Maximizing and unmaximizing a pinned widget should keep it pinned

[HarHarLinks]

Steps to reproduce

1. pin widget
2. maximize widget
3. unmaximize

Outcome

What did you expect?

widget is pinned

What happened instead?

widget is not pinned

Operating system

arch

Application version

Element Nightly version: 2022011101 Olm version: 3.2.8

How did you install the app?

aur/element-desktop-nightly-bin

Homeserver

No response

Will you send logs?

No

[jryans]

Thanks for the feedback. 🙂 It was an explicit choice during the design process to keep these separate, as in "pinned" and "maximised" are two separate "modes": a widget can only be in one or other (but not both), as that seemed like a simpler mental model.

Anyway, we did wonder if some might prefer it the way you are describing, so we'll need to collect more feedback like this first.

[HarHarLinks]

In that case let me explain my idea of workflow with it:

You are organizing or discussing something in a group, and you're keeping definite results in a widget which is pinned to always be visible, yet chat is mostly important. The widget might be an etherpad or doodle.com for example. While it's viewable when pinned, you might want to really get into it at one point, so you maximize. Then you're done, and it should go back to pinned.

I think about it similarly to a maximize button on a window on my computer screen. The unmaximize button feels more like exiting full screen or unmaximizing (green). In both cases the window stays visible. Traditionally there are also the minimize to taskbar button (red), and close X button (blue). Currently element's unmaximize feels more like "minimize to right panel" (similar to red) rather than what the symbol of contracting arrows communitcates (most similar to green).

[toger5]

I definitely can see how both options might be desired to be accessible from the top bar of a maximised widget:

• A: make pinned
• B: put into right panel/ hide the widget

I am not sure which icon would be best for which action. (I can see how minimise resulting in action B is un-intuitive if the maximisation was done from a pinned widget as you are describing and not from the right panel directly)
Two well suited icons for those two actions would be really great, I think. For my intuition and X for B and the minimize icon for A would make sense but there might be much better options. (the X icon might be a bad choice. Ppl could expect it to behave like: Remove for everyone)

[jryans]

I do think it's overall simpler to reason about if the place a widget goes next does not depend on whether it used to be pinned (which is the current way unmaximise operates), since after all you (or someone else) might have pinned it weeks ago before maximising it more recently, so it would feel awkward to have to recall the pinned state in order to guess what a single button will do.

So as @toger5 suggests above, perhaps a good compromise is having more buttons for the various locations a maximised widget can move to (pinned, right panel), each with specific icons and labels.

[HarHarLinks]

While that would be simple, I am not sure whether that meets the general UX expectation.

As a user, when I click to "exit fullscreen" I expect to go back to the view as it was before I entered fullscreen. This applies to Element's lightbox and video calls, but also to fullscreen in general (I don't want to be taken to the youtube homepage after exiting fullscreen). Even though this isn't a perfect analogy, I think they feel related.

At the same time I agree with the idea of having multiple buttons to essentially manage maximized and pinned states in one click.

In contrast to having a "close-to-pinned" and a "close to right panel", I want to mention the variant of having a toggle for the pinned state and another for the fullscreen state next to each other, both of which only and exclusively toggle their own function, contrary to current behavior.

does not depend on whether it used to be pinned (which is the current way unmaximize operates), since after all you (or someone else) might have pinned it weeks ago before maximising it more recently

Now, that is somewhat opposite of what you proposed: The UI now explicitly tracking the pinned status visibly by adding a green (if enabled, otherwise grey) pin icon to the border of the widget itself, instead of having it only in the right panel room info where it already is, rarely visible as the panel is collapsed/showing threads by default nowadays.

In fact there already is an Unpin option hidden in widget's ... options menu.

---

The behavior mostly needs to be communicated better than today. The first step would be to copy the 2 icons and their behaviour from the room info panel to the widget frame. The second step is to either visually clarify that these are mutually exclusive (are they, in room state?) or make them behave in not mutually exclusive way.

[toger5]

They are exclusive (maximization is another container (center container) and each widget can only be in one contianer)