1158631 - Remove "X has stopped typing" notifications

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Instantbird Graveyard :: Conversation, defect)

Description

[aleth [:aleth]]

Do we really need this typing state?

Isn't it enough to display "X is typing" while X is typing, and to remove the notification when X stops?

Maybe I'm simply not getting the use case for this.

If we do keep it, imho "X has stopped typing" shouldn't remain on-screen essentially forever.

Comment 1

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

Which problem are you concerned about with the current behavior?

The use case is when you are waiting in front of your screen because your contact is typing to you. It's nice to know that the contact is no longer typing (but hasn't cleared the message he was typing either), so that you don't expect a message/an answer to arrive 'any time soon'.

Comment 2

[aleth [:aleth]]

(In reply to Florian Quèze [:florian] [:flo] from comment #1)
> Which problem are you concerned about with the current behavior?

* Visual noise (but I may be biased, I'm not a huge fan of typing notifications anyway ;)

* Coming back to a tab which says "X has stopped typing" when I can't tell if that was 30 seconds or 30 minutes ago seems useless.

> The use case is when you are waiting in front of your screen because your
> contact is typing to you. It's nice to know that the contact is no longer
> typing (but hasn't cleared the message he was typing either), so that you
> don't expect a message/an answer to arrive 'any time soon'.

Thanks. That does suggest a timeout on the stopped-typing state may be the right way to improve this.

Comment 3

[aleth [:aleth]]

(In reply to aleth [:aleth] from comment #2)
> > The use case is when you are waiting in front of your screen because your
> > contact is typing to you. It's nice to know that the contact is no longer
> > typing (but hasn't cleared the message he was typing either), so that you
> > don't expect a message/an answer to arrive 'any time soon'.

I'm still a little puzzled by this. If the user cleared the message, "X is typing" simply disappears. If the user keeps the message sitting in the input box, you'll get "X stopped typing", and X may or may not send it later. In both cases you don't expect an incoming message, so why the distinction?

Comment 4

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

(In reply to aleth [:aleth] from comment #3)

> I'm still a little puzzled by this. If the user cleared the message, "X is
> typing" simply disappears. If the user keeps the message sitting in the
> input box, you'll get "X stopped typing", and X may or may not send it
> later. In both cases you don't expect an incoming message, so why the
> distinction?

Well... that's a difficult question ;).

Most typing implementations somehow have bugs or low reliability. In some conversations (I think that's facebook chat?) you would for example see the typing indicator for a few seconds, then it would stop, even if your contact is still typing. And then you'll receive a message, without the typing indicator having reappeared before the message was actually sent. So as a user, after seeing this happen a couple times, you get used to this flakiness, and still expect to receive a message when the typing indicator has just disappeared.

I'm still not sure what problem actually concerns you here.

I know the "stopped typing" indicator had a few bugs in the past. I don't remember if we have fixed them or not.
- it stayed forever if your account got disconnected and your contact cleared its input box while you were offline.
- On XMPP, it stayed forever if the resource that was typing and had stopped typing went offline without clearing the input box on the other side first (eg. if your contact's network connection dropped).

Comment 5

[Sylvestre Ledru [:Sylvestre]]

On the behalf of Florian:
Closing bugs related to the Instantbird UI as WONTFIX, as the development of the standalone chat client Instantbird has stopped. Instantbird users are encouraged to migrate to Thunderbird. The user interface of instant messaging in Thunderbird will feel familiar, as the Thunderbird IM support started as a fork of Instantbird.