We’re incredibly excited to release major new versions of Element across all three platforms, introducing Voice Messages as a first class citizen!
  • @joojmachine@lemmy.ml
    22•3 years ago

    being 100% honest here, matrix in general but element in special has grown SO MUCH in these last few months, I remember the first time I got in touch with it the whole experience felt so clunky I went back to signal, while today (specially with the develop message bubbles on element-web, can’t wait to see those on android as well) it all feels so much better, to the point I can confidently use it myself and recommend it to other people

  • @Gmork@lemmy.ml
    7•3 years ago

    Not a feature that I will make much use of, but I love seeing the app grow and hopefully pull in more people.

  • @OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
    6•3 years ago

    Has anyone tried the VoIP features? How’s the bandwidth? How is it with far away countries?

    Super excited to see it come to fruitation at all though :D. I’d love a decentralized VoIP future!

    • SeerLite
      2•3 years ago

      Is there a new VoIP implementation or are do you mean the existing one? If it’s the latter, it’s just a wrapper around a Jitsi meeting and it’s worked very well in my experience.

      • @kevincox@lemmy.ml
        1•3 years ago

        Element did and still does use Jitsi for >2 participants. 1:1 calls are and have always been WebRTC based not using Jitsi. IIUC this update just has improvements to the WebRTC based 1:1 calls.

        • SeerLite
          1•3 years ago

          Huh, really? I had a 1:1 call via Element on Android the other day and could swear it was all just Jitsi. Maybe it was just the UI that looked really similar.

          • @kevincox@lemmy.ml
            1•3 years ago

            It might depend if the room is considered a “DM” or a multi-user room. Were there any bots or similar in the room that may have made Element decide that it was actually a >2 person conference?

  • @applejack@lemmy.ml
    1•3 years ago

    I don’t like this feature at all. In fact, I actively dislike it when people send voice messages. However, I do understand they’re necessary to attract the mass market.

    I have a friend who insists on sending voice messages most of the time. It’s difficult because I may be working or outdoors or something, and therefore unable to listen to the message. It may be important, but I have no way of knowing. Whenever I get a voice message when out and about, I have 3 options:

    1. Assume it’s unimportant and leave it for later (not the nicest thing to assume for a friend).
    2. Assume it’s important and worry about it until I get a chance to listen to it.
    3. Assume it’s important and drop whatever I’m doing to listen to it (hope I brought headphones that I can fish out of my bag, or I have to hold my phone loudspeaker to my ear on the noisy subway like a douche).

    Whenever she sends something in text form, I breathe a sigh of relief as I’m generally able to read it quickly regardless of what I’m doing. Not only that, but I can search the text of it later on - maybe she was sending me a street address, imagine how crappy that would be in a voice message. I’d either have to remember it (not happening, could be days), awkwardly scrub through the recording later to find the address, or copy it out while listening to the message. Am I expected to preemptively keep Notes open to jot down essential info that may or may not be in the voice message? Smartphones only recently gained the ability to split screen apps, what the heck did people do a few years ago? Listen to the voice message, pause, switch to notes app, write info, switch to messaging app, unpause, repeat? That’s so unnecessarily crappy.

    Sending voice messages is disrespectful and lazy. You emburden the recipient and force them to do extra work because you can’t be bothered to type out what you want to say. Sending a voice message implies you value the recipient’s time less than your own, especially when the voice message is filled with pauses, "um"s and "err"s, or even the dreaded “…hold on, I need to think about it, I’ll send another voice note in a few secs” that often comes after an incoherent ramble. If nothing else, using text messages forces us to collect our thoughts up front and express them clearly. It’s the polite thing to do; people are taking time out of their day to read our messages, the least we can do is make it easy for them.

    Rant over. Nice work on the new feature.