Enhancement: show date in chat when it changes
asked 2014-01-22 22:43:09 +0200
Currently only the hour and minute of a message is displayed in Messaging app for XMPP type of chat, hence it is impossible to know from what date the messages are. This is obviously problematic.
There are several possibilities to solve this:
1) (preferred solution) add a date separator whenever a new message with a greater date than the previous one is received. For example:
10:00 Message 1
--- 2014-01-22 ---
10:30 Message 2
--- 2014-01-23 ---
09:20 Message 3
2) prepend the time with the date only when a message with a greater date than the previous one is received:
23:55 Message 1
2014-01-22 00:05 Message 2
00:10 Message 3
3) show full date and time for all message
Tough question. In sms the datetime is in a smaller font so even with both date and time the info never dominates...
vattuvarg ( 2014-03-04 17:46:19 +0200 )editI would prefer the separator way also as it follows the common behavior of desktop chat programs.
strnous ( 2014-05-27 08:22:12 +0200 )editWould it be possible to introduce a new GUI widget as a solution? The text size of the messages doesn't change by zooming. What if the two-finger zoom reveals additional data instead? Sort of like an outliner with collapsible blocks of text. It would save screen estate and allow some unlike solutions in other apps too.
vattuvarg ( 2014-05-27 20:56:21 +0200 )editI upvote this as it is really annoying scrolling through past conversations and seeing just the time and not the date when the IM message arrived. Plus it is sometimes really confuding if e.g. you chat daily at approx. the same time and never know if the message from the past day. As a fix by adding the date with some smaller fontsize it shouldnt be that hard as RFC.
Nekron ( 2014-06-06 23:41:11 +0200 )editDidn't it already do this in an earlier version, along with indicating when the messaging medium changed? I'm sure Harmattan did it.
Andy Branson ( 2014-09-29 17:14:44 +0200 )edit