Signal-desktop: Make link previews more compact

[GitMatze]

Link previews often are too large, especially when only a simple logo is displayed.
Below is a screenshot from Signal and one from WhatsApp for comparison.

Signal Screenshot

WhatsApp Web Screenshot

Solution:

I would strongly suggest switching to the WhatsApp-style mini-preview.
I see that sometimes a high resolution view of e.g. an article cover image looks quite nice, but arguably in 95% of the times it's just not worth the space. On the phone it is even more problematic, when the preview literally takes up more than half of the screen. Also, the preview image often isn't of any interest, which makes the current view extra annoying. Like here:

Platform Info

Signal Version: v1 39.4

Operating System: Linux Mint 20

Linked Device Version: Android

[GitMatze]

A quick fix might be to restrict the image height. It's still very space-consuming, however.

See Twitter for example:

[EvanHahn-Signal]

This is a good idea and something we'll look into soon.

[GitMatze]

Thanks! Just to show you the urgency of this: The preview of www.zeit.de currently takes up more than the the entire screen on my Galaxy S7 phone. It's really a serious UX flaw..

(Signal 5.1.1 on Samsung S7)

[EvanHahn-Signal]

@GitMatze Thanks for reporting. The various client teams will take a look at this on their respective platforms.

[GitMatze]

@EvanHahn-Signal . Great to see this fixed! I'm not sure though if large-height images are handled as intended.
Like a phone screenshot: https://www.valuewalk.com/2017/09/how-to-take-screenshots-on-iphone-x/

[EvanHahn-Signal]

@GitMatze Thanks—I think this is intentional, but we'll look into it just in case.

I'm going to close this issue because I believe it's resolved, but let me know if that's wrong and I can reopen.