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 :disappointed:

[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.

[flipmess]

make this optional ffs. plz :)

[Pablohn26]

+1 @flipmess

could you open this issue to follow the conversation and see the feedback?

A lot of duplicate issues:

• https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/1620
• https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/1621
• https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/1623

[auchri]

@Pablohn26 it's enough to mention it one time. Otherwise, if it's that important for you, implement an option in the settings and open a pull request!

[Pablohn26]

@auchri one time where All issues are closed

[Pablohn26]

@auchri There you can see @mahdiG message mentioning that matter is being talked here. Besides this one is older and more focused on main problem (the position of the conversation) rather than use of the screen.

PD: thanks for the info :+1:

PD2: I do not want to flood, I just want to talk about this feature in one place (open issue)

PD3: Thanks for open it :)

[draeath]

Perhaps a compromise? Instead of a hard alignment to the sides, what about a (relatively - no more than 5% of the message width) small offset? This would aide differentiation of blocks of sent/received messaged without spreading them across a large screen space.

Here's a silly little mockup to explain it visually. Apologies for the rather spartan visualization.

[tgrondier]

Balanced messages make it easier for me to go back in a group conversation to the last time I weighed in and read the latest development or news. Being able to distinguish my own messages easily was a big part of it.

I now have a half-empty screen when using telegram which really bothers me. It's like using a half-width window, except that I don't have another program on the other side. Even when reducing telegram and another program to half-width (let's say an internet browser), it doesn't really make the cut on monitor with 1920x1080 resolution and lower; most programs nowaday don't scale really well on smaller resolutions. At least, with balanced messages, I didn't have that feeling of "too much unused space" when looking at my window. I know it wasn't meant that way, but reading all these issues and discussion, it feels like the devs went out of their way to obfuscate the reading of my conversations.

I guess I could get used to it if there was an option to pin telegram above all other windows (à la Pushbullet SMS tool), but unfortunately that option doesn't exist either, or if I had a 4K monitor, which I don't own. While I understand the need to accomodate high resolutions, does it need to be detrimental to smaller ones? I think the cut for "All messages on one side" is just too low and should only really happen on these higher resolutions.

[sgregori]

Hi buddies, I also have a ultra wide monitor 2560x1080, maybe you look better focused, but in any case, we leave it to the user to decide the layout of the interface.

Thanks from Spain!

[Shadorino]

I have a 27 inch 2560x1440 monitor, I use 150 % scaling in Windows 10 and 200 % in Telegram, so there was no empty space that made the conversations unreadable like some screenshots I saw here.

Apparently people are divided on this. I personally don't see how the new way is better than before, I find it terrible, but let's agree on one thing : we need a setting to be able to choose. In the mean time I'll roll back to the previous version and disable updates.

[txomon]

Just in case, there is people that doesn't have perfect sight, such as daltonism or color problems, and having ones in one side and self in the other helps way a lot to distinguish.

I understand that maybe for someone with perfect sight colors are enough, but please keep in mind that there is people with not so good sight. Using more than one property to distinguish self is good.

Finally, when scaling the text out, I expect more text to appear in the screen with more words per line, but this is just personal preference. Keep in mind not using just one thing to distinguish!

[sgregori]

@txomon Happy to see you again ;)

Nice apreciations, both them.

[marcovr]

As everyone seems to have different opinions concerning this new alignment the solution is perfectly simple:

Just make it optional to revert to the old style and everyone is happy.

I fully understand why some people wanted a change because it's easier to read messages sequentially but it just looks awful and personally I like it way better if the messages are clearly separated.

[brawaru]

So give us choose To been all cool To forgot this bad moment Let users love you for this

Give us possibility to change this option in settings with menu like this:

• [x] One side
• [ ] Centred
• [ ] Old style

[martijnrondeel]

@auchri

if it's that important for you, implement an option in the settings and open a pull request!

Contributing.md: "Unfortunately we do not merge any pull requests that have new feature implementations, translations to new languages and those which introduce any new user interface elements."

---

An option for this would be a new feature that adds a new interface element, wouldn't it?

[felixfoertsch]

+1 for giving an option to get the old layout back. Thx. I don't want to use tdesktop in 125% mode.

[SunShiranui]

Personally I support draeath's idea.

[Kerberos91]

Don't you dare telling me what's better and what's not. I think we all have our own opinion and forcing us to like something like this is just wrong. I don't have a 4k monitor. I have 2 4:3 1024 x 1280 and a central 1366x768. It looked FANTASTIC the old way, now it looks stupid and i can't distinguish my messages from who's texting me. Good job. You fucked up without even giving us the option to choose.

[Valansch]

@telegramdesktop. You already mentioned, that you don't see why people would use Telegram full screen. So why compromise the visability on smaller screens (it already changes to side view at 720px) without giving the user the option to change it.

It must agree with the others that said that it is far easier to distinguish your own messages from the messages of others in group chats if the outgoing message is on the other side.

My not so tech-savvy roomate just came running to me for me to "fix" this. I know the user doesn't usally know what he wants, yet i can't seems to find any other messanger that does this like you said.

[FlamebergUA]

This is a pure example of bad decision-making. When you think "hey, there's an issue with Telegram on 4k displays! Let's just align everything on the left", you don't take into account what will happen when you do this.

1. I've got laptop at work, old sturdy laptop with 1366x768 resolution. Now I get to the conversation I'm part of, which has like 8 more people in it, and they talk there all the time. How do I quckly scroll back to my last message? Want to know how I have to do it today? Resize window to 1/2 of it's fullscreen width and scroll it that way. Thank you very much, I'm glad people with 4k monitors are now satisfied.
2. Some people, as was mentioned above, have issues with colour distinction, some have other sight issues. I assume you can rescale interface just for that. What about your own messages being placed amidst the other on a plaque that is almost the same in colour? Very useful?

It's kinda obvious now that you'll rollback this or implement the checkbox to revert this new feature, because it really WAS a bad call, but it's gonna take some time, and it's gonna be a painful time for me and many others.

Just please make a checkbox. Please?

[cschmittiey]

Yes, please do make this optional.

[FlyingPumba]

@telegramdesktop Not everyone has a 4K display. If you are really eager to have this "feature", please add a setting to disable it, so the people that don't like it (looks like everyone except you) can have a normal messenger layout.

[Walkman100]

PLEASE NO

[FlamebergUA]

@Valansch got same issue with my co-workers: two of 'em just walked into my office and asked if I have the same 'bug' they have. It's kinda obvious you can't call 'improvement' something people are so quick to tag as bug. When it doesn't work - it just doesn't work. You can't make people think 'oh, it's really better, because some guys had issues with high-res screens!' when they see it's just bad for them.

Btw, I've got a 1920x1080 screen at home - and I'm sure I won't feel the 'improvement' there either.

[Walkman100]

I have backup copies of old versions, I will switch to them if I have to