Suggestions for new side bar

[Rohit3523]

So recent update introduced another side bar in the web version and improved the existing sidebar but i noticed few things that team can consider as an improvement

Issues

• Both sidebars are now covering 1/3rd of the overall screen (maybe more on the smaller screen)
• Favorite position on the left sidebar was very useful and we can access the favorite dm and channels without clicking on anything and see message from important person immediately but now we have to click on category
• To open a channel we have to click 2 times, 1st click on the side bar then click the same channel on newly introduced sidebar
• I am not sure but why we need the newside bar direct message or channels, it's good for teams but not for direct message as we can see the same information on the left side ;-;

The way you can improve it

• Have an option to disable the new sidebar
• Let us resize the sidebar so we can adjust the width
• Remove the newside from Direct Messages and single channel

[reetp]

Agree there is a lot to dislike about the new "minimalist" junk when we have ever increasing screen sizes, and then they splatter huge wide panels we don't need with no resize options.

Personally I've tried the new nav, and promptly turned it back off.

Can't find anything now, and there's way too far between right & left icons (why split them, and minimise them, with my screen size? Ridiculous.)

Glad I am not the only one to voice dissent.

Sometimes designers just try too hard.

Also see:

#33561

[reetp]

Link

RocketChat/feature-requests#961

[Rohit3523]

To open a channel we have to click 2 times, 1st click on the side bar then click the same channel on newly introduced sidebar

They fixed this one

[reetp]

Still got the ridiculous second column which you cannot disable. As naff an idea as I have ever seen.

Over engineered convoluted mess.

I do hope this has been tested on a LOT of clients and not just sprung on them.

I have no idea of the supposed rational behind it but it takes me far longer to do the same things I used to do.

The likelihood is it will be sold as a great idea you all want but they are so invested in it they won't turn back, no matter how many howls there are.

[engelgabriel]

@reetp you can disable it in the Feature Preview panel.

[Rohit3523]

Finally a way to disable it, btw is this a recent addition?

[reetp]

@reetp you can disable it in the Feature Preview panel.

For now - hence testing it. Until we can't.

I can see the 'Teams second column' feature switch has now been removed on open (still on my older versions) and you are then forced to two columns as per my screenshot above.

What's the release schedule for it to be permanent?

[reetp]

Finally a way to disable it, btw is this a recent addition?

The feature UI has been there since at least 6.12.x that I know of. See my original bug linked above.

It is still switchable in your profile, but I imagine it's going to be forced on an unsuspecting public quite soon, with no opt out.

[engelgabriel]

@reetp Feature Preview is a lab for experiments and feedback. Some experiments will be VERY different when or if they ever become the default behaviour. This second sidebar is the very early phase of an experiment to create UX space for new features that you have no visibility yet. So please uphold judgment until we release more mature version of this experiment.

[reetp]

I've seen this vaguely develop in the year since at least 6.12 - released Sep 2024. So a year of dev at least. Hardly new.

It has changed a bit, but really just refinements on the original idea, and the fundamentals as per my comments on the above issue at that time have not significantly changed.

(The biggest recent change appears to be the removal of the ability to disable the horrendous second column altogether as per open right now, as above)

In any event, if it's a "preview for feedback", that's what I'm giving you.

The team may not like it, but feedback it is, and whilst the layout remains as is, and as deeply flawed, I will continue to feed back that in it's current form it is highly disruptive to workflow.

All I have seen is continued dev work, and nothing to suggest anyone is listening or that anything will be changed.

I've also see no justification or strategy for the changes made. Presumably there is some rational? Enlighten people.

Last, as it is a "preview" and only for feedback, not production, I look forward to confirmation there are no releases scheduled to have it as default in any v7 or v8 versions. Milton can presumably confirm this?

Thanks.

[engelgabriel]

You do have the ability to disable the second column altogether on open right now as I explained above, and there are no releases scheduled to have it as default.

[Gummikavalier]

I appreciate the filtering efforts, but currently also that this extra bar should remain optional (in self-hosted RC at least).

It works ok when you run RC in fullscreen or wide screen window. The problem is that most of us don't.

Even when RC is the most used tool and we like to hang in RC and browser, they are support to our work, not the focus of our work. So we multitask between RC and our main work.

Mostly people prefer to keep at least two separate windows open on their screens at the same time; One for whatever task you are doing yourself, and RC or email or video meeting for collaboration purposes in the other.

Today single wide display setups are most common in offices. Users basically divide the screenspace from the middle, which then means that RC window remains in vertical letter and not in landscape orientation.

Also considering focus for eyes and mind, in RC itself it should always remain in the channel and thread spaces where you read and write. Not in how to find your way there, even if it is important too, of course. It just should not steal from the previous.

For us vertical window space users if it was possible to put this second bar somehow into the channel bar space directly, it would be more preferable than having two bars stealing space and focus from the most important views.
Perhaps remove the channel bar completely, and incorporate this new filtering bar along with Favourites and Unread directly in its place. (And keep that too as optional for a long time.)

Also for the users ability to create custom filters with their preferred channel sets.

---

About the regular channel bar and its problems, not directly related to the space issue:

After several years of use, I have over 400 direct channels and over 100 regular channels in the channel list. There is no point in scrolling through this amount of channels at all anymore. The list is just too big to be useful.

So my main tools for finding channels and people of importance and their presence state are Unread, Favourites and Search. For the other parts the channel list has become obsolete to me.

For the newcomers it is a bit different thing in the first weeks of their RC usage; They need to be able to find default channels of the organization easily. So maybe also have a filter that shows all the default channels in the list.

[Gummikavalier]

One cannot see this stuff properly in curated test environments with low amount of channels and messages and users.

So I just installed 7.10.0 into production, and switched on the filters and doublebar UX for myself. It made my brain and eyes hurt; The view has far too much going on!

Dual bar might be okay for users with lots of vertical screen estate in their window arrangement. But what is not ok, are those small oneliner messages in the second bar that are crammed into the same space under the channel name.
(Edit: And technically it even has a bug that it does not show messages from any threads, not even the followed ones, making the feature just plain noise and no value currently.)

In the old UX this message preview was possible too if you choose Extended layout size. But no-one has used this feature (and extended mode in general) since in a company with lots of parallel projects and shared workforce, you get 100+ channels into the list in no-time.

If dual bar stays, at minimum it should have an option to change the second bar channel list size from extended to condensed. Or just option to get rid of message previews in them.

To end with positive note, I really love what you did with the search bar earlier, incorporating recently accessed channels button directly into the search. Very elegant!