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Spaces launch in Element

element.io

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Re: Spaces launch in Element

#41

Post by robertlagrant »

_abox wrote: post #30
bajsejohannes wrote: post #8

This seems to built for people with a lot of rooms/people. I think it's a classic mistake to enable it for all users, and I see it in all kinds of products. Everyone starts out by building something simple, but eventually it's bloated with features that I don't need (I'm sure someone does). Personally, I use matrix every day. However, it's only for a single room. With this new feature, I lost 70 "pixels" (or 140 actu…

Yes MS Teams is a great example. It started as a Slack knock-off. Not a great one, the UI is too low density and the multi tenant support sucks unlike Slack's. But it was relatively snappy. And free for O365 users. But lately they've been adding many apps, Wikis, all these fancy meeting modes that make it seem like everyone is in a theatre and many more fluffy things. Now the app is so slow it takes more than a minut…

I like when they embed views (e.g. PowerBI) in it, but as soon as you click off it to see a message and click back, it has to reload it all. It's like IE6 - a pre-tabs browsing experience.

Re: Spaces launch in Element

#42

Post by robertlagrant »

filleokus wrote: post #18
dmitriid wrote: post #7

Neither Slack nor any of the Slack clones can figure the most simple of things: tabs. Instead they all insist on having just one window with a 10-kilometer long list of rooms/chats/channels on the left that you have to switch between in a single window. This becomes especially frustrating when you have several active chats going on at the same time, or when you want to retain some info on the screen while answering i…

I think MS Teams is worst about this, because they have so much functionality crammed in the app. I constantly find myself switching between the Calendar view / channel view when planning a meeting, or between channels when referencing a PDF shared in the "Files" section of a different channel. Super annoying.

Yes - it's the worst here, because they're trying to surface so many products in Teams for some reason.

Re: Spaces launch in Element

#43

Post by athenot »

_abox wrote: post #30
bajsejohannes wrote: post #8

This seems to built for people with a lot of rooms/people. I think it's a classic mistake to enable it for all users, and I see it in all kinds of products. Everyone starts out by building something simple, but eventually it's bloated with features that I don't need (I'm sure someone does). Personally, I use matrix every day. However, it's only for a single room. With this new feature, I lost 70 "pixels" (or 140 actu…

Yes MS Teams is a great example. It started as a Slack knock-off. Not a great one, the UI is too low density and the multi tenant support sucks unlike Slack's. But it was relatively snappy. And free for O365 users. But lately they've been adding many apps, Wikis, all these fancy meeting modes that make it seem like everyone is in a theatre and many more fluffy things. Now the app is so slow it takes more than a minut…

> It started as a Slack knock-off.

More like a Webex Teams knock-off, as MS went after the Unified Communications space (group chat + video meetings, though they still lack contact center and hybrid meeting hardware).

Re: Spaces launch in Element

#44

Post by vaylian »

MayeulC wrote: post #12
vaylian wrote: post #2

> [Spaces] come in three main flavours: This is what I still find confusing about spaces. How do I create each of these 3 different flavours? Is there a default flavour? Do I have to upgrade a personal space into a private/public space?

I dislike that distinction a bit. Spaces are just like rooms. You can just create one (that's a personal space), invite some people in (private space), and make it public with a public link (public space). The distinction is artificial. I mostly want public or private spaces to regroup existing rooms, so the "private" space that wants to force me to create new rooms (in element) is a bad fit. I also think it's a bit…

> I dislike that distinction a bit. Spaces are just like rooms

Because you understand rooms at a different conceptual level than me. And that by itself is a good thing. But the rest of us still needs more explanations/analogies.

The thing that is still missing for me: How can spaces/rooms contain other rooms? For example, could someone create a sub-room of #matrix:matrix.org?

Re: Spaces launch in Element

#45

Post by diftraku »

Arathorn wrote: post #39
brainsmith wrote: post #35

That's awesome for teams to focus on just work conversations but unfortunately not enough. We've completely switched our work communication to a self-hosted matrix+element with SSO, so we can be sure our matrix auth is secured the same way our other internal services are. However, some of us also have personal matrix accounts which are offline during work hours and corporate accounts are offline outside of work hours…

Yup. Multiaccount is desperately needed in Element. Other Matrix clients (FluffyChat, Quaternion, possibly Nheko?) have it already though)... plus you can always cheat and just open Element in multiple browser tabs :)

I got around the single-account limitation on Element by installing a work profile on my Android phone using Shelter[1]. I initially spotted this from HN while we were looking at migrating from Slack to Matrix and I wanted to keep my personal account separate.

Works surprisingly well for my use-case (keep work stuff separate on Element) and even allows me to disconnect completely from work by simply turning off the profile.

[1]: https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter

Edit: added note about using Android

Re: Spaces launch in Element

#46

Post by kroltan »

robertlagrant wrote: post #41
_abox wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes MS Teams is a great example. It started as a Slack knock-off. Not a great one, the UI is too low density and the multi tenant support sucks unlike Slack's. But it was relatively snappy. And free for O365 users. But lately they've been adding many apps, Wikis, all these fancy meeting modes that make it seem like everyone is in a theatre and many more fluffy things. Now the app is so slow it takes more than a minut…

I like when they embed views (e.g. PowerBI) in it, but as soon as you click off it to see a message and click back, it has to reload it all. It's like IE6 - a pre-tabs browsing experience.

Embedded browser views are my pet peeve.

On some mobile apps (Gmail, Discord, Telegram, etc. On Android, never used a modern iOS device to know the situation over there) there are embedded browsers enabled by default, but they are not very persistent and have no actual browsing UI.

My mom was buying something from a link she got from a friend, and was unable to complete the transaction because she had to open another Telegram conversation to get the payment details (hey don't judge non-techy people's organization skills!), but of course going back means leaving the browser-view, so once she had the details at hand she couldn't go back to the store to finish the purchase.

That would be "fine" if there were a consistent UX to "no, i really mean to open this on my browser app, not on an embedded view" or if embedded views were opt-in, but as it stands, it is one of the classic attempts at "simplifying" things that actually makes the whole ecosystem more complex and obscure.

Re: Spaces launch in Element

#50

Post by thibaultamartin »

hda111 wrote: post #34

Thinks looks interesting. For replacing Discord. Is there also an audio chat function?

Voice Messages are thing, but are not exactly like Discord voice rooms: https://element.io/blog/introducing-voice-messages-and-so-mu...

But Matrix is an open protocol that everyone can improve. The Specifications Change Proposals are open to everyone willing to formalise the change they want, get it reviewed, and implement it so it works in practice.

And there is a Matrix Spec Change going in the direction of Discord-like voice chat rooms! (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/group-..., and in particular https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/group-...)

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