Granted, apps can lock you out if you don’t have a certain version, but by and large, you should be able to choose to update when there’s this drastic of a change
I’ve always liked having personal chats in the servers section. The notifications were much more clear, as the chat would always pop up to the top, and navigating to them was significantly easier as every area for messaging was easily accessible through one motion.
The UI is generally better and separating personal chats isn’t a deal breaker for me, but the new app is buggy in ways that actively impede my daily use, such as search filters not working over the full server in the default search bar, and the structure for dms makes it much harder to go seemlessly between talking in a server and talking with a group of friends in a dm or sending a message to someone. Swiping out of DMs to servers has much more friction, and switching between DMs takes significantly longer and is incredibly glitchy, sometimes trapping text boxes in a different chat, opening the conversation well above where you were actually talking, and many times it simply will get trapped in one dm and I need to restart the app fully to use DMs normally again.
I generally use significantly more DMs than servers, talking with my friends in groups of 3 or individually and having one or two servers for large communities of people. As such, the significantly shittier DM experience on mobile is making me want to use discord significantly less on mobile.
I like knowing where things are. I couldn’t find dms after the update until some told me. I also keep trying to swipe left to see members but that has moved too. I feel like in general everything has become harder to find.
there are levels of data hygiene and levels of inconvenience people willing to put up with. Pumping less data points into the machine is still better than pumping more
not being able to swipe from dm to dm list is a problem
performance is a MUCH BIGGER problem than either of these, my galaxy s9+ should NOT be on its knees begging for for forgiveness by using a fucking chat app.
the prior two can be easily fixed, but the performance is really concerning. ill be using aliucord until they sort that stuff out anyway, new app is pretty but unfortunately flawed
I always wondered what the FUCK are Discord doing with their shitty client app. Like, how bad is their whole Electron React bullshit going that their performance is so bad. At this point rewriting it in something native would be less bother than fixing this shit
A good change imo. Never made sense to me, both in desktop and mobile that DMs are located right with the server list. I don’t use it as much, but when I use it, it’s precisely for DMs, so I think it’s a change for the better. Some people complaining like they change every single part of the UI should touch some grass, sometimes change isn’t a bad thing.
Personally hate the change to the swipe. I get that on some huge servers people probably use the “reply” feature a lot, but I definitely don’t have so much use for it as to give up the nice, coherent and logical UX of “channel/server list is on the left, user list is on the right, just swipe to them”.
IMO, swiping should be for navigating UI, not interacting with individual items. Now there’s a useless thing on the swipe and I have to reach to the top of the screen if I want to check who’s online and in the channel. Annoying.
That and the new DM screen doesn’t use swipe right as navigation, it’s just a “back” button now. Can’t quickly look at the DM list and go back to your conversation by swiping right-left any more. Literal lazy design because this is an easier way to program that interaction.
Don’t care super much about the DM button moving, it’s more convenient to access but breaks the UI paradigm. Shrug.
Oh, and the “midnight” theme is not new, you could use it for years now in the old versions.
Yeah, my iPhone 4s still has the last version it supported and with a tweak it still works fine. It still even has the random quotes submitted by users, which have been long gone now.
Can someone explain the update to me . I mostly just use it for one discord server that a smaller streamer that I know personally and haven’t really noticed anything 🤷
It put messages in their own section that is distinctly separate from the server list. A good change in my opinion and they didn’t do it like slack where they took up more screen real estate so there literally isn’t a downside other than “that’s not where I’m used to clicking”
One of the biggest downsides is visible. The color changes make the app unusable for some people and my fiancé had to stop entirely because it gave them a headache every time they tried it no matter what theme they used.
What color changes? If you’re talking about a bug obviously it will be fixed after some time. Other than that I didnt see any color change. I especially like the new nightime theme that is full black.
The default themes (both light and dark mode) are low contrast. I don’t know why anyone would have gray text in light mode but they managed to mess that up.
DMs are now accessible by the menu bar on the bottom. Before it was at the top of the server list
user list is now only accessible by pressing a button on top of the screen
swipe on a message to reply to it.
colours have been tweaked to be less contrasted
As for my thoughts:
IDC about DMs
I look at the user list more often than I reply to people, so I rather swipe to see it. Even more than before, replying only needed a long tap on the message that would be in thumb reach, and now you needed to stretch out your thumb to reach the user list button (that is a search icon)
I don’t suffer from any particular contrast eye issues, but for those that does, contrast is pretty important.
No communication. This update breaks a lot of muscles memory, and it’s forced upon you even if you don’t like it. The old UX was completely fine too.
desktop/mobile discrepancy. Before, mobile was a lot like desktop, but now some thing are moved and you need to learn two interfaces
There is talks that it’s more buggy and slower than before, but I can’t objectively prove it
If you like the new ui, then that’s great. But there’s clearly people who don’t for great reasons.
The reasons might be fine, but my opinion is that is whole thing is a little bit… Blown out of proportion.
Just on a couple of your points:
The muscle memory point is very valid, but that boils down to not liking change for changes sake. Muscle memory can always be rewired, and it will take less time than you think it will.
The discrepancy between desktop and mobile has always been there, imo. So many of the desktop features were crammed away into menus and submenus that were hard to use on mobile. With a new mobile-centric design, we may not know where everything is yet, but it’ll likely be easier to access once we get more familiar with it.
The other thing for me is that Discord is the messaging app I prefer, by a long shot. If they see this as an opportunity to add SMS linking to their feature set, and allow users to then also bridge those from the mobile to desktop version, it would solve a lot of communication issues I have, having everything in one place.
Yes, the UI in Slack is more cryptic after the update. I had some difficulties with searching for messages in the new design. I think you can’t open the search results in context anymore IIRC. Also the change of color scheme. They didn’t even bother to change all the icons to match the new color or they just made the change so quickly they didn’t have time to.
oh, I didn’t do any searching with new design. I extensively use search. it’d be bad if they break it. true for colours. their own colour scheme makes text difficult to read.
but I use custom colour scheme(Dracula theme), so have been spared of that.
Lemmy’s biggest competitor at this point isn’t reddit, it’s Discord, or rather, the monster it has become. It seems to me that instead of creating a subreddit nowadays, every project now wants to use a Discord server for everything.
The problem with that is:
Asking messages in a big, open chatroom (over, say, 20 people) gets real messy, real quickly.
Conversations on Discord are difficult to follow when multiple of them are going at once.
The conversations containing solutions to problems in chat or threads are not search indexable, which is the reason why reddit became quietly dominant in search results, it is simply the biggest centralized repository of organized English language text conversations available.
So why do people insist on using Discord servers to build their community? Simple, it’s the network effect. If somebody wants tech support, it’s way easier to click a Discord invite on an account for group chat you already have than it is to sign up for yet another forum that you only use once. But Lemmy doesn’t suffer from that problem of traditional forums because of federation.
Which brings me to my point, if Lemmy is to grow, it’s better to sell Lemmy to disgruntled Discord admins and forum owners to move their community than it is to get people to move off reddit at this point, since people who wants to leave reddit has all done so at this point.
Discord is the same problem for the internet as the Facebook grups were. Its hermetic, the info stays there, its hard to search thus the same problem is being asked over and over. StackOverflow and Reddit strength is that’s they are indexed and easy accessed
Discord is really bad for preservation of information. I can still find forum posts from 10 years ago on a given topic all over, but discord links seem to expire and break all the damn time and it’s hard to search through. It sucks that discord has become the defacto choice for user community space.
Lenny does part of this yes. Fediverse is the bigger ticket item. From a single account I can federate to different networks and post questions or have other interactions in different formats.
Discord sucks, but I’ve actually had a 100% successful help rate on it vs Reddit or Lemmy.
Typically Discord servers have specific tech support rooms, and you’ll get help pretty quickly. Only once I have had to ask my question a second time, because it was missed the first time.
Meanwhile Reddit threads just get downvoted, buried, and you’re never helped. Even when I try to search for threads that other people have posted, 90% of threads are just blank.
Lemmy is the worst. Doesn’t matter what you need, they’ll just call you stupid and tell you to use Linux and FOSS alternative, ignoring the fact you NEED to use what you’re asking help with.
A forum should work in tandem with a chatroom in an “ideal” online community, imo. Searchable Q&A with a communication for additional, nuanced interaction. They serve different purposes and can be more powerful when used together, than they could be on their own.
Lemmy does seem to have a bunch of old, crotchety internet nerds on here that like the “old ways” of the webs. But just tell 'em to “go fuck yourself”, if they’re being a dick; and than don’t reply to them again. It’s very freeing. They’re just butt sensitive about linux and foss, cause they were bullied on early internet forums and now act the same way, when expressing their loud-ass opinions. It’s like an unfortunate cycle of abuse that has existed on forums, but don’t let it discourage you from asking anyway… the question might help others
I’m a crotchety old internet nerd… tell me to “go fuck myself”, just for funsies! It’s empowering!
I feel like Discord fills a different need than forum type systems.
The one API I have on discord, likes Discord as a place for casual chat about the system. I think the devs prefer it because it is an active place for the community; to word it better, ‘hey look at this cool thing I did’ > response within a few minutes ‘that’s cool’ heart^5 fire^3 thumbs up^7. Whereas on a forum you’d be waiting for hours, or just not have that casual of a conversation.
It replaces the old usage of IRC servers.
The help channel is highly responsive, and great for things you want a quick chat about, need a response now, or if you get help now great, but if not, you’ll figure it out on your own before you would ever get help on a forum, so it’s not worth posting to a forum.
Threads really do help organize when a discussion is going to be large, and discord is very much searchable, just not from your browser search engine.
For changes to the API, ideas, issues, or bugs, they direct you to github “Discussions” or “Issues”. They do have an idea discord channel, but it’s a more casual thing, or far out there discussions.
Discord does get a lot of hate for it’s searchability, which is valid, but I don’t have a problem with it as long as places like Stack Overflow (or what replaces it) are still around.
Thanks. They either wisened up that people don’t like change and need to force it, or didn’t add the option to android.
The “New Layout” section exists on android, but they got rid of the toggle; now you can only give feedback or learn more.
I would like the option to toggle off new layout, but do agree if that is the layout going forward, they should have it as the default so new people learn it out the door, but those that don’t like the change have a choice.
I’m sure the change is fine, I’ve just spent the past few days too busy to realize it was an update change, and that my app was buggy, having trouble finding DMs, and switching back to servers.
I’m sure it was an announcement/dev notes, but they’ve trained me to not read those and immediately close them, because they happen every few days, and they always pop up when i am opening the app from notification, and I just want to reply to the notification, not deal with adverts for Nitro, or to subscribe now while there is this super special discount, or learn about 3 new features I will never use, nor care about.
To everyone complaining about the updates; it’s likely that after a week or so you will just get used to the new layout and won’t even think about it anymore.
Personally, I have no issues with the update. Took about 5 mins to understand the changes move on. I also welcome the true black theme. Will save a decent amount of battery on my phone.
There are always people getting annoyed by changes, doesn’t matter what the changes are. Sometimes I get the impression that humans just need something to be annoyed about.
Honestly it’s desktop that drives me insane though. I remember I used to have it hard linked to an old hack that used the old layout still, but they took that away a while ago now.
I wouldn’t really use that comparison. The discord update resembles the old one. But old reddit and new reddit are damn near unrecognizable to one another.
I was in this same boat until I realized I can't send images from mobile right now and looking around for others talking about it, there were complaints that images they sent were sent to the wrong people or chats. If true, that's insanely incompetent for a business or their size.
Oh shit I was just fighting this I didn’t even bother googling it tho cause I just thought discord was being jank for me Not it being a everyone problem
Knowing how their desktop app works on Linux (or more specifically doesn’t and requires you to mingle with it if you want any degree of Wayland awareness) it doesn’t surprise me their app remake (because it’s not just a redesign) is total garbage. I hope they get around to fixing the performance and bugs; but as things are right now I’m staying on Vendetta and refuse to update.
Great info. I can understand modifying YouTube to remove ads, PnP, & screen-off usage for an entertainment app, but I don’t know I would tolerate that for messaging actual humans. It’s a shame these efforts aren’t going into self-hostable, decentralized options. :(
The new update doesn’t care about people with accessibility concerns. My fiancé can’t use the official app at all because they changed the contrast to make it impossible to read no matter the theme. The best they can do is 3-5 minutes looking at the official app before they get a headache and have to stop using their phone.
This update is actively harming its users with no options to undo it.
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