Chat colours are applied to my messages instead of incoming ones

janvotava 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

DevilPepper commented 3 years ago

LMFAO

Become a conversation artist. Use the new color selector to turn every chat into a masterpiece.

Just adding to these complaints, hoping that our voices would be heard. I don't want to be an artist. If I switch to a new conversation and I'm a different color, that's retarded. Principle of least astonishment... screw it? If I see the contact's badge is green, their messages should be green! I should be the same color everywhere! If you want to keep this change, at least let it be configurable for both self and others.

I've upvoted the OP since issues are probably prioritized by upvotes.

klikevil commented 3 years ago

I've upvoted the OP since issues are probably prioritized by upvotes.

Please also go through and upvote the comments on the issue that are agreeing with the sentiment that the colors should be applied to others instead of self, or reverted to the previous behavior, etc. The sentiments you agree with, the developers don't plan on undoing this as it stands now they also have a poll somewhere in this extremely long issue thread, but they are trying to copy other prominent apps that also do this. I went completely nuclear and rolled back to 5.3 on windows for my work computer where signal is NECESSARY for us to use for the security team for our discussions blowing away entire chat history.

More angry users just installed your atrocity against the visually impaired by the way on linux mint.

Ideal hates it too.

EvilRenegade commented 3 years ago

This is a terrible change that solves nothing and makes no sense UI-/UX-wise.

You have two sides to your conversations: A constant one (yourself) and a variable one (one or multiple persons you are talking to). This change makes it so the constant side has a variable color and the variable side has a constant color. That makes no sense.
As others have pointed out, color, especially on a monochrome dark background, acts as a highlight. It makes no sense UX-wise to highlight the messages whose content I already know (because they are my own), while the other side's messages are light grey on dark grey on darker grey.
I honestly have to question the sanity and the intelligence of anyone who argues "we could only distinguish 13 different colors at max, so people would inevitably have had duplicate colors, which would've been confusing - so we made it that all other people are the same color, but one single person (yourself) has 13 different colors, some of which are duplicated depending on which conversation you in" is actually a reasonable description of an improvement. If the problem is "multiple people could share the same color!", how the f*ck is "all people definitely share the same color!" a solution??
As others pointed out, coloring the names instead of the bubbles actually only reintroduces the problem in a different UI-element. Either you have enough colors for everyone to get a unique one or not. If there are two contacts with red highlight, there are two contacts with red highlight. Whether the highlight is the name or the talk bubble makes no difference.
Also, pure switching of the colors obviously does nothing to alleviate the problem for the colored side. If there aren't enough colors to prevent the colored bubble to have the some color for multiple conversations, how exactly does it help me that it's me who is red in two different conversations, rather than the other side? It still means color is not a unique identifier. So the problem remains exactly the same, only with worse UX/UI, because now I have to actively cognitively filter out my uselessly highlighted own messages and discern twenty grey people from each other!
As somebody else put it: Color is part of the identity of the contact here. It is an attribute associated with them. I may know three blue people, two red and five green, but distinguishing the three blue people is vastly easier than having to distinguish 10 grey people while pointlessly cycling through colors like a chameleon on LSD.
One would think it would be impossible, but it gets even worse when the second parties quote each other. Because quotes are backgrounded with the color Signal now assigned to me, which means I have grey Person A who quotes grey Person B, whose statement is now in my background color, despite the fact that it doesn't belong to me. How did this pass any sort quality assurance or user testing? It turns the message coloring actively misleading.

This change is TERRIBLE and it makes NO SENSE in terms of the user experience and the user interface design.

It should just be admitted as a mistake and rolled back.

If you're too proud to do that, at least remove color identities altogether. To say "contact coloring cannot work", and then uselessly color the wrong side of the conversation while still coloring the right side, but in a different way, is a clusterf*ck of a solution that helps no one.

No colors would be better than this sh*t.

klikevil commented 3 years ago

I am willing to compromise at this point, you can leave it the way it is on mobile, but please we are absolutely begging you on our hands and knees give us back the old behavior do not implement this change it is THE single worst UI change in the history of the application and makes it impossible. This is also going to be completely permanent?!?! Someone please fork signal to a sane version and build a desktop release for windows that has the latest patches but DOES NOT have the color scheme!!!

We only have 90 days before 5.3.0 will no longer work? The developer that decided this was a good idea needs to be fired... out of a cannon in to the sun.

klues commented 3 years ago

I just can confirm the many voices on this issue before me:

When I first saw these color changes, I was completely sure that this ist just a very annoying bug and someone just interchanged some variables in the code. Now I'm learning that this was intentional and I absolutely don't get it. @EvilRenegade already mentioned all the points why this makes no sense at all UI/UX wise.

Please revert this and please hear the voices of your users - otherwise they eventually will leave. I love Signal for the fact of providing an open source and secure messaging possibility, but I really don't understand how they're treating user feedback in some cases. BTW: all of the other Signal users I know also are very confused about these changes regarding colors.

klikevil commented 3 years ago

Maybe everyone here and elsewhere is taking the wrong approach, let’s try appealing to their feelings as developers. Think about your favorite IDE/text editor, all of the sudden someone that maintains decides that the only thing that is important are errors, so this will be the only color you can customize, all other code will then be highlighted bold grey text on black background and can no longer be customized because the only thing you should care about are the errors you’ve introduced right? Great looks like our work here is done.

Now put yourself in our shoes, wouldn’t you be mad as hell and fight this change and drag your feet until the bitter end until whoever put out the abomination admitted that they were wrong and rolled back this “design” choice? It needs to be taken out back and shot, and buried very deeply in the annals of history.

simonflick commented 3 years ago

You can't expect the developers to take the criticism here seriously if you prefer to prove Godwin's law instead of making solid arguments.

klikevil commented 3 years ago

Okay, well 73 users have thumbed up the initial post, so it's slowly growing in the amount of people that are unhappy with the change, I've also seen threads on reddit that are very upset with this and various other locations with people seeking answers. The change made users unhappy enough to think it was a bug and then they found out that this was to persist. There are a few thousand on their beta feedback with maybe 30 that like or are neutral, the rest has all been negative feedback. We don't like the way other messaging applications looked, it in addition to encryption were why we use signal.

https://www.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/nwpd91/colors/

There's 103 right there.

I've posted several screenshots of my friends being upset by the latest update and dismayed that they can't downgrade.

If you have a few hours, go ahead and read through here:

https://community.signalusers.org/t/beta-feedback-for-the-new-color-changes/33048/

That's around 900+ users, the fanboys of the change are vigorously arguing for it to stay the way it is now, but i've only been able to find maybe 30 or 40 of them that actually like it other than the developers. I really don't like the "well they'll just have to get used to it" attitude, all non iOS (mainly from the linux community) users that i know are very uncomfortable with this design choice and they want the colors reapplied to the message bubbles of incoming users, I want some assurance they're going to at least re-add the flexibility to apply colors to incoming messages instead of outoing.

simonflick commented 3 years ago

It's good to have individual opinions, polls, etc. And I'm all in for customizability so that users can change the colors like they want. But the evidence provided does not support claims like "everyone is outraged about this".

EvilRenegade commented 3 years ago

It's good to have individual opinions, polls, etc. And I'm all in for customizability so that users can change the colors like they want. But the evidence provided does not support claims like "everyone is outraged about this".

That's a cute approach, but where is the actual evidence that this change makes any sense? Like @klues, I literally thought this was a bug until I searched for a fix and had to realize this was a deliberate change.

Where is the evidence that this is a reasonable, positive change that provides an equal or better user experience compared to before?

p0ll3 commented 3 years ago

It's good to have individual opinions, polls, etc. And I'm all in for customizability so that users can change the colors like they want. But the evidence provided does not support claims like "everyone is outraged about this".

Who needs evidence if its obvious? Why should the emphasis be on my own messages then the one that I am receiving? Like every other messaging app is handling it one way and signal starts being the unicorn that kNoWs iT beTtEr. Beside that, how should normal users like my parents vote on something like that topic on github or reddit, for sure thats not possible. I can also assure that everyone I talked about that colorswitch, thought it was a bug. Perhaps signal wants to loose the recently gained userbase, than I can understand that change.

Richardk2n commented 3 years ago

We are all here (and not on the feedback Forums for example), because we actually thought this was a bug. Not a good look for a "feature". People here laid out several points of valid criticism and presented their arguments well for example (by @EvilRenegade):

* You have two sides to your conversations: A constant one (yourself) and a variable one (one or multiple persons you are talking to). This change makes it so the constant side has a variable color and the variable side has a constant color. That makes no sense.

* As others have pointed out, color, especially on a monochrome dark background, acts as a highlight. It makes no sense UX-wise to highlight the messages whose content I already know (because they are my own), while the other side's messages are light grey on dark grey on darker grey.

* I honestly have to question the sanity and the intelligence of anyone who argues _"we could only distinguish 13 different colors at max, so people would inevitably have had duplicate colors, which would've been confusing - so we made it that all other people are the same color, but one single person (yourself) has 13 different colors, some of which are duplicated depending on which conversation you in"_ is actually a reasonable description of an improvement. If the problem is "multiple people could share the same color!", how the f*ck is "all people definitely share the same color!" a solution??

* As others pointed out, coloring the names instead of the bubbles actually only reintroduces the problem in a different UI-element. Either you have enough colors for everyone to get a unique one or not. If there are two contacts with red highlight, there are two contacts with red highlight. Whether the highlight is the name or the talk bubble makes no difference.

* Also, pure switching of the colors obviously does nothing to alleviate the problem for the colored side. If there aren't enough colors to prevent the colored bubble to have the some color for multiple conversations, how exactly does it help me that it's _me_ who is red in two different conversations, rather than the other side? It still means color is not a unique identifier. So the problem remains exactly the same, only with worse UX/UI, because now I have to actively cognitively filter out my uselessly highlighted own messages and discern twenty grey people from each other!

* As somebody else put it: Color is part of the identity of the contact here. It is an attribute associated with _them_. I may know three blue people, two red and five green, but distinguishing the three blue people is vastly easier than having to distinguish 10 grey people while pointlessly cycling through colors like a chameleon on LSD.

* One would think it would be impossible, but it gets _even worse_ when the second parties quote each other. Because quotes are backgrounded with the color Signal now assigned to me, which means I have grey Person A who quotes grey Person B, whose statement is now in _my_ background color, despite the fact that it doesn't belong to me. How did this pass any sort quality assurance or user testing? It turns the message coloring _actively misleading_.

The counter arguments were: We like it the way it is. Multiple people might have the same color therefore we gave everyone the same color. Others do it like that as well.

If you read through the feedback thread you will the one person defending the changes with all her might against an onslaught of an incredible amount of people hating it. Other than that the "pro changes" side is not very well presented and doesn't seem to care to much aside from the developer whos idea this probably was. While we cannot have numbers on how the split between like and dislike is (in the feedback thread it's clearly mostly against, even though some of the new features are good and people just hate the coloring, so a small part of the update. This is still bad enough to make a majority reject it as a whole), it is very save to say a lot of people hate it.

Pressing through such controversial changes with an attitude of "They will get used to it" is very problematic and this stance should be reevaluated.

derNarr commented 3 years ago

One conclusion from this could be that changes that are already very controversial in the beta release might need to be postponed and first all the non-controversial changes should be pushed into the stable branch. If some consensus can be found within the beta release, then these changes should be pushed to stable.

Beta releases might be primarily to find edge cases and technical bugs, but it should also be part of building consensus on how such a great piece of software should evolve and for which changes the time might not be here.

The more I read and think about the recent changes on colouring, the more I got the impression, that dropping the colour for the incoming bubbles are orthogonal / independent to the other changes, therefore there was no real need, to make this change right now.

But nevertheless and even how upset and emotional we are because an important and daily app dropped some (for us) very convenient feature, there is not reason to not still be civil and bring up constructive criticism (which most people did, even if I understand the ones that don't).

And as a pro the developers responsible for this change explained in a very calm and supportive way, why they thought and think this is the right and necessary change. They were not ignorant in terms of that they did not responded. They responded, but could not be convinced. They neither convinced me, that this change was necessary. And in the end they have the power and I don't, which makes me feel helpless and therefore angry.

Still, I am glad that Signal is in development and that changes are made to this software and I am glad that the developers put effort and thought into the changes they made. (And this change was well thought and not lighthearted.)

Still I hope that the next time something gets very controversial in beta, the controversial change separated from the other changes and gets postponed for the time being.

(Even after a week the "new colours" feel wrong. Usually, I adapt relatively fast, but this change still annoys me :disappointed: )

klikevil commented 3 years ago

I'm going to be looking at possibly doing a minor fork of 5.4, pentargency laid out how this would be pretty easily doable and a developer I know said he'd take me look at it because with electron and the chrome paks they are using wouldn't be too hard to look at the diffs and at least give our message bubbles back the light grey that we were used to and simply reverse the sides for the color gradients. We'll take a look and keep you posted here if we wind up going through with the fork and if we can get a simple solution I can assure you we will be submitting a pull request.

cemysce commented 3 years ago

I'm going to be looking at possibly doing a minor fork of 5.4, pentargency laid out how this would be pretty easily doable and a developer I know said he'd take me look at it because with electron and the chrome paks they are using wouldn't be too hard to look at the diffs and at least give our message bubbles back the light grey that we were used to and simply reverse the sides for the color gradients. We'll take a look and keep you posted here if we wind up going through with the fork and if we can get a simple solution I can assure you we will be submitting a pull request.

Disclaimer: I'm only stating what I'm about to because your post (and lack of repos in your GitHub account) implies a lack of development experience. (Admittedly my own account lacks repos despite my being a professional developer of enterprise software for over 12 years, so maybe that isn't the best gauge.) If I misinterpreted that, please don't take the following in a condescending tone, that is not my intent, I'm just trying to help.

If you are forking this for your own benefit or as a learning experience, by all means have at it. However if you intend to produce, maintain, and share a fork of Signal, you should understand what a monumental undertaking that is for an individual, especially for an application that is so focused on privacy and security. Beyond the time commitment and complexity of maintaining the fork, you and your fork would also have to earn and keep the trust of a user base, many of whom are extremely cautious. And as for the complexity of maintenance, as the upstream Signal code evolves over time you (being outside of the loop of upstream Signal development) would have to constantly play catch-up, and it would likely become increasingly difficult to maintain the old color behavior.

klikevil commented 3 years ago

I'm going to be looking at possibly doing a minor fork of 5.4, pentargency laid out how this would be pretty easily doable and a developer I know said he'd take me look at it because with electron and the chrome paks they are using wouldn't be too hard to look at the diffs and at least give our message bubbles back the light grey that we were used to and simply reverse the sides for the color gradients. We'll take a look and keep you posted here if we wind up going through with the fork and if we can get a simple solution I can assure you we will be submitting a pull request.

Disclaimer: I'm only stating what I'm about to because your post (and lack of repos in your GitHub account) implies a lack of development experience. (Admittedly my own account lacks repos despite my being a professional developer of enterprise software for over 12 years, so maybe that isn't the best gauge.) If I misinterpreted that, please don't take the following in a condescending tone, that is not my intent, I'm just trying to help.

If you are forking this for your own benefit or as a learning experience, by all means have at it. However if you intend to produce, maintain, and share a fork of Signal, you should understand what a monumental undertaking that is for an individual, especially for an application that is so focused on privacy and security. Beyond the time commitment and complexity of maintaining the fork, you and your fork would also have to earn and keep the trust of a user base, many of whom are extremely cautious. And as for the complexity of maintenance, as the upstream Signal code evolves over time you (being outside of the loop of upstream Signal development) would have to constantly play catch-up, and it would likely become increasingly difficult to maintain the old color behavior.

That's completely understandable @cemysce , my github repos are mostly set to private due to the line of work I am in though, I do security devops/security engineering. EQIP confidentidential clearance and the companies tend to want to own everything I do for them. You are correct it wouldn't be long term maintenance most likely, just when I am forced to upgrade to 5.4 i'm going to fork it and invert the incoming message bubble and outgoing message bubble and pretty much follow the practices that were outlined so eloquently and effectively laid out as an effective solution by a user on their beta feedback forum in this post in particular. https://community.signalusers.org/t/beta-feedback-for-the-new-color-changes/33048/1133 and then hope others that are effected by this that have enough knowledge to contribute can assist with maintaining the project. I'm really not a web developer/ui guy so I certainly wouldn't be the wisest choice for maintaining the project, but for a basic UI concept like this it shouldn't be too enormous of a task to allow the application to still function and be usable at least for a one time fork.

By the way, more support from another silent user on this issue that liked the previous behavior better. I can't stress enough how only a vocal minority are investing our time in complaining about this bug because we are invested. The vast majority of my contacts are not in favor of this that have experienced the previous behavior.

[EDIT] We are up to 84 likes on the classification as this as a bug.

ghost commented 3 years ago

Yesterday I have updated Signal in Android, and now chat colors are applied to my messages instead of incoming ones.

I find it much much harder to follow individual and group chats now, this makes no sense, It is absolutely counter intuitive. I did not found any option for to revert.

This must be a bug and not a feature.

klikevil commented 3 years ago

@Nostrocean Make sure to share your feed back and take the poll linked earlier in the thread https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/5316#issuecomment-856078560 .

ghost commented 3 years ago

I didn't noticed the url have a poll in the message 786, shared feed back.

Richardk2n commented 3 years ago

Guess, which of these was deemed less colorful/less like a Christmas tree and therefore less confusing/superior/the design to be forced upon everyone. The answer might be surprising.

Signal Signal_old

klikevil commented 3 years ago

Guess, which of these was deemed less colorful/less like a Christmas tree and therefore less confusing/superior/the design to be forced upon everyone. The answer might be surprising.

I'm not sure I understand what you are implying, but I much prefer the second one better even in dark mode. We at least need the option to not have our own message bubbles colored if they're going to keep it in its current state it's unusable by the neurodivergent

Richardk2n commented 3 years ago

Guess, which of these was deemed less colorful/less like a Christmas tree and therefore less confusing/superior/the design to be forced upon everyone. The answer might be surprising.

I'm not sure I understand what you are implying, but I much prefer the second one better even in dark mode. We at least need the option to not have our own message bubbles colored if they're going to keep it in its current state it's unusable by the neurodivergent

I am implying, that the some of the stated reasons for the change are actually opposite to what was claimed. It was pointed out, that the old design looked like a "Christmas tree" and was therefore confusing, I just wanted to provide actual examples to show, that the new design is actually a lot more colorful/busy and confusing. Instead of three colors + white for text + highlighting of the quote we now have 6 colors + white for some of the text + highlighting of a quote not made by me in my color. This is a lot more busy and btw the light blue name the devs want to re-educate us to use is barely readable on some monitors.

Like look at at, what is easier on the eye/less busy/less stressful to comprehend, and what was claimed to be so. I just want to point out this discrepancy.

ghost commented 3 years ago

They expect people cease complain, when the solution is simple, allow both options, at the user's choice in the color panel.

https://community.signalusers.org/t/beta-feedback-for-the-new-color-changes/33048/1241

Do not stop complaining

literal-0x4e commented 3 years ago

this is a regression and a bug and I won't treat it otherwise until it gets fixed, regardless if anyone, including the dev team, insists it's a feature.

stormoPL commented 3 years ago

I will add also my penny although a lot right arguments against this change was already made. Regardless of whether there are enough colors to ensure color uniqueness for each user, the current solution is the worst and most absurd. Emphasizing content that is irrelevant (already known) and graying out the important is just plain stupid. If the chat is too colorful then let there be 2 colors, but let important things be highlighted.

Developers also seem to forget that you could want to distinguish only one person with a particular color (e.g. your boss) and have the same color for the rest. The current change is a gigantic absurdity no matter how someone uses Signal.

SenorFusion commented 3 years ago

This is the single worst update Signal has ever pushed and the worst UI design I have ever seen.

How I imagine UI design at Signal works now: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell

I haven't seen anyone in the thread point this one out:

If you use Android and Desktop you get all of the new Avatar / Name / Group Avatar color nonsense BUT DOUBLE

The following are ALL different colors in a single group chat of just 3 people:

-Desktop group convo avatar -Desktop participant avatar color -Desktop participant # 1 name color -Desktop participant # 2 name color -Desktop participant # 1 and # 2 message color -Desktop my message color -Android group convo avatar -Android participant # 1 avatar color -Android participant # 2 avatar color -Android participant # 1 name color -Android participant # 2 name color -Android my message color

That's 12 different colors of rainbow vomit for conversation that used to have 3 consistently used colors for 3 people that could be understood intuitively at a glance.

Did the FBI finally infiltrate Signal and are trying to steadily run it into the ground?

Edit: silly me, only counted 11 different colors but its actually 12.

Richardk2n commented 3 years ago

Just stumbled upon something, that was not yet pointed out. In a one on one conversation if the other person cites his own messages, the quote gets colored in the same color as my messages. I would say this is obviously a bug, but after this train wreck of an update i am not sure, if it is intentional (maybe to keep in line with the principal to highlight everything, that is already known and gray out new information).

cemysce commented 3 years ago

Just stumbled upon something, that was not yet pointed out. In a one on one conversation if the other person cites his own messages, the quote gets colored in the same color as my messages. I would say this is obviously a bug, but after this train wreck of an update i am not sure, if it is intentional (maybe to keep in line with the principal to highlight everything, that is already known and gray out new information).

Please enter a new issue specifically for that, with screenshots if possible.

klikevil commented 3 years ago

I started a change.org petition to collect signatures for users that want incoming message bubbles to have colors applied to them again.

https://www.change.org/RevertTheGray

Legendary117 commented 3 years ago

I tried to get used to it but I'm still not liking it. If the developers can't add such a simple feature back I have serious concerns about the security of this app.

EvilRenegade commented 3 years ago

I tried to get used to it but I'm still not liking it. [...]

That's because it's still an obviously broken "solution" to an imaginary problem.

They're not trying to solve the problem. They're trying to ignore us until we give up. They don't care. They've made their obviously wrong choice and they're going to stick with it, refusing to admit anything is wrong.

There's a video online of a child who wouldn't believe its mother that the round fruit on the table wasn't an apple, but an onion. The child insists it's an apple and they want it. So at some point, the mother relents, turns on the camera and hands the child the onion. The child obviously realizes its mistake on the first bite but refuses to admit being wrong. It keeps soldiering on, stubbornly eating the raw onion as if it's exactly what it wanted.

That's the Signal developers.

https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/7u47yf/mom_can_i_have_this_apple_thats_not_an_an_apple/

klikevil commented 3 years ago

The solution to roll back to 5.3 was provided earlier in this thread supposedly is going to expire at some point today, i haven't seen such a message on the desktop client. I will update you all if the desktop client still works after today.

Let's all join together and collectively hope that they come to their senses and allow the colored message bubbles to apply to others at the very least. Keep up the pressure and if any of you are reading this make sure to sign my change.org petition that I posted 10 days ago [ https://www.change.org/RevertTheGray ].

Legendary117 commented 3 years ago

Let's all join together and collectively hope that they come to their senses and allow the colored message bubbles to apply to others at the very least. Keep up the pressure and if any of you are reading this make sure to sign my change.org petition that I posted

Perhaps more importantly, make sure to leave a rating/review on the play store or app store to let them know how you feel. They would surely notice if their rating dropped because a large perfect of their users are unhappy with this change.

SlappyHours commented 3 years ago

Just because the old solution did not scale well in huge group chats the whole user experience got changed for the worse for use cases like 1:1 chats and small group chats (which are 90% of my use cases). Especially the change in 1:1 chats where incoming messages have the same color in all chats, but my outgoing words have different colors for different contacts makes absolutely no sense. I am the only constant in all these conversations - why would my color change instead of the other person's bubble color?

But what can I say... it is a free app. I will continue to use it even though the user experience is definitely worse now.

Richardk2n commented 3 years ago

Just because the old solution did not scale well in huge group chats the whole user experience got changed for the worse for use cases like 1:1 chats and small group chats (which are 90% of my use cases). Especially the change in 1:1 chats where incoming messages have the same color in all chats, but my outgoing words have different colors for different contacts makes absolutely no sense. I am the only constant in all these conversations - why would my color change instead of the other person's bubble color?

But what can I say... it is a free app. I will continue to use it even though the user experience is definitely worse now.

What i still don't get: How do random name colors scale better than set bubble colors.

GSPP commented 3 years ago

After 6 weeks I still cannot get used to this.

I think it's unintuitive because my own color changes in each chat. This is rather illogical and it prevents me from getting used to the colors. It's too hard for the brain.

In my opinion, this should be reverted. But at least, there should be a configuration option. I bet 90% of people who are aware of that setting would switch back.

EvilRenegade commented 3 years ago

I think it's unintuitive because my own color changes in each chat. This is rather illogical and it prevents me from getting used to the colors. It's too hard for the brain.

It's quite easy on the brain. The brain easily notices how utterly stupid this is and how no one in their right mind would've waved this through QA.

Probably why none of the developers dare try give a credible explanation for why this shit was forced on us.

klikevil commented 3 years ago

@GSPP + @EvilRenegade

After 6 weeks I still cannot get used to this.

I think it's unintuitive because my own color changes in each chat. This is rather illogical and it prevents me from getting used to the colors. It's too hard for the brain.

In my opinion, this should be reverted. But at least, there should be a configuration option. I bet 90% of people who are aware of that setting would switch back.

I as well, and from the looks of it in the extremely long thread grayson has responded (and he is most active there) https://community.signalusers.org/t/discussion-about-the-new-color-changes/33048/1440

It looks like they have no plans to roll it back because they think it is "integral" to features they have down the line. At this point I'm just trying to have them give me the ability to select the light gray as my own color to have everything be uniform as that would be better than the abomination that is stripping other users of their personality.

It's worth noting that I have provided a solution for windows users for the time being but it only has 37 days left of functionality: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/5316#issuecomment-859332546

@SlappyHours

Just because the old solution did not scale well in huge group chats the whole user experience got changed for the worse for use cases like 1:1 chats and small group chats (which are 90% of my use cases). Especially the change in 1:1 chats where incoming messages have the same color in all chats, but my outgoing words have different colors for different contacts makes absolutely no sense. I am the only constant in all these conversations - why would my color change instead of the other person's bubble color?

But what can I say... it is a free app. I will continue to use it even though the user experience is definitely worse now.

Join the argument there are only like 6 users on the side that like it that i have seen that are militant in their defense of it, they have been posting since reply number 232 on this thread that has over 1400 messages and arguments for why it is the worst UI decision ever.

https://community.signalusers.org/t/discussion-about-the-new-color-changes/33048/1440

We finally got him to answer the best well written arguments against this done by the user penta--- something; read through it the sarcasm in his text you'll be able to pick up on and at least get a good laugh out of it

https://community.signalusers.org/t/beta-feedback-for-the-new-color-changes/33048/1133

@Legendary117

Let's all join together and collectively hope that they come to their senses and allow the colored message bubbles to apply to others at the very least. Keep up the pressure and if any of you are reading this make sure to sign my change.org petition that I posted

Perhaps more importantly, make sure to leave a rating/review on the play store or app store to let them know how you feel. They would surely notice if their rating dropped because a large perfect of their users are unhappy with this change.

I did that the MOMENT I was forced to update on my phone because the old version expired, i was also forced to remove pandora from my phone to even install the bloated update due to lack of space. Furthermore I pulled my monthly (albeit small) donations to signal foundation.

Coleslaw3557 commented 3 years ago

Found myself here after the same update. I nor anyone else I know that uses signal appreciates this change. Looking at forks but they aren't much better.

douglasg14b commented 3 years ago

Seriously each contact is a color yet when you go to the messages the contact color isn't the color of their messages. How does that make any sense that each of your contacts colors applies to your messages and not them??

Even if you go to signal settings the appearance example for chat colors shows the contact color and then the chat example with the contact color being their messages and you being gray.

The behavior is just wrong and inconsistent.

If you really want to force the sort of thing on users how about you provide a toggle to switch it, instead of....this.

Edit: This also harms accessibility in general, even ignoring the illogical nature of this change, is signal really getting into the game of making the app less accessible to those that find this change challenging?

EvilRenegade commented 3 years ago

Still shitty, devs. The longer you hold out on correcting this, the less competent you look.

For connectivity's sake:

Richardk2n commented 3 years ago

I now have a group chat, where one persons picture is green and his name is blue, while another persons picture is blue and his name is green. Very not confusing. How could someone ever greenlight "random colors" as "less confusing"?

Also colors are inconsistent with android app, making them even more annoying.

klikevil commented 3 years ago

Still shitty, devs. The longer you hold out on correcting this, the less competent you look.

For connectivity's sake:

Accessibility: Signal is literally unusable after recent color change Signal-Android#11389

new chat color interface makes no sense Signal-Android#11387

Chat colors no longer work as expected Signal-Android#11380

Send and received messages color switched Signal-Android#11339

The worst part is their community forum with the same like 4-8 people defending it and telling us all that we're thinking wrong for not liking this. I want those people removed from the ability to beta test this or any product in the future. It makes no sense why they decided they wanted to bring the android version inline with the iOS version when iOS only controls 27% market share while android controlled 72 of the smart phone market. Either way I am only concerned about this on desktop where I use signal on a day to day basis.

 $ echo $(get_duration $(($(date -d "August 23 2021" +%s)-$(date -d now +%s)))) | awk '{print $0/86400 "  days until we see if my anti-signal 5.4+ workaround functions properly."}'

3.982 days until we see if my anti-signal 5.4+ workaround functions properly for signal desktop, I'll keep you posted if it works but it is nasty and involves manual daily backups and if your colors get synched to your phone again you have to restore the manual backup which refreshes every chat session and you lose a lot of messages.

[EDIT]

My signal desktop 5.3 still works, i added in hosts entries to block it from communicating with the update servers and my build is not expiring. The signal community forums censored my screenshots. Quite annoying, but it's "past the build expiration date" so clearly the moderators don't know what they're talking about.

if you look at the hidden posts from earlier in this thread, I linked to a 5.3 build windows installer on virustotal. Installing it will blow away all conversations, make sure you have a backup of your current copy of signal, and then on a daily basis I would recommend having a backup of %APPDATA%\signal to %APPDATA%\signal.color.backup, occasionally your phone will sync and you will need to restore from signal.color.backup to get your colors back otherwise everyone else turns blue. But in my eyes (and I'm sure several other of you), the above is worth it over using the trash they forced upon us based on a few biased beta testers that have no aesthetic taste whatsoever.

period@D5DZ5WT2 ~ $ echo $(get_duration $(($(date -d "August 23 2021" +%s)-$(date -d now +%s)))) | awk '{print $0/86400 "  days until we see if my anti-signal 5.4+ workaround functions properly."}'
-3.82318  days until we see if my anti-signal 5.4+ workaround functions properly.

For those of you waiting on a fix and anyone willing to take on the hassle since they have absolutely no plans to revert.

Add the ability to color incoming message bubbles.

Iron-E commented 2 years ago

@josh-signal sorry for the ping. Thanks for all your work on signal :)

I saw you were working on a lot of the commits regarding group colors around this timeframe. I was hoping you could help us with this? Could there be an option to use the old color scheme again?

There hasn't been any word on this issue, #11389, #11387, #11380, nor #11339. It seems like a lot of people want it.

klikevil commented 2 years ago

@josh-signal sorry for the ping. Thanks for all your work on signal :)

I saw you were working on a lot of the commits regarding group colors around this timeframe. I was hoping you could help us with this? Could there be an option to use the old color scheme again?

There hasn't been any word on this issue, #11389, #11387, #11380, nor #11339. It seems like a lot of people want it.

You may wish to read through that, the signal developers are vehemently opposed to this no matter how many people want it :-/ 5.3 still works for desktop if you block all future updates from signal, but it's a hackish workaround and requires daily backups and you'll bug a lot of people as it will constantly refresh chat sessions as you restore from backups to keep your color scheme entact. I posted the nuclear option somewhere in this thread with a link to the 5.3 installer on virustotal. https://community.signalusers.org/t/discussion-about-the-new-color-changes/33048/1604

EvilRenegade commented 2 years ago

Still a shitty change with no reasonable UI- or UX-justification.

klikevil commented 2 years ago

My hope is one day they will add the gray back as an option for right message bubble, and let you choose custom colors for each individual contact's message bubble, until then i'm staying at 5.3

Legendary117 commented 2 years ago

The UI keeps getting worse (Pastel icons on the black background!?), I think at this point we'd all be better of asking Session or Briar for these features, they actually seem to listen to their users.

scottnonnenberg-signal commented 2 years ago

I'm going to close this, as we don't have any plans to revert the color changes made many months ago. You're free to continue discussing this on the forums, of course: https://community.signalusers.org/

signalapp / Signal-Desktop