The NeoChat is happy to announce the 3 major version of NeoChat. This release is the product of more than 3 months worth of work.
Bubbles everywhere 🗨️
The first thing you will see then opening NeoChat 1.2 is that we are now using message bubbles.
We also replaced the not so great green line used as read marker with a better looking separator.
Advanced Chatbar
The text input component was completely redesigned.
It’s also now possible to get autocompletion of commands:
Speaking of commands, it’s now possible to send customized reactions
when replying to a message with /react I love NeoChat.
There was also improvements in the keyboard shortcuts. It’s now possible to use ⬆️ to jump in edit mode for the last message.
Another way to edit the last message is to use the s/text/replacement
syntax inspired by sed. It’s not enabled by default but you can find
it in the settings.
Matrix URI support
NeoChat now support matrix uris and when opening matrix: link
in your browser you will then be proposed to open it with NeoChat.
As a side effect, supporting Matrix URIs helped us unify how we handle
opening and joining rooms accross our codebase.
Inline reply
We added inline replies support in our notification. So it’s now possible to reply to messages directly from the notification.
Fancy effects
Miss the fancy fireworks or snow effects from Element? We too. So Alexey Andreyev added them in NeoChat.
Mobile Improvements
On mobile the context menu are implemented as bottom drawer.
Account switcher
NeoChat supports multiple accounts since day one but it was not really practical to switch between accounts. We now implemented an account switcher, available at the bottom of the room list.
Other
Aside from the many new big features this release brings, NeoChat 1.2 contains a lot of bugfixes and small usability improvements. We closed aproximately 100 issues (bugs and feature request) and this doesn’t count the huge number of bugs fixed without an corresponding issues. Some hightlight are:
- Scrolling on mobile now is smoother. It still not perfect but we are working on making it better.
- Joining a room now makes it appears in the room list without having to restart NeoChat and the room will be automatically opened
- Show the location of hyperlinked text on hover.
- Add an indicator for lack of internet connectivity
- NeoChat doesn’t hang anymore when loading a room
- Disable the chatbox if we’re not allowed to send messages