Re:Jami – FOSS, Distributed Instant Messenger
by jessedhillon on Saturday June 29, 2019 @04:58PM
(#20314735)
I'm just replying to the demo animation showing on the front page:
- the user gets a notification from Bárbara, and taps it, then
- the tap triggers Jami to open to the list of all contacts, presented in some order that apparently is not by recency of communication, because
- the user scrolls through the list down to Bárbara, who is below the fold, and whose list entry shows no obvious indication of unread messages
- the user taps Bárbara's entry and goes to the chat pane
- then, the user clicks the phone button to call Bárbara, which is beside a camera icon
- yet the next screen looks like a video call
My take: a person would have to value privacy and openness of source very highly to put up with this unobvious UI. It doesn't seem like it should be necessary to have to trade-off security guarantees for good design in theory, but in practice it frequently seems like that's the choice given.
- the user gets a notification from Bárbara, and taps it, then
- the tap triggers Jami to open to the list of all contacts, presented in some order that apparently is not by recency of communication, because
- the user scrolls through the list down to Bárbara, who is below the fold, and whose list entry shows no obvious indication of unread messages
- the user taps Bárbara's entry and goes to the chat pane
- then, the user clicks the phone button to call Bárbara, which is beside a camera icon
- yet the next screen looks like a video call
My take: a person would have to value privacy and openness of source very highly to put up with this unobvious UI. It doesn't seem like it should be necessary to have to trade-off security guarantees for good design in theory, but in practice it frequently seems like that's the choice given.