Comment by Arathorn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Arathorn | Hacker News Reader

There's a bunch of outdated info in here, unfortunately:

> Does not have an admin panel

The admin panel is at https://github.com/element-hq/element-admin (but it's relatively new, so many folks haven't noticed it exists)

> No image captions > > This is silly, but while (official?) bridges support image captions, official Element app does not.

Element Web & X support captions. (Element Web doesn't currently support authoring them, but can display them - obviuosly this is on the todo list though).

Element Classic has basically not been touched in 2.5 years, unfortunately, and so yes - doesn't support them. But at this point the old app is just not being developed; we don't have bandwidth to do both.

> Slow notifications

This sounds like it might be overloaded server problems ftr.

> Element X is Slower > Somehow, it is slower. Clicking on a conversation takes 0.5-1.0 seconds to load it, compared to almost instant load on Classic.

This was an Android specific bug which was fixed a few weeks ago; EXA should now be instant as it should be, at least on nightlies: it was stuff surrounding https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-rust-sdk/pull/5841 and https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-rust-sdk/pull/5854. Unsure if the fix has made it into a build yet.

EDIT: the fix shipped in stable Element X Android a few weeks ago.

> Conversations are sorted by... who knows. It is not recent nor alphabetical.

It should be by recency.

> Onboarding is bad

Sorry, but you have to run an auth server (matrix-authentication-service) if you want Element X to work.

EDIT: if i've got any of the above wrong please just say, rather than downvote :D

> The admin panel is at https://github.com/element-hq/element-admin

I think author uses regular synapse install and there is no apt package for element-admin, manual build would be required with no update process.

> Element Web & X support captions - i think this is honestly the worst of both worlds

if app_old has features A,B,C,D and app_new has A,C,D,E it frustrates both groups of users. Which app are you actually supposed to use? Having feature parity with the old app is essential before moving on with newer features. And I am still waiting for that to tell people to switch.

You claim:

> There's a bunch of outdated info in here

Then link to a 3 week old issue and a repo that didn't meaningfully exist until two months ago? Wow.

If you consider that to be outdated, then that reinforces the OP's point about Matrix being difficult to host.

> at this point the old app is just not being developed; we don't have bandwidth to do both.

You're wording that as if it's a good excuse for providing a poor user experience. It's not.

> > Onboarding is bad

> Sorry, but you have to run an auth server (matrix-authentication-service) if you want Element X to work.

This is a bit outrageous IMO. Actually breaking and deprecating the classic auth and requiring a new server component to keep the only actively supported client (which still can't properly manage keys or sessions on its own, like classic Element can, even as non-verified sessions are being disabled) is a bit rich.

> if i've got any of the above wrong please just say, rather than downvote :D

Maybe it's not necessarily that any of those are wrong per se as that they just don't address several other important issues raised in the article, such as (copied from headings in the article):

* Needs constant cleanup

* Database grows out of control

* Element X is now recommended as the new and better client. It is not.

* Calls are not backward compatible

Also saying the info is "outdated" because a bug was fixed two weeks ago (and you're not even sure if it made it into a built yet!) seems pretty disingenuous. More generally, I think the timeline on which info becomes "outdated" is maybe different for you than for actual users. Actual users expect to install it and have everything work. If there are major bugs, protocol changes, and app-throwaway-and-rewrites happening on a timescale of 2-3 years, that's still too fast for most people to consider their info outdated. If everything were going swimmingly with none of these problems for like 5 years, then yeah, okay, but that's not the situation.

god if there was a comprehensive chat protocol without a loser ceo i'd move to it tomorrow. matrix org staff don't know how to interact with other human beings.

well, that whole post convinced me to not even try any of this lol. gl with community tho.

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