Should Chat really resume by default?

[CarolineM]

Last night I was chatting with people.
Today I turn on the computer and click chat and it restarts the session. It was someone else's session. They aren't online today.

This is confusing. The message I get about it being offline is confusing. I can't invite anyone to it because its not my chat.

To be even more confusing the chat icon in the circle is my friends color, but the chat icon in my frame is my color. It is also showing up in the neighborhood as my color.

[eben]

OK, we clearly need to fix all the color bugs. This is a really important notion that needs to be wholly consistent throughout the UI or its just meaningless. It's upsetting to hear that it's still so broken.

Regarding the higher level question, I'm unsure. I think the system could get more confusing if we allowed activities to specify what kind of behavior they want, since the user won't know what to expect from any given activity. If it poses a problem, and "starting new" is too hard to do with the new approach, as I've always feared it might be, then we may have to resort to introducing an extra step into the launch.

First you would select an activity, and then you would select to start new or resume the most recent. It wouldn't be a terrible system, but it adds clicks to the process. That can be OK if the clicks improve the experience. When you really think about it, there are other things we could ask up front too. Activities that support sharing, for instance, could offer to share at time of launch, preventing the need to switch to the activity toolbar to activate this purportedly central feature of Sugar. I don't want to open Pandora's box here and make launching any activity feel like filling out a survey, but perhaps we could actually streamline the overall experience by requiring a couple up-front steps.

This also goes hand in hand with my previous response about the chat dialog in #402, which suggested that resumed activities that have already been shared in the past could offer to re-share with those participants at launch, automatically sending them invitations.

What do other people think? We've been avoiding dialogs in general, but this isn't the "bad kind", since it's presenting the user with meaningful choices which change based on context, rather than an "Are you sure?" ("Yes I'm sure, just do it!") type affair.

[CarolineM]

If its someone else's chat. And they are off line. Should I really be resuming? Should I ever resume by default someone else's activity?

I do think resume or start new should be something the activity should decide.

[eben]

But it's not really "someone else's" chat. It was a chat between you and them, regardless of who started it. If they are offline, then perhaps the alert should indicate that bit of info instead of suggesting to share it. That would be much more useful in context.

Resuming simply means to go back into the last open instance of that activity. I strongly disagree that we should allow the behavior to vary based on who started the activity, or on the activity itself. I think this adds a number of variables to the equation which won't be obvious. The current model is nice and simple, so we just need to figure out in what cases the current model isn't effective, and find a solution that takes those cases into account.

It seems that it's a user preference whether they want to create something new or resume a previous activity instance, and perhaps the ability to do one or the other is too hidden in the current design.

[FGrose]

The alternate color is a very good hint that one would be resuming shared Activity created by another user. I like this if I want to resume a shared painting or Write document.

Having an <Alt> click accelerator for the 'Start new' would shorten the path to that work flow.

Allowing the Activity developers (and their responsive users) choose the default behavior would enable the evolution of this feature to proceed more easily, and the gray icon would indicate the behavior, if the default were to Start new.

More discussion needed...

[wadeb]

In resume by default, there is the implicit assumption that "what you did most recently" is always what you want to do again, e.g. it is given greater weight than "starting something new" or "resuming something older".

For some activities, weighting in favor "what you did most recently" is appropriate. But the current weight as expressed by the UI is too extreme, given the need to Alt+Click or use a context menu.

Ultimately the idea of resuming a Chat is important. Modern chat programs like Skype restore your chat history in order to reestablish context when you open a contact.

When Chat is resumed, it should display the saved chat history and attempt to reconnect the session with the participants who were involved before.

[alsroot]

Replying to CarolineM:

Last night I was chatting with people.
Today I turn on the computer and click chat and it restarts the session. It was someone else's session. They aren't online today.

This is confusing. The message I get about it being offline is confusing.

its fixed by #402's patch

I can't invite anyone to it because its not my chat.

could you recheck it -- in the last sucrose(0.84.1) I can invite others to "not my chat" session.

[satellit]

there should be a way to open the chat session in write directly from the journal with out resuming
an old shared instance.
Alternativly, be able to click on the picture in journal and make it go full screen so the session can be read; it is too small to read.

[tomeu]

Sounds like anything we could do here is too invasive for 0.86

[CarolineM]

This is marked as needs info. Who does it need info from?

[garycmartin]

Replying to CarolineM:

This is marked as needs info. Who does it need info from?

I'd say it needs some significant design discussion work for a future release cycle.