Element-android: Url preview

[bmarty]

Display URL preview in the timeline, as other Riot clients does (except - sadly - Riot iOS)

Do not perform URL previewing in e2e rooms, as it leaks the URL to the HS

EDIT: Update of description:

We need design on how to display URL previews in the timeline.
We have several states to consider: loading/error/loaded. It should be good to avoid blink in the timeline, so all the states should take the same space.
Several preview can be displayed in a row if the message contains several URLs.
Also it is possible to close the preview. On Riot-Android, it had the effect of storing the url value, to avoid display the url preview anymore for that URL. On Element Web it seems that this is not the current behavior, it just closes the preview.

The current data we get for a preview:

• The url itself
• An image URI (optional)
• A title
• A short description

As suggested by @dhrunia, we could consider displaying URL preview in e2e room, but the decision has to be taken globally for the Element product.

Ref: https://matrix.org/docs/spec/client_server/r0.6.1#get-matrix-media-r0-preview-url

Element URL display (FTR):

Edit:
Design is ready: https://www.figma.com/file/tnv1s5KUVK38Byt54gs7GM/Timeline-URL-previews?node-id=0%3A1 , proposal 2 is mature (we think :) but feedback welcome via Figma comments

[RotBolt]

I would like to work on this issue

[bmarty]

Ok, thanks

[ptman]

@KaenDagger did you get far?

[dhrunia]

Do not perform URL previewing in e2e rooms, as it leaks the URL to the HS

Most self hosted users wouldn't mind if URL is leaked to HS. Maybe let the users decide by providing an option to enable URL previews in encrypted rooms as well?

[532910]

It'd be nice to have a toggle for default preference for encrypted rooms.

[ptman]

is minivector from f-droid currently the only android client with url previews?

[nadonomy]

@niquewoodhouse prepped a simple proposal for visualising URL previews here: https://www.figma.com/file/tnv1s5KUVK38Byt54gs7GM/Timeline-URL-previews?node-id=8%3A122

[Alvazz]

@bmarty what is this view? it is timeline?

[Alvazz]

@bmarty Has the current timeline function been released? Where to click in

[532910]

Doesn't work for me.
Inline URL preview is enabled in Preferences, element-web has enabled URL previews for this room and it shows previews.

[bmarty]

Available in Element Android 1.0.12 and up

[532910]

Yep, 1.0.12 is installed.

[bmarty]

@532910 could you open a dedicated issue to track your problem please? Thanks