ImprovementsAlex Lins (Bao)
·2 days ago
Closed
Chat: display date & time on every message
Actually, in chat is only the time displayed for every message, but not the date.
In a long list of chat messages, I feel always lost and lose the track "when was it?"
With a lot of scrolling there comes somewhere (30 posts above or so) a line that finally tells the date for all what's below of it. But is is easy to overlook and I don't want to scroll some meters up in the endless list only to find the f*cking date of a post.
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AL
·2 days agoThanks for flagging this — you're right that losing the date context in a long chat thread is frustrating.
A couple of quick clarifications to help us understand the full picture:
- When you scroll back through older messages, do you want the date to appear on every message (even if it's the same day), or just when the date changes from the previous message?
- Are there specific times of day when you're most likely to hit this — like when you're catching up on messages from multiple days at once?
Please take care with your language.
There is a date always present at the top of the screen to show exactly what date the messages are from. It seems redundant to put the date on every message and unnecessary noise. This is also how virtually all chat apps we've experienced do this.
(OK, I take care of my language. Need more sleep, sorry.)
Three things:
1. We have here once more the case of very bad visibility, plus very bad placement.
I've never seen that date there on top and I would (of course!) never have expected it there.
2. Really, when I scan through a long list of posts, then I'm always interested when this post was received.
I don't want to refocus my tired eyes for each single post, because the App forces me to look far up and then down again.
It seems to me, that the team members are relatively young and healthy.
They can't imagine how much "little" bad design choices can affect an "older" user's workflow.
I'm only 59. That's not sooo old. But I feel the big difference to ages below 50.
To protocol something, make a screenshot.
The image you need (for court etc.) should show only a certain message (with date & time) but no other messages.
The normal way is, to make a screenshot and then to crop it to the needed message. But in AnyTwo, this attempt fails. :-(
And btw.:
Even copy & paste of the bare text fails, it doesn't contain the date!
-- How bad is that?
Please remove the bad visible and not needed (only confusing) date on top!
Instead, show the date where it is needed: direct left from the timestamp of the message.
That's the only place where it makes sense.
The date is on the top for virtually all chat apps. It's on there for whatsapp, Signal, Slack, you name it.