Maintain theme settings after logout/in

[tmissoni]

Your use case

What would you like to do?

Settings of custom theme on Element Web Browser are not kept after logout/login.
Such settings should be kept and store as part of user settings

Why would you like to do it?

UX is poor in this situations. My clients should inherit such settings

Have you considered any alternatives?

No response

Additional context

This has been pointed out during the PoC of Hessen, potentially a huge deal.

[t3chguy]

It used to be set at the account level, then product decided for it to be device specific - matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk#4810 is the context

[nadonomy]

We made the change from account wide to device specific as it presented problems for multi-desktop users— e.g. different desktop environments for the same user might demand different text size settings. Per device also removes any sync nasties or expectations from the equation.

I think there's some nuance needed to find the right path.

@tmissoni few q's to help:

1. Specifically which display/theme settings are you expecting to persist?
2. Can you describe the user lifecycle in more detail (e.g. is it users logging in to the same web browser continually? or different computers?)
3. Will the PoC be using Element Web on app.element.io or a custom/EMS deployment?

[tmissoni]

I understand the use case but if I login from another browser/desktop I would honestly expect to have my configuration, or at least decide if I want to have sync config or per/device config
1 - Imo we should keep clients settings consistent if I login from another platform. And I mean everything, from notifications, to appearance, to keyboard (keyboard not due to different key layout). This is valid both for web or desktop, because it will also be unlikely that people uses both on the same machine.
2 - users are likely to login from different computers, due to the fact that such resources are shared. It is then very annoying to go through the settings again.
3 - PoC is running on a custom on-premise installation, together with Element Web

[t3chguy]

to keyboard

This doesn't scale well, if a user has both Mac & non-mac, or different keyboard layouts.

[tmissoni]

Agreed on the keyboard. This could be omitted

[nadonomy]

1 - Imo we should keep clients settings consistent if I login from another platform. And I mean everything, from notifications, to appearance, to keyboard. This is valid both for web or desktop, because it will also be unlikely that people uses both on the same machine.

This is a pretty large blanket statement. We need to break it down to be able to figure out a productive path. As @t3chguy said keyboards don't scale, notifications also don't scale as browsers sandbox permissions, browsers vs desktop have different constraints on what data we can persist, etc.

Can you be more specific on what things the PoC is expecting to persist? A list of specific, exact settings which are blocking known user needs would be the most useful. with a rationale on why.

2 - users are likely to login from different computers, due to the fact that such resources are shared. It is then very annoying to go through the settings again.
3 - PoC is running on a custom on-premise installation, together with Element Web

For Element Web/our production deployments we generally optimise our decision making for individuals (1) continually using their personal computers (2) logging in to web browsers ephemerally. Depending on the answers to the above we might be able to tweak the default behaviours, or might need to extend our capabilities for custom deployments.

[tmissoni]

1 - Imo we should keep clients settings consistent if I login from another platform. And I mean everything, from notifications, to appearance, to keyboard. This is valid both for web or desktop, because it will also be unlikely that people uses both on the same machine.

This is a pretty large blanket statement. We need to break it down to be able to figure out a productive path. As @t3chguy said keyboards don't scale, notifications also don't scale as browsers sandbox permissions, browsers vs desktop have different constraints on what data we can persist, etc.

Can you be more specific on what things the PoC is expecting to persist? A list of specific, exact settings which are blocking known user needs would be the most useful. with a rationale on why.
I will define 2-3 blocks of settings that makes sense to be inherited between different logins

2 - users are likely to login from different computers, due to the fact that such resources are shared. It is then very annoying to go through the settings again.
3 - PoC is running on a custom on-premise installation, together with Element Web

For Element Web/our production deployments we generally optimise our decision making for individuals (1) continually using their personal computers (2) logging in to web browsers ephemerally. Depending on the answers to the above we might be able to tweak the default behaviours, or might need to extend our capabilities for custom deployments.

I guess here we can really intend this to be on custom/on-premise deployment.