How do I display the whole chat thread title when the title view is specifically designed to be one-line?

Question

Here's the screenshot of a list of all chats:

The title of the chat, i.e. Message Message......, is designed to be single line display only. However, users can enter have titles that are longer than the 60-70 characters a line can have on mobile. I need to show the entire title somehow.

Here are the problems:

1. Clicking once on the chat message (title or icon) leads you to the chat, i.e. conversation

2. Long-press opens a dialog box asking you if you want to delete the chat or not (if you are the author, or unfollow the chat if not)

3. Swiping left takes you to another tab called Status, and swiping right leads you to another tab called "My Profile".

How do I show the entire title when the user wants to see it? What is the expected behavior?

Answer 1

I think you need to think sensibly about the title length, if truncating is undesirable. On a mobile device you're going to be limited by space. I'm a little unclear how one line can be between 60-70 characters, yet two lines is only 92, that said, I don't think it is unreasonable to limit the title length as the title should be an indication of the topic, not the topic itself.

So your options, as far as I can see are:

1. Keep the font size as it is, as the user type in excess of, say, 60 characters, reduce it slightly to keep it on one line, if they go over 90 characters, split it over two lines (Facebook do something like this)
   2. Limit the number of characters for the title so it will fit on one line

Any other idea would be an interaction to view the entire title, which seems a little pointless when a user could just open the subject.

Answer 2

I would suggest keeping **Title** within a certain standard of length and display your title in two lines.

It shouldn’t be what is needed but what works best for your app and users because mobile devices show a different amount of characters, and the character count will also differ for different devices.

So, keep it less and limit your users by providing fixed number of characters.

Answer 3

You can make the long-press action pull double duty. Don't look at it as a single action, look at it like a detail view. You can use many lines of text there for a title, or better; a title plus description. Then under that you have options to delete/unsub, fave, add to a collection, and similar actions.