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Michael Eaton talks with me on a variety of topics. This episode is sponsored by Smartsheet.

Show Notes:

Want to be on the next episode? You can! All you need is the willingness to talk about something technical.

Music is by Joe Ferg, check out more music on JoeFerg.com!

Doc Norton talks about the experimentation mindset. This episode is sponsored by Smartsheet.

Show Notes:

Supplemental links from Doc:

Want to be on the next episode? You can! All you need is the willingness to talk about something technical.

Music is by Joe Ferg, check out more music on JoeFerg.com!

Craig Stuntz is manipulating .NET IL. This episode is sponsored by Smartsheet.

Show Notes:

Want to be on the next episode? You can! All you need is the willingness to talk about something technical.

Music is by Joe Ferg, check out more music on JoeFerg.com!

Skype: Too Many Smiley Faces

April 19, 2018 mgroves 0 Comments
Tags: usability

I noticed a recent change to Skype, specifically in the chat client.

3 lines of Skype text chat, each with a smiley face icon at the end

Look at all those smiley faces!

At first, I thought, the person that I'm chatting with is really overdoing it on the smileys. I get it, you're being friendly!

But it turns out: if you hover over the smiley face, it's a "react to this message" button.

Hover over tooltip saying "React to this" with a menu of emojis floating over that.

Do the Skype product managers really think that "reacting" to a chat message is so common that it needs to have its own icon and menu for every single message?

Or maybe this is more useful in a group chat setting? Is Skype trying to compete with Slack and IRC?

Either way, I found it very distracting, confusing, and unnecessary. Most of my Skype chat is 1-on-1, and this icon is completely superfluous for that. It is only marginally useful for group chat.

I would suggest a single smiley face icon in the "Type a message here" area instead. Skype already has that, but it brings up a completely different menu. Which is also confusing.

If there was a way to turn this off, I would use it.

Tim Wingfield is using lots of APIs. This episode is sponsored by Smartsheet.

Show Notes:

Tim Wingfield is on Twitter.

Want to be on the next episode? You can! All you need is the willingness to talk about something technical.

Music is by Joe Ferg, check out more music on JoeFerg.com!

Matthew D. Groves

About the Author

Matthew D. Groves lives in Central Ohio. He works remotely, loves to code, and is a Microsoft MVP.

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