New Design Proposal

[qalandarov]

Hello, I want to propose a new design for Bitchat that's similar to other existing chat apps.

We could have public chats like Bluetooth and Location (maybe even "World"?) at the top and DMs / private chats below them.

Listing all the history will help users find their past chats easily which currently get lost when switching "rooms"

[amertahseen]

I like it more the way it is, its unique

[SkinnnyJay]

I enjoy the Cyberpunk IRC Vibes it gives; it brings me back to my basement, hacking the day away...

[SkinnnyJay]

PS, can we meet in the middle, a hybrid of this, while keeping the roots of the terminal look?

[qalandarov]

I think we could have different "themes", but I was trying to highlight one of the biggest usability issues I see with the current design which is disappearing DMs.

[SkinnnyJay]

Was that a feature that was expected of the app? Disappearing DMs sounds like a good idea if they disappear for the sake of peace of mind. Similar to how Signal treats messages, this approach could be a middle ground, offering an option for both parties to make it a persistent chat versus one-time DMs.

Tinfoil hat question: Is any DM encrypted and could not be read if the device were compromised?

[qalandarov]

No, I didn't mean the messages would disappear, but you just won't be able to find the DM until you get a new message from the other party, which could actually give a false impression that there's no DM, but in fact the messages are still there.
Just try with 2 devices chatting to each other from any "location" room (e.g. block/city/country...) then switch one of the devices to another "location" and you'll notice that the previous DM is not listed on the sidebar, but it's still on the device - you'll notice that when you message from the other device

[SkinnnyJay]

Where are these Avatar images going to be served from/stored?

[qalandarov]

we could introduce a similar feature like iOS where it asks users whether they want to share their profile picture with the other person and it could be sent as a peer-to-peer file transfer

[SkinnnyJay]

Makes sense. Is this image stored on my device in the future or during the length of the DM's life cycle?

[qalandarov]

During the length of the DM's life cycle and maybe have a 30-day cache expiration if it's never used again (in case if you see the chat from the same person in some group chats - the expiration will be updated) - or something like that