Addressing feedback from users, Microsoft’s Skype team is working to bring back In-call chat panels with its latest Skype Insider Preview.
According to a new post from Microsoft employee and Skype forum owner Karah, the new In-call chat panel has been brought back and now moved to the right of the in-app window.
In addition to bringing back the in-call chat panel, the Skype team has also made it resizable for user convenience.
The move came after users provided feedback discussing the issues they were running into when using the newer version of Skype while attempting to hold conference calls, meetings or shared video where additional information was needed, such as the ability to screenshot, send files during the call or receive content without being pulled from the video to do so.
We’ve heard your feedback regarding the positioning of the chat panel while in a Skype call. In our previous versions of Skype 8, the chat panel opened up on the left and prevented you from seeing your lists of conversations at the same time as the chat for the current call. Today, we’re excited to announce that the chat panel for the current call will always open up on the right side! We’ve also made it resizable!
Arguably, for some, it feels like the Skype team is reinventing the wheel as the previous desktop version had already seemingly addressed issues similar to this.
However, the renewed in-call chat panel is part of a broader development push from the Skype team to unify and update the engineering platform for Skype to be more consistent across mobile, desktop and the web and produce newer features much more quickly. While results remain mixed, it’s nice to see the team iterating at a much faster clip than has been historically done.
