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Change the chat interface slightly for mobile screens to improve mobile users' experience (implemented)
Right now the chat interface is a bit clunkier than it needs to be. Depending on your screen, there's a lot of excess elements inefficiently laid out. Basically the actual message area is big and padded and has lots of things that waste precious screen estate on a phone. Further, when a new message arrives the area we're typing in jiggles around on the screen.
This fixes your input area to the bottom, so it's visible as you scroll. That could change if it's not so important to have it there. (Other web chats work well with the input positioned at the bottom, and it scrolls away with everything else.)
The 'Submit my post' button is gone. If it should be there, it should be a tiny button on the right of the text input saying 'send'.
The 'connect' button is gone; connect users to chats automatically.
The 'connected, listening for updates' message is gone: if there's a problem, warn them then, but don't take up screen estate perpetually with that message.
Ideally, the CSS would be in a small-screen media query and the active parts of the code would only work in that same size. I haven't gone to that trouble in this mockup though. It's imperfect and broken in a few little ways, but it hopefully gets the message across.
When new messages arrive, scroll down to meet them. (The chat might already do this.)
Start the page with us scrolled down to the bottom, so we don't have to scroll past 100 old messages to see the latest one.
I think that's it?
Go ahead and tear in whether you like or hate this. (I won't take it personally!)
meta info
endorsement points: 0
created: 05 February 15 at 11:51 AM (build: 2/4/2015 8:51 PM alpha)
closed: 13 February 15 at 02:55 PM (build: 2/12/2015 4:15 AM beta)
Having the "connect" button is useful in case the reconnect times out
My opinions:
Input box should not be fixed to the bottom, adds no value when scrolling
Connected is useful to see so you can immediately know if you're disconnected or not. I was considering replacing it with signal strength bars, though.
My pet peeve with all chat systems is auto-scrolling down to a new message. That is just evil. Ever try checking back up the screen when someone is posting every two seconds? Try reading from the top, only to be interrupted before you can even find the spot at which you were last interrupted? Infuriating.
I do think going to the bottom of a chat (and forum page) upon opening that chat from a link, would be a very nice feature.
I could definitely see compacting controls, though. A signal strength icon as a connection indicator ('strength' is not applicable of course, but the icon still conveys the meaning) would be nice but it could be an icon on a button, which you press to connect when unconnected.
The Input box fixed at the bottom 'can' add value when scrolling (but again, requires the scroll to NOT be auto-scrolled to bottom upon new post). The use-case on my phone is that my text entry pad floats. I can both see the text I am entering, and scroll the screen back up to read a previous post(s) to which I am responding, while typing in the text entry box. This would be the ultimate setup for a large-screen phone, but it may not quite be worth the cost of unique development.
Regarding the connected message and button: don't show it unless something's wrong, and don't show a signal strength bar. If we're connected fine, the message takes up space and doesn't need to be seen: we can take that as granted because there's no error message. Don't show us a signal strength bar because there's nothing we can do about it, and being on a phone we'll already have an idea of our signal strength. (By now I know all the spots I go through day to day where my signal doesn't work well, and then my phone has a signal strength bar otherwise.)
If and when something is wrong, tell us. If we've been disconnected, show a one-line message above or below the chat entry bar saying "Disconnected; trying to reconnect...." If it's given up, show us a message saying "Can't reconnect." with a button saying "Retry".
There has been some tweaks to the input box to streamline it. It has not been styled specifically for a better mobile experience but a more simple one overall.
WA, the new phone improvements are great. I think this can be closed.
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