A feature suggestion has been made to make emoji suggestions appear continuously while typing, similar to some messaging apps. P16 shared examples of how this feature works on other platforms and demonstrated a prototype on their local setup. The idea is to show emoji suggestions without the need to start with a colon, allowing users to choose an emoji while typing.
However, not everyone is in favor of this feature. davemaxwell thinks it could be distracting and prefers the current method of typing a colon to access emojis. sam and Mittineague also expressed concerns about the potential distraction and resource usage.
P16 suggested a compromise, showing emojis only after a minimum of three keys have been pressed. However, sam still thinks this would be distracting and hurt composing text.
The general consensus seems to be that this feature could be a nice plugin, but it’s not suitable as a default feature. codinghorror and marcospreviato agree that it’s better as a plugin, allowing users to choose whether to use it or not.
Some messaging apps have a feature where emojis pop up continuously (based on the keystrokes) between the keyboard and the chat screen. For example, when you type the word coffee on Line, you have a small popup containing emojis with the ‘coffee’ keyword:
Letting the user choose while typing might be a better method in my opinion - the user can continue writing as before or he can choose to change a word to an emoji.
If the community and devs like this feature, I can submit a PR.
I’d prefer to keep this as it is, or a plugin at best. That has the potential to be very distracting - there are probably a dozen of the triggers which I use on a regular basis in conversation.
When stickers show up seamlessly without having to type a colon, I think we will have more emojis used in a post, especially if you have additional custom emojis on the forum.
Depends on how much you like emojis. I think they’re fine and they have their place, but making them more prevelant can get annoying quickly. There’s a reason they’re not instantly available.
If I want to see , the I’ll type : confused :. But I don’t want to see the emoji just because I type the word . And having the popup coming up continuously would get very distracting very quickly.
There are a reason there are so many autocorrect memes out there. Having something guess what I want to type usually doesn’t end well.
But some people might really like it - which is why I suggested the plugin approach instead. Have it if people WANT to use it, but don’t force people to use something.
I have actually started using emojis a lot more because of this feature along with many of my friends, which is why I proposed this feature. Line does this for example, and is very popular for their stickers, which you can use in this way.
I guess it has a different appeal to a younger demographic.
@sam@Mittineague What do you think of showing emojis once a minimum of three keys have been pressed, similar to search queries? For example, Smi.. would show up the smiley emojis but just typing S.. or Sm.. would not.
, the I’ll type : confused :. But I don’t want to see the emoji just because I type the word . And having the popup coming up continuously would get very distracting very quickly.
of emojis. This would get massively distracting.
