morodar , possibly @lstor , @moreyummystuff , @mchangun , @vaporwave9 , @csavard-sudo , @briancw , @DeathOfBalance and any others that find this update/change unacceptable/unpleasent/etc) , I found an old release that you can fetch:
WARNING THIS WILL REMOVE ALL CURRENT CONVERSATIONS AND WILL ESSENTIALLY REGISTER IT AS A NEW DEVICE AS THE DATABASE HAS BEEN UPDATED TO A NEW VERSION AND IS NOT BACKWARDS COMPATBILE Signal 5.3.0 Windows desktop installer
I fetched this from here:
the sha sum appears to check out on vt https://signal.en.uptodown.com/windows/download/3692416
WARNING THIS WILL REMOVE ALL CURRENT CONVERSATIONS AND WILL ESSENTIALLY REGISTER IT AS A NEW DEVICE Please note as they have updated the database you will need to move %APPDATA%\Signal out of the way before installing, this will blow away all group texts etc until they get this god awful interface rolled back. 5.4.x is absolutely worthy of me doing so to have this back.
You better believe I will ALWAYS be thoroughly reviewing every future update to prevent this from ever happening again quite upset with this new functionality and it changing the previous defaults of chat colors 😡.
cemysce
commented
3 years ago This change seems to be an attempt to fix a problem that I guess some people have, but creates an even worse problem in its place. Previously I could change the chat color, giving an individual the same color in all of my chats. Now all I can choose is my own color, and it only affects a single chat. Furthermore, the names of other people in their posts are now in arbitrary colors that I cannot choose, and they're not even consistent across chats -- person X's name may appear red in one chat, and blue in another. I defy anyone to convince me that is better.
What problem is solved by picking a different color for my own posts depending on which chat I am posting to? The only thing I can imagine is that it (along with the new wallpaper feature) may be useful to distinguish chats from one another. I have not personally had that problem, but maybe some others do. So fine, provide that ability, but don't simultaneously remove the ability to set the color for other users' posts! As others have stated above, this change makes no sense. It does not even solve the stated problem that there aren't enough colors to distinguish people when there are lots of them in a chat -- a problem that I hope the developers realize that not everybody has (my own chats have maybe 5 active people each, if that). The reasoning behind this change seems to boil down to "things aren't perfect for some people, so let's make things worse for everyone".
And the argument that certain other apps behave this way should carry very little weight. There are lots of features in other apps that Signal does not and should not mimic. If some other app is doing something better than Signal, the argument to mimic that should be on the feature's merits. Otherwise, the only reason possible is to attract users of that other app, ignoring what existing users want.
cemysce
commented
3 years ago If the issue with colors for others' posts is that they're confusing in chats with too many people in them, then let the user decide how to deal with that. Right now the ability to select a color no longer does anything to distinguish other people, because it only applies to your own posts and you cannot change the automatic color for others' names, so Signal developers must be of the opinion that users who have this problem with large groups find the total lack of distinguishing colors to be an acceptable solution. In that case, if Signal were to restore the ability to pick a color for each contact, then these affected users could just choose grey for all of their contacts.
j-schumann
commented
3 years ago I want to share my experience as visually impaired:
For me it's very hard to distinguish people just by the colored name and the avatar as very many of my contacts don't even have an avatar but matching initials. Others with avatars are not distinguishable because the avatars are very small and some look nearly the same at that size in regards to color & brightness.
Second point is readability (in the light theme of the desktop app): The current gray of the background of incoming messages with the very light and also grayish font offers very low contrast and makes for strenuous reading. When my own messages are gray on gray it's not optimal but i seldomly have to read my own texts again... I don't think the current contrast of incoming messages text + timestamp on the gray background or even the icons that appear on the light app background (when hovering a message) pass WCAG AAA rules or maybe not even AA for contrast.
So for me, I want colored background and white text (or black text on brighter colors) on any message, regardless of incoming or outgoing, or group vs direct conversation. In groups it is important for me to distinguish people on first sight (and not by carefully inspecting small avatars and names).
To summarize: Probably nobody has anything against changing the default setting to the current state of the desktop app. But please don't remove an existing feature for that. If anybody has problems with too many or too few colors for every contact in group chats let them have the same (background) color for every incoming message. But let all others choose a distinct contact color (with a picker instead of a limited palette) for each contact. Nobody is against keeping the new feature of coloring outgoing messages (again with a meaningful color picker).
Richardk2n
commented
3 years ago Yes but it is actually a bit restrictive because the color picker is hue, saturation, lightness with the last one being locked.
I can explain this bit, we want to ensure that white text is always legible on whatever color you choose so we have a fixed lightness table mapping depending on what hue you pick.
Please just allow people to choose what they want. If they want their messages to be colored in a way, that you deem not perfectly readable, why should they be not allowed? Surely you can display a suggested lightness and still let people do what they want.
Also I have been using and loyal to Signal for years now, and am very used to (and somewhat dependent on) message coloring to distinguish people, could you please not f me over to attract new potential users? You should attract people by being better and not downgrading to be as bad as the others.
Also I am not visually impaired and still have a hard time reading bluish gray on gray. This is in no way better than distinguishing people fast and efficient by message bubble color.
pcharest
commented
3 years ago Please revert that. This must be a bug and not a feature.
klikevil
commented
3 years ago Yup, just give me back my old color to my own messages this is what i care about the most; agree.
100% agree
Agree, don't cater to the minority at the expense of your current user base, you see how mad this issue has me, I literally blew away my entire signal database of all my massive conversations and group chats and reverted to a previous version of signal and will not be upgrading it to 5.4 ever until i have my old message bubble color back to its once pristine state by default.
I am against the current behavior of coloring my outgoing messages, i like the old behavior for my outgoing messages, if you change coloring outgoing messages please leave the setting on coloring outgoing messages as their default from version 5.3.0 and let users change it with a meaningful color picker if they so choose at a later date
Agree give us back our default outgoing message color, can keep the color picker just make our outgoing messages default to the old behavior, if you are going to keep the new functionality please for the love of God let us have the default colors from 5.3.0 and allow users to customize their own messages and set custom colors for everyone else they can set everyone back to gray on their own if they want to keep the ridiculous new bug.
Android users appear to be upset about this too this is a critical incident in the UI/Usability aspect of the application at this point.
example:
I then realized they were talking about the same thing i was
Me laughing at them because your new version sucks and this is not good behavior.
The vast majority of people do not like the new behavior please scrap it all together, change its behavior, or add a way to opt out of this new color insanity. It makes absolutely NO sense for you to impose this on the majority for a few people complaining about not being able to customize only their colors for messages......
Tomsanik
commented
3 years ago I am criticising Messenger's nonsensical colors for quite some time. When I talked to someone about why the Signal is much better than Messenger, color management was one of the main reasons. When I started using it, it blown my mind that the color of contact is this consistent throughout the chats (I am former WA user). And now you "copied" this absolutely nonsensical color schemes.
Why is it now just worse:
Sorry for long message, but as you probably found out -- I really hate this color design from the bottom of my soul and mind.
Please give us at least switch to old color scheme. I beg you on my knees.
klikevil
commented
3 years ago start ./rant.sh
I am criticising Messenger's nonsensical colors for quite some time. When I talked to someone about why the Signal is much better than Messenger, color management was one of the main reasons. When I started using it, it blown my mind that the color of contact is this consistent throughout the chats (I am former WA user). And now you "copied" this absolutely nonsensical color schemes.
Why is it now just worse:
- I don't know how about the developers and Messenger slaves, but I don't read my messages. I don't need them to be highlighted. I wrote them.
- I absolutely loved that all of my contacts has it's own bubble color that is used in private and group chat. When I see blue message, I know right away Adam wrote it no matter what.
- What sense does it make to different people have the same grey bubbles? It makes ABSOLUTELY no sense whatsoever, more so in group chats. Color of the bubble was the main distinguisher between people. Color of name is useless, I will rather read the name than look at the color of such small element. More so outside on sunny day, where bubble color gave me person right away, now I have dull grey for everyone.
- Color of the contact in group chat has even different color of the name then my chosen color for private chat.
- I just don't have that much choice to color manage my Signal now. All chats look very similar. And I just hate that my colors are highlighted. Just hate, no other words. Just. Hate. Sorry if you like it. I don't.
- Many people are not in large groups to be lost in color duplicities. Now you stripped all of us of really comfortable way of distinguishing contacts. Couldn't it be solved differently than just actually get rid of colors?
- I saw somewhere around here, that it makes smoother transition from other apps. With all due respect: what the hell? Signal had supreme color management. If I compares Signal and Messenger colors to people, they just said "I never thought about it, but it really doesn't make sense this way". They just don't know better. Signal should show them, not accomodate for modern functions, that are invented by people (FB) that care about conversation emoticon and adds between chats.
- Wouldn't having RGB color selection be enough solution to most color duplicities problems?
Sorry for long message, but as you probably found out -- I really hate this color design from the bottom of my soul and mind.
echo 'rant ended'
Please give us at least switch to old color scheme. I beg you on my knees.
Preach brother preach 100% agree with everything you have said, if you are a windows user and complaining about the desktop client if you navigate to here:
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/5316#issuecomment-858119267
I describe the nuclear (blow away all current conversation history and all open chats other than the pinned ones, but even that conversation history will be blown away for obvious reasons) option workaround to downgrade signal to 5.3.0 again until they get this issue resolved (the sqlite database was uploaded and is not backwards compatabile).
I can't stress enough how much I agree with you, they need to fix this immediately everyone is outraged about this and this bug needs to be pinned and I would like to see whoever committed/tagged version 5.4.x to be banned from all future pull requests etc and respectfully asked to leave the project and never come back but that is asking too much. I will settle for a revert to 5.3.0 or restore our original color to its pristine state and allow the color picker to work for individual contact's message bubble color instead.
derNarr
commented
3 years ago There seems to be a poll now (which will have very limited meaning) in the feedback channel:
https://community.signalusers.org/t/beta-feedback-for-the-new-color-changes/33048/786
As stated there as well, this poll will be not representative at all, but for me it was still good (and interesting to see) that 15 to 20 people seem to like the new UI.
simonflick
commented
3 years ago As stated there as well, this poll will be not representative at all, but for me it was still good (and interesting to see) that 15 to 20 people seem to like the new UI.
CLICK TO SEE HOW THE MAJORITY OF YOUR USERBASE WANTS THEIR MESSAGES TO LOOK AGAIN.
The opinions stated in this issue are not representative at all because almost only people who dislike the changes end up writing here.
But I would also like to see full customization of the chat design. I mean if you're already using Electron, it would be a waste not to allow that.
derNarr
commented
3 years ago In here I also want to emphasize that (at least for me) it is really only about the colouring and that I do want to have colour identities for my contacts and that it only clashes twice in the last years for me.
I do think the other UI changes go in a good direction. Especially having the contact pictures next to bubbles in group chats is really good. Placement can be improved and the default picture should have some generative / procedural / distinctive feature to it, because I have a decent amount of contacts with the same initial letters.
Colouring the names in an distinctive way is an interesting feature as well, where I really have to see how much I like or dislike it and how it can be improved in terms of contrast etc.
So at least for me, it is only about the colours and having vivid colours attached to contacts (and myself in a boring grey).
My responses are not about freezing the status quo and having everything like the “old style” UI forever. Not at all.
j000
commented
3 years ago What about colouring top bar? Can we at least do that? Right now, when I have Signal opened in split screen and only see 4-5 incoming messages, colours are useless. Other UI changes I really like.
I actually agree with some other comments - why are my (one person) messages in one app coloured differently, but incoming ones from different person are the same colour? Since we have setting for changing one colour, can we simply have another - for incoming messages?
klikevil
commented
3 years ago In here I also want to emphasize that (at least for me) it is really only about the colouring and that I do want to have colour identities for my contacts and that it only clashes twice in the last years for me.
Same, I don't want everyone else to have my old color and then have only messages colored, I do not care about the rest of the changes this is my only complaint which is why I am commenting on this issue repeatedly to try to keep it relevant. It is a deal breaker for me, I will remain at version 5.3.0 until a security vulnerability comes out and then I will probably pull in the diff from that and hope and pray that applying it to a 5.3.0 fork works and then ATTEMPT to build it (all my previous attempts have failed though due to crazy dependency conflicts and not being able to get bettersqlite3 because it is saying it is a bad tar ball).
As stated there as well, this poll will be not representative at all, but for me it was still good (and interesting to see) that 15 to 20 people seem to like the new UI.
CLICK TO SEE HOW THE MAJORITY OF YOUR USERBASE WANTS THEIR MESSAGES TO LOOK AGAIN.
The opinions stated in this issue are not representative at all because almost only people who dislike the changes end up writing here.
But I would also like to see full customization of the chat design. I mean if you're already using Electron, it would be a waste not to allow that.
My only real issue is with it locking colors to only your messages because we already know what we sent, we don't need that to stand out and that they changed the default color away from what we previously had and are used to and gave that to everyone else. Everytime i see messages from others in group chats i think that I sent them, I am red green color blind but am used to seeing everyone else with colors not me, I very much want to keep my old color and not have the defaults get completely inverted and swapped on me, I have pretty serious brain damage from some very bad habits that i started around 11 until my late 20s..
gbip
commented
3 years ago Do you plan on making the app usable again ?
Bug Description
Chat colours are applied to my messages instead of incoming ones. It's an inconsistent behaviour with the previous versions. Now my messages are highlighted instead of replies from my contacts.
Steps to Reproduce
Install Signal 5.4.0
Actual Result: Chat colours are applied to outgoing messages. Expected Result: Chat colours are applied on incoming messages.
Platform Info
Signal Version: 5.4.0 Operating System: macOS