Differentiate own messages from others in chat history

[fraenki]

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Feature request

Which Nextcloud Version are you currently using: 31.0.0

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Currently the messages of all chat participants look exactly the same (text, color, background). This makes it somewhat hard to distinguish own messages from replies.

Describe the solution you'd like
In the chat history, own messages should be distinguishable from messages sent by other chat participants. This could be achieved through differences in color or contrast.

Additionally, text alignment could serve as a distinguishing feature. Own messages could be right-aligned, while messages from other chat participants could be left-aligned.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Currently the avatar/name is the most obvious difference. I could look at the avatar or read the name, but this takes notable longer and I'd prefer a comfy solution to the problem. 😊

Additional context
Many other messengers have already implemented similar features:

Skype:

WhatsApp:

We could try to implement this feature, but we would need some guidance on what to consider to ensure it gets accepted.

[nickvergessen]

Duplicate of #902

[nickvergessen]

We could try to implement this feature, but we would need some guidance on what to consider to ensure it gets accepted.

Well by now our comparison tools are MS Teams, Slack and other video call / meeting software and less messenger apps that spilled from mobile into the desktop. And there most apps don't seperate sides by author, so that is our current design decision.

We discussed it end of last year and don't see this coming soon, although we see it being requested every now and then.

As to what would need to be considered:

• Future maintainability of the affected frontend components (biggest factor)
• Support of existing features
  • Status icons: read marker and silent send
  • Message time
  • Reactions
• Right-To-Left languages
• Narrow screens/layouts (mobile or in the sidebar during a call)
• Support for reference widgets (posting a link and inline editing a document then, etc.)

[fraenki]

We discussed it end of last year and don't see this coming soon, although we see it being requested every now and then.

So if we would submit a PR, would this be even considered or immediately closed?

I'm asking because a frontend developer quickly hacked something together because it annoyed him. This was a minimalistic approach, nothing fancy, so this question is not all theory. :)

[nickvergessen]

We will have a look again, but can't really give a garantee on timeline or acceptance as it's non trivial to know how it compiles against the list provided above.

[fraenki]

Well by now our comparison tools are MS Teams, Slack and other video call / meeting software

I just took a look at MS Teams and it looks exactly like the proposal in this FR: different colors and right/left alignment. See this video.