Make user-pills red in replies to you, and remove red from reply text

[kenwuuu]

Signed-off-by: Ken Wu kenqiwu@gmail.com

Issues Addressed

Ugly red text in replies to your messages. Delete that, make your user pill red instead to indicate a reply to your message.

Closes: element-hq/element-meta#744

Changes

• Use Pill.tsx instead of MemberAvatar and SenderProfile
• Disable red text highlighting for any message that is a reply to one of your messages. This removes highlighting if there is a keyword mention in the reply but here are my arguments for why this is fine:
  1. Keyword highlights function firstly as a method of drawing the user's attention to a message that is important to them. A visual indicator (reply highlight and red user pill) still exists telling users that the message is important to them, covering this function entirely.
  2. Secondly, keywords are a filter to allow for important notifications to pass through, removing red text does not affect that functionality.

How to test

Have someone reply to you

Screenshot of change

Checklist

• Tests written for new code (and old code if feasible)
• Linter and other CI checks pass
• Sign-off given on the changes (see CONTRIBUTING.md)

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[germain-gg]

Hi @kenwuuu ,

Thank you for your contribution, at this stage it is unlikely we will integrate the proposed changes. The red reply text is a mechanic that quite a few users rely on today. And moving away from that would probably require an alternative way to convey the same meaning.

I'd recommend you look at issues labelled with Help Wanted or good first issue if you're interested in contributing to Element Web.

[kenwuuu]

Hey @germain-gg, that's very insightful. I think we should poll users and see how many enjoy the red text when we already have the yellow background and reply blurb that help visually alert users to replies. How can we go about that? If you point me in the right direction, I can get it going.

[kenwuuu]

In fact, as an SDK, we shouldn't be dictating the design of UI more than we need to and I'd argue that changing the color of text based off message type or context should be something left to clients to decide. I'm interested to hear any thoughts on this

[t3chguy]

@kenwuuu looks like you haven't read the README... https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk#matrix-react-sdk:~:text=As%20of%20Aug%202018%2C%20the%20only%20skin%20that%20exists%20is%20vector%2Dim/element%2Dweb%3B%20it%20and%20matrix%2Dorg/matrix%2Dreact%2Dsdk%20should%20effectively%20be%20considered%20as%20a%20single%20project%20(for%20instance%2C%20matrix%2Dreact%2Dsdk%20bugs%20are%20currently%20filed%20against%20vector%2Dim/element%2Dweb%20rather%20than%20this%20project).