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Comment by pclark | Hacker News Reader

I have no idea what Skype was thinking with version 5 of their client. It is atrocious.

There is so much white space, if your Instant Messenger client takes up more screen space than a web browser, you're probably doing something wrong.

Download version 2.8 - http://mac.oldapps.com/skype.php

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I couldn't believe my eyes after I installed Skype 5 yesterday. Not only was the user experience confusing, but it was much more difficult to use, despite them trying hard to make it more userfriendly. For instance, I spent a minute trying to figure out how to send an instant message. I clicked on the person's green button, that gave me a dropdown box with "Send instant message". When I clicked this, nothing happened. Turned out that the instant messages were hidden and I had to drag that part of the window up so it becomes viewable. Stuff like that...

The PC version is getting bleh too. I had to ask my friend how to find the pm messages when he was showing me his screen the other day.

+1 for giving the link to the previous version.

It is in fact atrocious, for a mainstream piece of software. Many of us gave them feedback that the new client is WAY too generous with the space, at least for us with more than 5 contacts online. They did very little from the beta to the general release.

More so than the whitespace, the multi-window approach is a pain in the ass. It gets worse when you are calling someone. Goodluck managing even the most trivial things such as finding where your video window went(oh there it was, hiding behind the text window, the contact list and the a dozen others).Seriously, it's gotten to a point where this thing is plain usable. This thing with the camera is just latest in a string of mis-steps by Skype. If it is indeed by design, the attempt to sabotage rival platforms and tools is reflective of a very dangerous mentality. Sad !

the biggest news in Skype 5 for Mac is that it is single-window, and that's the main reason many hate it (not me).

Skype never made good client software for apple's devices, so it's not surprising. All versions have major UX flaws and iphone app is very buggy and slow/freezing for example.

The biggest issue I have is that they seem to have this idea of 'keep your chats open even when you're not around'; then when I open Skype on my iPhone, it downloads the last month of chat history, one message at a time, and is slow and useless (and chews up bandwidth, CPU, and battery) until I give up on it.

It's horrible design, and I can't help but think that no one at Skype has actually used it for anything, which seems improbable. I've heard that the Android version does the same thing as well. It's just terrible.

Have you read the comments on their "skype 5 for mac" forum? http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showforum=313

It's really impressive to me they could publish such a terrible UI.

What they had in mind was the 90% of their users who only have 5 contacts in their contact list and the 95% of their users who only use the text area to write "Can I call you"

In other words Skype is designed for the 90% not us 10%

Over here skype is the #1 business messenger. Text-chat dominates voice and video by far, and most users have dozens or even hundreds of contacts ("everyone else in the company").

It seems unlikely to me that all these companies amount to only 10% of overall skype usage.

Where is here? The most common business messenger in my experience has been Office Communicator. It's everywhere that Exchange and Outlook are.

It seems to be really popular in Europe. Virtually every single European company I've worked with has communicated over Skype.

Where is here?

Europe. "Do you have skype?" is mostly a rhetoric question around here when asked in a business context.

Seems quite popular in Canadian business circles too.

I am just telling you what the numbers are.

If you want to get a sense of how bad thing at Skype have gotten, check out this thread on their site.

http://blogs.skype.com/en/2011/01/mac.html

It's their "big announcement", and it's followed by the longest, and most vitriolic stream of comments from people who are appalled by the terrible design. It's the only thing 9/10 comments even mention.

The amazing thing is that near the bottom, their "Blogger in Chief" Peter Parks provides a point-by-point reply to each of the comments that didn't mention the UI (there are a handful), while completely ignoring the issue receiving all the attention. He actually gets called out on this, only to come back with half-baked line about "your thoughts about the new UI are very valuable to the Mac team here."

Which, of course, is total bullshit. They're the exact same comments the Mac team received by the boatload and promptly ignored during the beta.

Well, I wouldn't just state that they ignored them. I find it equally probably that someone higher up in the company has dictated that this is to be the interface, or that their designers take forever to actually design anything, so a redesign was out of the question (without pushing back the release date, which could be argued to have been necessary).

See, I’ve heard this before, but I’m

1) not sure it’s true this is the case (show me the numbers or concrete reasoning), and

2) more importantly, I believe this is a flawed approach because it’s in Skype’s best interest for users to have lots of active contacts/friends/numbers in the system. Why design in such a way that discourages desirable behavior?

It’s a failed design, and I don’t think that supposed 90% rule really applies

Sometimes the benefits are only apparent later one.

What is failed about it?

It's different yes. But what is failed about it?

The fact that you recognize it as unworkable “for us 10%” indicates a failure.

I don't know what makes you think I recognize it as unworkable. Think you are reading too much into what I wrote.

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