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None of these "innovative chats" that already use a browser to display them can even come up with the idea of tabs. Nope, they all insist on keeping everything

None of these "innovative chats" that already use a browser to display them can even come up with the idea of tabs. Nope, they all insist on keeping everything inside a single window. So even if you have thread "for better communication with no noise", it still gets lost in all other threads, and they come up with workarounds like a dedicated page for threads etc. Just give me tabs, damnit.

kadoban 5y ago
Nothing does stop you from having multiple browser tabs open for Element. It is kind of wasteful and awkward though. I agree that this would be useful, though getting to ux nice might be challenging.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > It is kind of wasteful and awkward though. It's not. If you have several conversations going on at the same time, what's awkward is having to switch between them in the same window.
barnabee 5y ago
Absolutely. I miss having multiple windows, each with one or more tabs, all respectful of my screen real estate! With most IRC clients or multi protocol chat programs you could have a couple of important channels always visible on a second monitor, key people you DM a lot in a tabbed window somewhere prominent, active chats open next to your work, and everything else in the main app window, minimised. Now we have a website (wrapped in an app, if we’re lucky) with next to no layout control. It’s nothing short of a disastrous step backwards. I’m convinced the recent resurgence of the terminal is partly due to the complete abandonment of GUI applications for most forms of professional computing. We desperately need a new framework for applications: - offline first - local first - data first - standardised types and APIs - as composable as the terminal - standard controls across all apps - standard window and document model - web views considered harmful - UX and “customer journey” designers considered worse We were nearly there, then “web 2.0” happened
- kadoban 5y ago
  > Now we have a website (wrapped in an app, if we’re lucky) with next to no layout control. It’s nothing short of a disastrous step backwards. This is true of Element, but you can have a Matrix client with any form you like. There already exist several. So it's not the most compelling criticism here IMO, because those who are using Element have chosen it over other options.
  - barnabee 5y ago
    This is a fair point. I still feel that my criticism applies to where the money and development effort seem to be focused, even for Matrix, but I am a big fan of Matrix overall and agree that it does at least have a variety of better clients. It’d be great to see every Slack replaced with a Matrix server for sure.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  Yeah as kadoban says, Matrix has no such restriction only Element does. You can do exactly what you're talking about above with other clients.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
12baad4db82 5y ago
I'm not sure I completely follow, aren't tabs still within the same window? How would tabs solve the 'keeping everything inside a single window' problem? Is the conversation list on the left side of the window not analogous to tabs? A conversation can be pinned there which would be providing the same experience as keeping a conversation open in a tab.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  You can open threads and windows in separate tabs, and switch between them without losing where they are and having to search for them
kgeist 5y ago
We use Rocket Chat and it's even worse than that. The entire channel is marked as "there're new messages" but you have no idea which one of the threads has new messages so you have to look through all of them. Good luck if it's some old thread from weeks ago. Or maybe there's some option in the UI to quickly find it but I'm not aware of such.
jeroenhd 5y ago
I don't think your desire for tabbed windows is shared among the general public, to be honest; we've seen a trend away from early 2000s separate windows to full screen "experiences" and the general public doesn't seem to mind. This could be because all native applications have been simplified down to laggy web UIs designed for toddlers, but even in the typical nerd spaces the old stack of hierarchies has disappeared. For what it's worth, Thunderbird is getting Matrix support and with its age come some of the old-fashioned design choices that might just end up giving you your tabs. If all else fails, I'm afraid you're going to need to get enough people together to make your own chat UI. Maybe fork some open source messenger and show the world the advantages you're describing, because I don't think many people get the benefits. That said, Element is very much not an innovative chat client. The federation protocol is what's innovative, the clients range from what look like modified IRC chats to Discord clones. The only areas where Matrix clients are innovative is where they're not being used to chat, as Matrix isn't exclusively a chat protocol.
deleted 5y ago
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kadoban 5y ago

Nothing does stop you from having multiple browser tabs open for Element. It is kind of wasteful and awkward though. I agree that this would be useful, though getting to ux nice might be challenging.

dmitriid 5y ago
> It is kind of wasteful and awkward though. It's not. If you have several conversations going on at the same time, what's awkward is having to switch between them in the same window.

barnabee 5y ago

Absolutely. I miss having multiple windows, each with one or more tabs, all respectful of my screen real estate! With most IRC clients or multi protocol chat programs you could have a couple of important channels always visible on a second monitor, key people you DM a lot in a tabbed window somewhere prominent, active chats open next to your work, and everything else in the main app window, minimised. Now we have a website (wrapped in an app, if we’re lucky) with next to no layout control. It’s nothing short of a disastrous step backwards. I’m convinced the recent resurgence of the terminal is partly due to the complete abandonment of GUI applications for most forms of professional computing. We desperately need a new framework for applications: - offline first - local first - data first - standardised types and APIs - as composable as the terminal - standard controls across all apps - standard window and document model - web views considered harmful - UX and “customer journey” designers considered worse We were nearly there, then “web 2.0” happened

kadoban 5y ago
> Now we have a website (wrapped in an app, if we’re lucky) with next to no layout control. It’s nothing short of a disastrous step backwards. This is true of Element, but you can have a Matrix client with any form you like. There already exist several. So it's not the most compelling criticism here IMO, because those who are using Element have chosen it over other options.
- barnabee 5y ago
  This is a fair point. I still feel that my criticism applies to where the money and development effort seem to be focused, even for Matrix, but I am a big fan of Matrix overall and agree that it does at least have a variety of better clients. It’d be great to see every Slack replaced with a Matrix server for sure.
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
Yeah as kadoban says, Matrix has no such restriction only Element does. You can do exactly what you're talking about above with other clients.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

12baad4db82 5y ago

I'm not sure I completely follow, aren't tabs still within the same window? How would tabs solve the 'keeping everything inside a single window' problem? Is the conversation list on the left side of the window not analogous to tabs? A conversation can be pinned there which would be providing the same experience as keeping a conversation open in a tab.

dmitriid 5y ago
You can open threads and windows in separate tabs, and switch between them without losing where they are and having to search for them

kgeist 5y ago

We use Rocket Chat and it's even worse than that. The entire channel is marked as "there're new messages" but you have no idea which one of the threads has new messages so you have to look through all of them. Good luck if it's some old thread from weeks ago. Or maybe there's some option in the UI to quickly find it but I'm not aware of such.

jeroenhd 5y ago

I don't think your desire for tabbed windows is shared among the general public, to be honest; we've seen a trend away from early 2000s separate windows to full screen "experiences" and the general public doesn't seem to mind. This could be because all native applications have been simplified down to laggy web UIs designed for toddlers, but even in the typical nerd spaces the old stack of hierarchies has disappeared. For what it's worth, Thunderbird is getting Matrix support and with its age come some of the old-fashioned design choices that might just end up giving you your tabs. If all else fails, I'm afraid you're going to need to get enough people together to make your own chat UI. Maybe fork some open source messenger and show the world the advantages you're describing, because I don't think many people get the benefits. That said, Element is very much not an innovative chat client. The federation protocol is what's innovative, the clients range from what look like modified IRC chats to Discord clones. The only areas where Matrix clients are innovative is where they're not being used to chat, as Matrix isn't exclusively a chat protocol.

deleted 5y ago

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