Deltachat-android: show "new message marker"

[r10s]

when entering a chat, there should be a marker above the first unread message.

this marker can disappear when sending messages and is also not important while chatting (unless the last messages is not visible due to scrolling away, cmp #731)

however, when the screen goes off and on again and new messages arrive in between, the marker should appear.

the last parameter for dc_get_chat_msgs() (marker1before) can help on this issue.

[adbenitez]

Hey!! I was about to open a feature request with this! haha +1

[adbenitez]

The marker should appear if the new messages aren't for the currently active chat(ex. new since last visit to the chat room), can disappear when the user reply or when the user go back to the chats list.

On the other hand:
Perhaps a better approach is: when a user visit a chat the "view frame" is at the position of the last first unseen message with an effect of the marker disappearing between the last seen message and the first unseen one (just like the effect on https://riot.im/app )

[r10s]

Perhaps a better approach is: when a user visit a chat the "view frame" is at the position of the last first unseen message

hm, not sure. esp. for chats with many messages, this may be annoying.
also the effect, that if you open a chat, you see new messages appear, would be a bit harder to implement.
so, at least for now, i would prefer the "old" method :)

[adbenitez]

@r10s I think I don't managed to make clear my idea, what I am talking about is that instead of having the users to start at the bottom of the chat and go up until they reach the unseen marker, they can start with the chat windows having the scroll at the first unseen message, if there are 1000 unseen messages what is easer? scroll up to you find the first unseen message or press the "go to bottom" button(in case you don't wanna read them)??

[adbenitez]

I don't know if you understand what I am talking about??? but it is actually much more harder for the user to start at the bottom of the chat and scroll up to the first unseen message to go all the way down again while they read the messages, it is much more "logic" to present to the user the chat screen with the scroll at the position of the first unseen message so they can read the unseen messages easily (even with this there are no real need for a marker) and if they just are not interested on reading all the new messages they simply press the "go to bottom" button

[adbenitez]

hm, not sure. esp. for chats with many messages, this may be annoying.
also the effect

how it is this annoying??? this only happens on opening a chat with unseen messages, not while you are writing on a chat, also you want to read this messages anyway, in the less common cases when you don't it isn't annoying because you just press the "go to bottom" button.
There are no need for any effect, just having the scroll at the needed position instead at the bottom, the effect I was talking was the effect of the marker, but that isn't really needed

[r10s]

how it is this annoying???

i do not assume, all user read all messages in a chat :)

eg. there may be threads you're only interested in from time to time. maybe you have met the ppl in between or so. so there are reasonable situations where one does not want to read the last 500 messages for the last week but mainly the new ones.

however, i'm also not 100% sure about this :)

but, with the go-down-button, that's a good point.

however, the most complicated thing for now is to get the "new messages marker" working at all, we can then think about where to scroll to on opening a chat.

[adbenitez]

it is much more annoying for the guy who wants to read the first 10 of those 500 messages, when he had to go in the middle of a talk but after that a lot of messages have been sent, for the people that don't want to read the messages at all, it is just a tap on the go-down-button, for the people that want to read them it is Kung Fu scrolling ;)
I had not get my hands dirty with Android or with the DC code yet, but there aren't a way to get the index of the first unread message??? for a ListView you could .setSelection(first_unseen_index); for recyclerview (with linear layout manager) linearLayoutManager.scrollToPositionWithOffset(first_unseen_index, some_pixels_of_previous_message_for_context)
Not tested anything of this just searched on stackoverflow.
If we manage to set the scroll to the first unseen message there are no need for a marker at all, users just get from the point they where the last time, no surprises no need for a marker, and if they just wanna go to the bottom there is the old good go-down-button

[r10s]

i think a marker is also needed when eg. the screen goes off and messages arrive and the user turns the screen on.

[adbenitez]

@r10s do you mean:
user open a chat and start to chat,
user then press the lock button to turn off screen,
some new messages arrive to that chat,
users turn on screen and the chat activity is visible again.
If so, when the user turns on the screen the chat will be at the position of the last seen message(when he turned off the screen) so there are no need for a marker, but a marker may be useful if the user was reading old messages and then new messages arrive...

[r10s]

sure, the message will be visible, however it is helpful to see _that_ there are new messages and _which_ they are.

otherwise it is easy to oversee them.

that's what at least telegram also does btw. and afaik also whatsapp and probably some others.

[adbenitez]

I had never used or seen any of those apps but I am not against a marker, having a marker is fine, but I think is really needed a way to go to the first unseen message, if you think it is better to start at the bottom, at least DC should provide a way to go to the first unread message just like riot does ("ir al primer mensaje no leído" means "go to the first unread message"):

[r10s]

thanks for the details :+1:

[adbenitez]

is this implemented??? it was weird, but yesterday I have seen a dark marker and if I remember well a text saying the number of unread messages, but that is the first and only time I have seen this marker, it was kind of an illusion, please tell my I am not driving crazy!!!!

[r10s]

afaik it's not yet implemented ;)

but maybe there is a hidden view that pops up only every 42 days or so for a fragment of a second :)

[violoncelloCH]

@adbenitez are you talking about this thing?
It's strange, because it appeared above a message I sent myself... and I sadly don't know how to reproduce, but at least I've been fast enough to take a screenshot when it appeared the second time...

[adbenitez]

violoncello I am "offline" could you send the image to [email protected] ??
I was so amazed that I could not take the screenshot, also this happened only once to me.

[r10s]

@violoncelloCH thanks, interesting, so it's already there, but just not displayed accordingly

@adbenitez so you were not dreaming or driving crazy but you have very good eyes :)

[r10s]

so, basically, the "new message marker" is there but not shown.

[r10s]

closed by https://github.com/deltachat/deltachat-android/pull/940