5 ms·

Tbh, Signal's UX on Android is pretty good. Is Telegram just better on iOS or am I missing something when you say it has better UX?

newman314 11y ago
Enh. Signal's UX is still not effortless. For example: * Does not make it clear it's a point to point mapping (on iOS) right now. I discovered this the hard way. * Unclear failure modes (see above). It's entirely possible to have messages be silently dropped. * Texting vs. call methods unclear. I.e. there's a phone icon but no text icon (select name instead). * Contacts list has some text only, some phone only, some both. * The whole contacts list arguably needs to be rethought. It only shows others that have installed Signal/RedPhone/Textsecure. There is no easy way to see if someone does NOT have Signal installed and have the functionality to send a link to invite other person to add the app. I think this would help tremendously in the virality of the app. * There used to be easy ways to invite people to the app within the app, seems to have gone away with only a tweet an invite to app store function remaining. * There have been several instances when I can't see someone after they install Signal. They have to initiate a message to me in order for the contact to show up in the list. * Signal has poor handling for contacts with multiple numbers. It's not clear which number is being used and you can't switch selection of numbers. So what I'm saying is don't necessarily ape what Telegram/WhatsApp etc. is doing but I think Signal would do well to study hard the onboarding workflows of those apps.
- mapgrep 11y ago
  What do you mean it's a point-to-point mapping? Genuinely curious. You mean that there is no server to buffer failed delivery attempts if one of the devices is off or disconnected? (Side note, I've hit that the same bug where the other person has to contact me first because they don't show up in my contacts, even though they should.)
  - newman314 11y ago
    It's one device to one device (as stated elsewhere in this thread. Apparently, only Android+Chrome combo is supported for multi-device). Put differently, I can't register the same number to an iPad and iPhone simultaneously at this time and hope to communicate with someone. It apparently gets things all confused. I was doing some more testing and it also appears that I'm unable to call someone with a greyed out name but with available phone icon. Once again, no clear indication if this is a bug (not supposed to happen) or a feature (can call but not text).
    - mapgrep 11y ago
      Oh I see. That is indeed annoying. So I guess this bit from the desktop announcement is a stretch: "....all incoming and outgoing messages are displayed consistently on all your devices." I mean I guess if you ONLY have one phone and a desktop that would be true? And I guess if Signal only allows you to register those two things, it is TECHNICALLY true, in the sense that "all" <= 2
      - newman314 11y ago
        And all = Android + Chrome (at least for now). Since I'm not an Android user, I'm unable to confirm all > 2 scenarios. Someone should try and report back.
        frayesto 11y ago
        I have Signal on Chrome on multiple computers. It works just as expected with messages shared across Chrome and to the phone. It's all very fast and working quite well.
- qrmn 11y ago
  I do have an "invite" prompt on my SMS contacts that don't yet have Signal: "Invite to Signal: Take your conversation with %s to the next level.". Perhaps it's a function in the beta version that isn't in the live version yet? I haven't seen a message with a double-tick that's been dropped yet, at least not on a recent version. It can sometimes behave poorly with Android battery-saving mode - however, so does plain SMS. Turning off sync is part of the actual point of battery-saving, but conversely, I never want to not get messages. That's arguably Android's problem, not Signal's. Still, it uses GCM, so at least there's hope for the deep sleep (which I haven't tried yet).
  - xorcist 11y ago
    Surely battery saving modes should not drop messages? It could delay them but should never (well, almost never) drop them.
    - newjersey 11y ago
      With no knowledge of how signal's servers actually implement this, I would like to ask you... how long should the central server hold on to the (encrypted) message that Alice sends to Bob if Bob never becomes available again?
      - newman314 11y ago
        Best effort, deliver at least once? At least that how it seems iMessage seems to work. I have no idea how long iMessage holds on the queue but it seems no more than a few days. Not sure what kind of attack vector a public TTL would constitute.
      - xorcist 11y ago
        I haven't thought about what's reasonable (an hour? a week?) but it still shouldn't be dropped but bounced back to the sender with an undelivered message. At last that's how email solved it some thirty years ago. (But perhaps a new protocol could take the opportunity to improve things further and offer on-line delivery status notifications throughout the process.) No matter what, messages should never be silently dropped.

newman314 11y ago

Enh. Signal's UX is still not effortless. For example: * Does not make it clear it's a point to point mapping (on iOS) right now. I discovered this the hard way. * Unclear failure modes (see above). It's entirely possible to have messages be silently dropped. * Texting vs. call methods unclear. I.e. there's a phone icon but no text icon (select name instead). * Contacts list has some text only, some phone only, some both. * The whole contacts list arguably needs to be rethought. It only shows others that have installed Signal/RedPhone/Textsecure. There is no easy way to see if someone does NOT have Signal installed and have the functionality to send a link to invite other person to add the app. I think this would help tremendously in the virality of the app. * There used to be easy ways to invite people to the app within the app, seems to have gone away with only a tweet an invite to app store function remaining. * There have been several instances when I can't see someone after they install Signal. They have to initiate a message to me in order for the contact to show up in the list. * Signal has poor handling for contacts with multiple numbers. It's not clear which number is being used and you can't switch selection of numbers. So what I'm saying is don't necessarily ape what Telegram/WhatsApp etc. is doing but I think Signal would do well to study hard the onboarding workflows of those apps.

mapgrep 11y ago
What do you mean it's a point-to-point mapping? Genuinely curious. You mean that there is no server to buffer failed delivery attempts if one of the devices is off or disconnected? (Side note, I've hit that the same bug where the other person has to contact me first because they don't show up in my contacts, even though they should.)
- newman314 11y ago
  It's one device to one device (as stated elsewhere in this thread. Apparently, only Android+Chrome combo is supported for multi-device). Put differently, I can't register the same number to an iPad and iPhone simultaneously at this time and hope to communicate with someone. It apparently gets things all confused. I was doing some more testing and it also appears that I'm unable to call someone with a greyed out name but with available phone icon. Once again, no clear indication if this is a bug (not supposed to happen) or a feature (can call but not text).
  - mapgrep 11y ago
    Oh I see. That is indeed annoying. So I guess this bit from the desktop announcement is a stretch: "....all incoming and outgoing messages are displayed consistently on all your devices." I mean I guess if you ONLY have one phone and a desktop that would be true? And I guess if Signal only allows you to register those two things, it is TECHNICALLY true, in the sense that "all" <= 2
    - newman314 11y ago
      And all = Android + Chrome (at least for now). Since I'm not an Android user, I'm unable to confirm all > 2 scenarios. Someone should try and report back.
      - frayesto 11y ago
        I have Signal on Chrome on multiple computers. It works just as expected with messages shared across Chrome and to the phone. It's all very fast and working quite well.
qrmn 11y ago
I do have an "invite" prompt on my SMS contacts that don't yet have Signal: "Invite to Signal: Take your conversation with %s to the next level.". Perhaps it's a function in the beta version that isn't in the live version yet? I haven't seen a message with a double-tick that's been dropped yet, at least not on a recent version. It can sometimes behave poorly with Android battery-saving mode - however, so does plain SMS. Turning off sync is part of the actual point of battery-saving, but conversely, I never want to not get messages. That's arguably Android's problem, not Signal's. Still, it uses GCM, so at least there's hope for the deep sleep (which I haven't tried yet).
- xorcist 11y ago
  Surely battery saving modes should not drop messages? It could delay them but should never (well, almost never) drop them.
  - newjersey 11y ago
    With no knowledge of how signal's servers actually implement this, I would like to ask you... how long should the central server hold on to the (encrypted) message that Alice sends to Bob if Bob never becomes available again?
    - newman314 11y ago
      Best effort, deliver at least once? At least that how it seems iMessage seems to work. I have no idea how long iMessage holds on the queue but it seems no more than a few days. Not sure what kind of attack vector a public TTL would constitute.
    - xorcist 11y ago
      I haven't thought about what's reasonable (an hour? a week?) but it still shouldn't be dropped but bounced back to the sender with an undelivered message. At last that's how email solved it some thirty years ago. (But perhaps a new protocol could take the opportunity to improve things further and offer on-line delivery status notifications throughout the process.) No matter what, messages should never be silently dropped.