Users nathank and jimkleiber suggest implementing a swipe feature to initiate replies in Discourse chat on mobile, making it easier to respond to specific posts. This would replace the current long-press method, which they find cumbersome. jimkleiber also expresses interest in creating a theme component for this feature but is hesitant due to past experiences with chat themes breaking after updates, and wonders if chat is now stable enough for custom themes and components.
In many messaging / chat apps, swiping left (sometimes right) initiates a reply to the chat post that is swiped. Could we do that too? It is a nice quick way to reply to a specific post.
The current way to do this requires a long press and then a move of your finger to the bottom right and tap. While not too bad really, I believe that this is a tad too cumbersome for frequent action.
P.S.
I thought that swiping right closes chat as per:
but it doesn’t - that is a trick in Chrome on mobile (does the browser back button function)
I’d really love this. I can’t speak for my users but for me, I’m trying to find the friction I feel when using Discourse chat on mobile as compared to WhatsApp or Telegram and I think one of the main sticking points is the inability to swipe to reply. Something about longpress seems 1) hidden and 2) maybe antiquated.
I’ve thought about trying to implement a theme component that would do it but also have gained some hesitance to create themes related to chat as I created one to make the layout look more like WhatsApp and the theme kept breaking with new updates.
Is chat stable enough now to start creating more themes/components?