First of all, I agree that people who don't want the feature should be able to turn it off completely and never see any trace of it. It's too easy for software to become bloated with too many "bells and whistles" and lose focus and elegance that got people to start using it when it was new.
Having said that...
I want chat added as an extension of the webmail service!
Although there are some other "private" chat services, I haven't found any that my other friends accept as readily as ProtonMail. I won't use many of them because they are not actually secure, or are run by for-profit corporations. Basically, there are few that I will use, and they are typically buggy or have immature designs. So my less-computer-literate friends won't use them.
My friends and I are all using ProtonMail and love it, and there are times when we are both online and emailing each other. It's cumbersome to send emails in both directions, and they often cross, so it's very confusing to keep a coherent conversation going. (For example, my friend might write two messages while I'm responding to an older one. Then I don't know if I should continue writing a reply, or read the new messages first. This can make a person crazy.)
In other words, the chat feature would be helpful at times when there is already an active ProtonMail email exchange going. Then it would be easy and smooth to switch over to chat.
Some people commented that they don't want ProtonMail to become another "social platform" or "social network". I don't either(!), but I'd love it if ProtonMail developed into a more capable *communication* platform.
Jay
First of all, I agree that people who don't want the feature should be able to turn it off completely and never see any trace of it. It's too easy for software to become bloated with too many "bells and whistles" and lose focus and elegance that got people to start using it when it was new.
Having said that...
I want chat added as an extension of the webmail service!
Although there are some other "private" chat services, I haven't found any that my other friends accept as readily as ProtonMail. I won't use many of them because they are not actually secure, or are run by for-profit corporations. Basically, there are few that I will use, and they are typically buggy or have immature designs. So my less-computer-literate friends won't use them.
My friends and I are all using ProtonMail and love it, and there are times when we are both online and emailing each other. It's cumbersome to send emails in both directions, and they often cross, so it's very confusing to keep a coherent conversation going. (For example, my friend might write two messages while I'm responding to an older one. Then I don't know if I should continue writing a reply, or read the new messages first. This can make a person crazy.)
In other words, the chat feature would be helpful at times when there is already an active ProtonMail email exchange going. Then it would be easy and smooth to switch over to chat.
Some people commented that they don't want ProtonMail to become another "social platform" or "social network". I don't either(!), but I'd love it if ProtonMail developed into a more capable *communication* platform.