a jump should be followed by orientation; show the day, date and time

[grahamperrin]

Enhancement request

Current behaviour

An example, following a jump:

From the down arrow alone (to the left near the foot of the column), it's clear that I'm not at the end of the timeline.

From the scroller alone (in the scrollbar, to the right of the messages column), in this case the orientation is marginally better: I'm nowhere near the end of the timeline.

However: where am I – at what point in time?

To tell, I can:

1. move the pointer, until a time appears for a message; or
2. page up or down, maybe repeatedly, until a day appears, then down or up, maybe repeatedly, until I relocate the point to which I was jumped by the application.

Issues

A time with neither a day nor a date – (1) above – is, more often than not, useless. (YMMV; I often find myself catching up after days away from a busy room.)

For (2) above: leaving, then manually relocating, the point to which I was jumped requires memorising a message or (for want of a better expression) the shape of things, then actively ignoring what's on screen whilst rushing to find a day marker (rushing because I want the passing messages to be not misinterpreted as read), then rushing to memorise the day (because I want the messages either side of the marker to be not misinterpreted as read), then rushing in the opposite direction whilst actively ignoring all passing messages whilst actively absorbing the shapes of the passing things whilst trying to recall the earlier shape of things around the point to which I was jumped, and if I'm lucky: as things rush past, there'll be a matching shape. With additional luck I'll remember the day that was shown in the midst of the multidirectdional rushes, then again I'll move the pointer to a message and see its time (alone) then I'll relate that time to a day (was it a relative expression of a date, or an absolute expression?) and finally I'll have:

• orientation ☑️

That's the theory.

In reality, the necessarily mashed-up and self-conflicting nature of the workaround often causes me to forget what was at/around the day/date marker, by the time I relocate the point to which I was jumped by the application.

Metaphorically: it's like being in the middle of a long road with many pedestrians, asking a passer-by the name of the road, the passer-by knows the name but instead he tells you to run, run, run in either direction without looking at the houses, shops or people but do look out for a sign somewhere in the middle (not near a kerb) of the road, then run, run, run back to … whatshisname and what was his face?

:-)

Suggestions

A few moments (not immediately) after the jump by the system, begin displaying orientation:

• day, date, time

Fade that in, relatively quickly.

A few moments later, fade it out. Relatively slowly, but not too slow (it should disappear before the user finishes reading the messages).

Resist any temptation to animate the display.

Neutral colours might be better than e.g. shades of green.

My gut tells me: align to the right.

(That alignment may be thought of as inconsistent with the to-the-left display of the time, alone, that can appear for each message; but this is not about any particular message; the issue here is general orientation following what may be a colossal jump back in time.)

Formats

I prefer to see:

• an absolute day (e.g. not 'yesterday'); and
• the date and time in formats that are unambiguous.

So, for example:

• Monday 2017-04-24 23:59

YMMV :-) I'm certain that some other users will prefer relative dates and/or localisations, so it will be smart to offer user preferences for this enhancement.

---

There might be more to add from my point of view, but what's above is hopefully the gist of it.

Thanks

[grahamperrin]

Improvement noted with thanks. Visible in one of the shots in element-hq/element-web#3766 …

[ara4n]

The improvement comes from element-hq/element-web#2051 (comment). Honestly, I think that this might be sufficient for general purposes - the idea of fading in/out temporary date markers feels a bit overengineered. I'll keep this open at lower priority though in case we wish to revisit it.

[grahamperrin]

Thanks! element-hq/element-web@67efb8b is a huge improvement but I very soon found myself thinking …

… "What date was that?"

Honestly, that's not contrived. I did need to know, and to know: I switched away from Firefox, to a terminal window and ran cal(1).

[grahamperrin]

… the idea of fading in/out temporary date markers feels a bit overengineered. …

Agreed.

I can't recall when this enhancement landed, but it's ideal:

• point at the time ☑ for the date to fade in.

@ara4n close this issue, if you like, and tiptoe over to element-hq/element-web#3763 where I'm in Harry Enfield mode, prepared to spend Loadsamoney on a fix …

[Palid]

Got a suggestion today from @d33tah that telegram-like info about current day would be amazing when you scroll up/down. I'd very much opt-in for this solution, as it's pretty easy and understandable. Current date information disappears after a few seconds of not changing day too. See attached video.

CleanShot.2021-10-07.at.11.39.32.mp4

.

[d33tah]

And another video that attempts to demonstrate the desired feature:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DqOwcD9KGORtCDywXthlNQLd-JTqto-N/view?usp=sharing

[MadLittleMods]

Related to element-hq/element-web#7575 which would solve this issue if implemented.