Need UI to improve discoverability of bridged users

[matrixbot]

Created by @ matthew:matrix.org.

[ara4n]

I suggest we expand RoomDirectory somehow to make this clear. suggestions welcome. @AmandineLP? The idea is to somehow spell out how to join #freenode_#foo:matrix.org style channels without having to magically know that #freenode_... works.

[AmandineLP]

If you're ready to go for a fully user-friendly UI I'd suggest a "Join an IRC channel" button, which would:

• either reveal a field at the top of the directory page where people wan enter/select the network name which prepopulates a text in front of the field where they can enter the channel name.
• or displays 2 fields (maybe in a popup): network name & room name, press ok ==> channel is accessed.

Second option is probably the nicest

[ara4n]

Turning this into the official issue to track the design process for fixing this.

Suggestion is that on the new 'start direct chat' and 'join/create room' UI that comes out of element-hq/element-web#1882, we give the user the ability to distinguish identifying 'remote' users and rooms they might want to either talk to or join.

In the simplest case, this could be a dropdown on the respective 'start direct chat' and 'join/create room' UIs to identify the network you are trying to locate the user or room on: e.g. "IRC (Freenode)", "Email", "Slack (ribot)", "Slack (matrix)", "Matrix", "XMPP", etc. There would be the option to search all visible networks. Inviting someone by email then just becomes a type of identifying someone.

Similar UI could also be useful when inviting users into existing rooms.

[ara4n]

Before I forget - in discussing this last week with @antikewl, the conclusions were:

• Don't add a new dropdown for 'start DM' invites
• Instead, have a button to link to Scalar to manage the bridges available for locating users
• ...and include in the autocomplete options, users on the various networks. E.g. typing "trevor ribot" would offer autocomplete suggestion of @ trevor on ribot.slack.com. If the remote directory can be spidered, then it'd include spider results too.

We don't have a conclusion on how to handle remote bridged rooms when trying to join a room via directory.

[ara4n]

We don't have a contact lookup API yet that will support this autocomplete, so for now let's implement it without bridged lookup.

[antikewl]

For reference.

https://zpl.io/1iXBEQ

https://zpl.io/1iXBEQ

[ara4n]

keeping this open to track the bridged-aware aspects of it.

[ara4n]

see element-hq/element-web#2934

[lampholder]

Experimenting linking this riot-web issue with a meta-issue to track the feature across web, ios and android - element-hq/riot-meta/issues/1

[grahamperrin]

Since pills have been introduced, maybe review this issue …

[t3chguy]

Pills don't really help you to see people that are connected via a bridge. Flair from groups maybe