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>it's unfathomable how Slack could still not have this feature I hear this saying a lot, and every time I just can't take it seriously. This is the first time

>it's unfathomable how Slack could still not have this feature I hear this saying a lot, and every time I just can't take it seriously. This is the first time I've ever heard of someone wanting customizable background colors for messages on a messaging platform. It's just not something I or anyone I know about cares about. I just can't see how that would be considered a high importance feature by anyone.

kcorbitt 11y ago
HipChat's colored messages made it easy to see the error messages in a stream of mostly unimportant notifications. Slack kinda lets you do the same thing with a vertical colored bar to the left of the message, but important/error messages are much less visually distinct.
Jordrok 11y ago
I seem to remember AIM allowing customized fonts and background colors around 15 years ago... Just sayin'
- Klathmon 11y ago
  And a Porsche from 1992 can outrun a current day Prius, it doesn't make one better than the other...
  - criddell 11y ago
    Depends on how long the race is :)
- JonnieCache 11y ago
  mIRC supported ANSI colour codes for foreground and background back in the 90s. I seem to remember people hated you for using them though.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  And it was a miserable nightmare trying to talk to my friend who would decide to use bright yellow Comic Sans on a bright pink background.
- lmm 11y ago
  AIM is actually really nice these days. I wish I could get my friends to switch back to it.
douche 11y ago
People go ape-shit about silly features in IM clients all the time. Case in point, emoticons
- daveguy 11y ago
  Back when I was a boy we didn't have any fancy emoticons! We used ascii characters and we LIKED it! >:-O
baddox 11y ago
It's all about integrations. We have all sorts of server messages and errors in a couple of our Slack engineering channels. Slack provides almost no way to visually distinguish these messages based on importance. In Hipchat, we had red/yellow/green background colors that worked great. To be clear, I'm not dead set on having background colors. I just really miss having a good visual distinction between messages.
- Klathmon 11y ago
  I came on a little strong there, it's just saying things like "how could they not have [insert niche feature here]?" drives me up a damn wall! But that makes sense, and it would be a nice to have. In the meantime can you "hack it in" via different icons per status?
  - baddox 11y ago
    We do it with icons. It's still nowhere near as immediately recognizable at a glance, but I suppose it's fine. I just had a thought: you could embed an image preview that's just a solid red square. That would be very noticeable for important errors.

kcorbitt 11y ago

HipChat's colored messages made it easy to see the error messages in a stream of mostly unimportant notifications. Slack kinda lets you do the same thing with a vertical colored bar to the left of the message, but important/error messages are much less visually distinct.

Jordrok 11y ago

I seem to remember AIM allowing customized fonts and background colors around 15 years ago... Just sayin'

Klathmon 11y ago
And a Porsche from 1992 can outrun a current day Prius, it doesn't make one better than the other...
- criddell 11y ago
  Depends on how long the race is :)
JonnieCache 11y ago
mIRC supported ANSI colour codes for foreground and background back in the 90s. I seem to remember people hated you for using them though.
pavel_lishin 11y ago
And it was a miserable nightmare trying to talk to my friend who would decide to use bright yellow Comic Sans on a bright pink background.
lmm 11y ago
AIM is actually really nice these days. I wish I could get my friends to switch back to it.

douche 11y ago

People go ape-shit about silly features in IM clients all the time. Case in point, emoticons

daveguy 11y ago
Back when I was a boy we didn't have any fancy emoticons! We used ascii characters and we LIKED it! >:-O

baddox 11y ago

It's all about integrations. We have all sorts of server messages and errors in a couple of our Slack engineering channels. Slack provides almost no way to visually distinguish these messages based on importance. In Hipchat, we had red/yellow/green background colors that worked great. To be clear, I'm not dead set on having background colors. I just really miss having a good visual distinction between messages.

Klathmon 11y ago
I came on a little strong there, it's just saying things like "how could they not have [insert niche feature here]?" drives me up a damn wall! But that makes sense, and it would be a nice to have. In the meantime can you "hack it in" via different icons per status?
- baddox 11y ago
  We do it with icons. It's still nowhere near as immediately recognizable at a glance, but I suppose it's fine. I just had a thought: you could embed an image preview that's just a solid red square. That would be very noticeable for important errors.