Yes, it would be easier to see the names+avatar instead of avatars only!
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I vote for the change to avatar plus username
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Yes, please!
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Thank you for considering the change, Paulo @paulo !
To make the design even simpler, here are my two cents:
- In the scenario of 1-1 chat, remove inbox owner’s name/avatar, and only display the name/avatar of the other party of the conversation. This is because that it’s always easy for users to understand that they themselves are involved in these chats, and it’s a rare case that they search their own names/avatars to locate certain chat.
- In the scenario of multiple-user chat, only display the name/avatar who initiates this chat, how many people are involved in this chat, and (perhaps) the last name/avatar who reply to this chat.
Not sure how difficult to code such requests. I will leave that part to tech experts 
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I gave it a second thought – in the scenario of multiple-user chat, actually the current design (a bunch of avatars + the number of participants) is good enough for me. It’s simply because that multiple-user chats can be easily distinguished by the chat theme, and I use these chats relatively less often than I use 1-1 chat so it’s easier for me to remember which is which.
However I am likely to be an outlier. I will leave this part for other members to weigh in.
I agree with this. In a two person conversation that involves me, I think I would just like to know who the other person is.
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I have just implemented the change to show the username on the (list of) messages. This is only tentative and may be reverted if there’s issues with it.
I understand (and even agree) that the current way with only avatars is not ideal, specially with large groups. But I’m also not totally happy with this solution as it makes the layout better for some cases, while making it worse for others where this isn’t really needed. The original logic with the row of avatars was the same used on a list of topics within a category — by changing its layout, that’s partially lost as it’s not as intuitive that it’s the same thing.
Ideally we would like to make this an option per user, but this would take me more time than we have right now. As this only involved only some light styling, it’s unlikely to break any code (at worst, just the layout) on future upgrades, so hopefully not too hard to keep it going forward.
If you find any issues with the change, please leave them below.
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Fantastic! Was just going to vote for the change, and there it is 
MUCH better - I was going crazy(ier) trying to keep track of who each avatar represented!
I agree - much better!
Muito obrigado, Paulo! 
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It’s wonderful! Tried and tested immediately and I found the conversation I was looking for very fast and easy. Thank you! 
Thank you, I think many members will appreciate this 
This looks sooo good!!! Thank you Paulo!!!
Thanks a lot! That’s wonderful, at least on the computer. It’s also great that for messages with large groups only four members are being mentioned followed by a +10. Great!
Edit: It’s okay on mobile view, too - it shows the name of the latest person posting, doesn’t it?
Thank you very much, Paulo.
That seems to be the case, yes, but I only updated the interface on desktop and have not touched the mobile layout (where avatars don’t show).
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I hardly used the PM on my mobile, so I wasn’t aware of what it looked like before 
Great change, thank you!
It might be too much, but would it be possible to search (!) for the username among the messages? Maybe a search engine or simply with Ctrl+F in the browser? (the latter isn’t working at the moment)
The situation is way better than in the avatar area, but still very difficult to find older stuff. I see the usernames as I scroll down, but sometimes I have to scroll multiple times to find what I’m looking for.
The Post has been terrible since the beginning of the pandemic, delayed cards are very frequent, and now as the regular Xmas chaos is upon us… Oh well, it’s gonna be a challenge to find old exchange of messages after 1-2 months when I have only fragments of information.
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Your browser search should still work: just do it twice to reach the browser search instead of the forum search. Note that browser search only works for the items already loaded on the current page.
Using the forum search itself, you can also specify to search by messages of a particular person by including on the search terms “by:username”.
Lastly, you can also use the advanced search options to search for messages from a particular username “In my messages”.
Currently the way to reach the advanced search options is to start a search outside of the messages and click ‘options’.
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The Ctrl+F isn’t working in the Chrome browser (I suppose there is some sort of protection on the usernames, they cannot be even highlighted or marked with the mouse), but the Advances search solves my issue! Thanks!