Replace / Augment bot embeds with Adaptive Cards

[ckohen]

This is a client and API feature request, Before you send me off to /feedback though, this is a request for a more interoperable API for bots specifically, that the client would end up supporting. Basically it would exist in a tier similar to interactions, completely designed from the ground up (in this case, a majority of the API design being done already) for bots that the client then implements.

Now that that's out of the way....

Huge shoutouts to @andyearnshaw for inspiring this

Embeds seem mostly designed to, well, embed content from websites that have the appropriate meta tags. Bots have been given access to post embeds with some additional flexibility as a means to display content in a more visually appealing way. However, they have tons of limitations:

• Desktop - Width is wildly limiting, longer blocks of text (that don't have line breaks) have no place being in embeds since the readability on desktop is terrible, (somehow we do this all the time).
• Mobile - Width is limiting again, the opposite way. Inline fields? yeah those don't exist, so consistency of formatting doesn't really apply
• Speaking of inline fields, there's practically no control over how they behave, you get your toggle switch and thats it, changing this has been suggested Add a way to force an inline field onto a new row #3233
• The rest of the layout is fairly strict, it works great for some things, and we force it to work for others. More often than not, embeds take up way more space than they need to convey the information in them due to styling limitations
• Embeds don't support videos outside of a select few (bots cant at all obviouslly)...This isn't a deal breaker but worth mentioning
• Behavior we sometimes rely on (like mentions resolving) is technically unsupported and subject to break at any time.

Something that @andyearnshaw mentioned in that discussion linked above is adaptive cards which I believe would be a perfect fit for replacing (or adding on top of) bot embeds. They were designed with the intent to fit right into the native flow of an app, utilizing a common schema, making it easy for bot devs to take already done work and put it on discord, and it'd fit right in.

Potential advantages of adaptive cards:

• Layouts!!!!! (Especially loving the ability to limit lines but keep the whole text / expand on request)
• Tables (Tables #4098)
• Possibility of card native interaction elements (all those input types 😮)
• Separate control of card suppression from embed suppression (perm and client side)
• With the above, a potential solution to Rich embeds alternative text #3226
• Videos? Videos in embeds for bots/webhooks #3456
• Potential for much better A11Y implementations
• Text styling (Allow developers to color normal parts of messages #3681) in a contained context and with A11Y in mind
• Roughly equivalent level of client security as embeds

I honestly used to love embeds, used them for everything. I've since grown tired of them due to the limitations listed above and how spammy they can be. I understand how much of a request this is, and given the multitude of other things that should have much higher priority, I'd expect this to be going on a very long term plan.

Thanks for reading! And here's to the future of bots!

[DeeJayTC]

@discord staff
if you need help building this reach out to www.madewithcards.io :)

this neeeeeeds to happen!!!