Message ordering can break if /sync is stuck as messages aren't always queued

[ara4n]

I just un-slept my laptop and:

• "Connectivity lost, messages will be queued" was displayed
• In practice, I was able to send messages.. and they went grey->black in the timeline immediately
• Eventually a /sync (?) unstuck, and a bunch of missed messages appeared... causing the timeline to get out of order.

Had my messages been queued this would have been okay - although in practice I'd rather be able to talk even if /sync is stuck, and have the timeline get in the right order afterwards.

[ara4n]

Just had this again - see the timestamps; except this was just blocked doing a /sync that was taking a long time to complete.

[MadLittleMods]

Is this any better with the circle send receipts?

One of the most important ones is that we finally killed off the old grey->green->black transition used to show the various sending stages when you send a message - which gave an unfair impression of the app being slow, when in practice the speed at which you send a message is typically limited by the network. Instead, we now show a circle on the right hand side when you send a message, which is filled with a tick once the message is received by the server. Once people read the message, their circular read receipt drops down from the heavens to replace the send receipt, and then the circle of life continues.

-- https://element.io/blog/introducing-voice-messages-and-so-much-more/

[MadLittleMods]

Related to:

• Very old events appear out of order in the live timeline after federation backfill element-meta#1491
• Messages can appear out of order if /sync is delayed but message PUTs are 200ing element-meta#1934