Some animations for DC Desktop

[farooqkz]

I think DC Desktop could use some animations. Some ideas:

1. When you have selected an account, there is a white bar next to it. Add an animation for changing this.
2. When a new message has been added to the MessageList, there is an animation which first older messages get pushed up, then the new message gets added.
3. When you select a chat, it is highlighted in chat list. There could be an animation for change of this highlight.
4. Animation for deleting messages.
5. Animation for when new dialogs appear
6. Animation for scrolling to bottom(the scroll to bottom button).

Some devices are lowend and if we do animations on them, they’ll be slow. I think Desktop should communicate with the OS somehow to disable the animations when the OS demands it. E.g. because the user has set performance mode, because GPU acceleration is not available or because the device is on power save mode.

[WofWca]

I agree, we need more transitions.

@farooqkz

When a new message has been added to the MessageList, there is an animation which first older messages get pushed up, then the new message gets added.

This is already done for incoming messages.

@farooqkz

Some devices are lowend and if we do animations on them, they’ll be slow. I think Desktop should communicate with the OS somehow to disable the animations when the OS demands it.

CSS transitions are pretty fast. I would not add JS transitions, unless it’s easy and important. That is to say, I don’t think we need code that specifically handles power saving mode / hardware power.

[Raiden]

Speaking of animations, DC-Desktop is the only messenger I know of that allows using GIFs as wallpapers. I hope this feature stays in the Tauri version. Perhaps this option should be highlighted more.

Cool "hidden" feature in Delta Chat

Hello, I just noticed that DC supports animated backgrounds. All you have to do is select a GIF as wallpaper. Unfortunately, it only works in the desktop version. Is this function actually intended? Anyway, I like it and my chats now appear against the backdrop of a beautiful soothing waterfall. I think it would make sense to enable this function on smartphones as well. As far as I know, no other messenger has anything like this. It would be even better if you could set a separate GIF fo…

[farooqkz]

CSS Animations still run on the GPU. And if there is no GPU acceleration, they will hit CPU badly.

[r10s]

@farooqkz

When you have selected an account, there is a white bar next to it. Add an animation for changing this.

first, we should adapt the highlighting of the selected account at all, it is too weak and not good visible, compared to the impact. i have that on my todo list

apart from that, some subtile animation can help ux, but it needs to be done very carefully

[Raiden]

Does anyone know if this feature will remain in the Tauri version?

Cool "hidden" feature in Delta Chat

Hello, I just noticed that DC supports animated backgrounds. All you have to do is select a GIF as wallpaper. Unfortunately, it only works in the desktop version. Is this function actually intended? Anyway, I like it and my chats now appear against the backdrop of a beautiful soothing waterfall. I think it would make sense to enable this function on smartphones as well. As far as I know, no other messenger has anything like this. It would be even better if you could set a separate GIF fo…

[farooqkz]

very carefully

I second that. If we go too fast and add unbaked stuff, the UX will be worse than what already is. But I think the ideas I gave are good starts.

[Raiden]

@farooqkz

When you have selected an account, there is a white bar next to it. Add an animation for changing this.

Maybe animated avatars would make sense? If a user moves the curser over the profile, the avatar is animated. On the other hand, avatars would probably become too big. Maybe you could get around the problem by having two versions of an avatar: one that is sent to others and an animated one for the profile switcher.

[DELTA_MAFIA]

I understand that UX is important, but not the first necessity. I think first we need to slowly remove some functions from the experimental mode. Carefully and slowly. We’re not playing catch-up.