The irony is that I suspect we have fixed it - eg Element X and Matrix 2.0 is a massive step change forwards; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHyHO3xPfQU etc.
But I can see why bad experiences in the past would stick.
But I can see why bad experiences in the past would stick.
It's still so clunky and so difficult to get off the ground. To start, E2E key verification just wouldn't work on Element X; she had to install Element, verify my key there, and go back to Element X.
That would be easy to overlook if the UI felt responsive and snappy, but it doesn't. It feels far from native. I don't know if it's Electron under the hood--I haven't checked--but it sure feels like it. It feels unresponsive in the same way as a stereotypical bank app, like walking through Jello. Maybe it's a protocol issue; I'm not sure.
I've got a nice, powerful homeserver running, waiting for love, but it will continue waiting until such time as there's a responsive client. Every month or two, I upgrade it and give it another shot, but I always end up back on a mix of Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, and Discord. None of my work or social circles are willing to make the switch when it feels so slow.
If I'm using a mobile app, chances are I'm on-the-go. I probably have a slow, high-latency, or otherwise unreliable connection. It's possible it comes down to protocol differences that hinder UI responsiveness.
Edit: As a test, I just sent a message from my phone while on a cell connection with good service. Hitting the send button felt unresponsive: it took a bit for the message to appear in the chat history (maybe 100-200ms). That's on a stable 300 Mbps connection mere miles from my homeserver.
For contrast, Telegram doesn't wait to clear my text area. I can queue further messages to send even if my first hasn't gone through. Same for Slack and Discord.
The first msg does take a little longer to clear the composer, but it’s barely noticeable. And as the recording shows, it queues up msgs fine if the first hasn’t gone through.
How does this compare with what you’re seeing?
If I search for Element on app stores I still get the old app first (with millions of installs, vs. tens of thousands with Element X), and https://matrix.org/try-matrix also still points people to the old app. So I'm confused what "past" you're talking about :)
Similar situation with Dendrite BTW, it's been in beta forever, and the only private Matrix community I ever was a part of ditched it because Synapse was too much of a resource hog, and there's no clear migration path.
It doesn’t have threads or spaces yet; threads are underway currently; spaces will follow.
Dendrite on the other hand has been relegated to an experimental server; we didn’t have bandwidth to do both Synapse and Dendrite so focused on improving Synapse instead, which has steadily become less of a resource hog. Guess we should provide dendrite->synapse migration paths.
And surprised to hear Dendrite is now just experimental and not the future anymore. The README and FAQ on GitHub give no indication of that at all, maybe start there?
That looks to be a snafu. It’s featured on https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/ for instance.
> And surprised to hear Dendrite is now just experimental and not the future anymore. The README and FAQ on GitHub give no indication of that at all, maybe start there?
Yup, the readme needs to be updated and that’s with me.
Element is the only piece of software where logging in and out (I don't want to be permanently logged in) proved to be too much of a challenge - I was regularly losing encryption keys on different devices.
If you are ever at a point where you have no active sessions (aka “devices”) then other clients will not be able to send you the keys to decrypt their messages.
This is one of the many ways to get “unable to decrypt” errors in Matrix.