[MEDIUM] Feature Request: Make attachments to show immediately like the regular messages

[m-natarajan]

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Version Number:
Reproducible in staging?: y
Reproducible in production?: y
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from TestRail:
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers):
Logs: https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/4856
Expensify/Expensify Issue URL:
Issue reported by: @quinthar
Slack conversation: https://expensify.slack.com/archives/C049HHMV9SM/p1707112380464339

Problem:

If I post a message like "Hello world", it'll appear exactly as if I had already sent it -- even if in fact it's still uploading it. It will also show grayed out if I'm offline, to indicate it hasn't sent. But we treat attachments differently: we show a static Uploading attachment... message, which is replaced with the preview after upload. I'm not even sure if it works offline, or what it shows while it's queued for offline upload.

Solution:

Let's make attachments work like regular posts in that we should show the attachment immediately in its final location, exactly as if it uploaded instantly. If we are offline and it hasn't yet uploaded, then show the preview grayed out.

Platforms:

Which of our officially supported platforms is this issue occurring on?

• Android: Native
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: Native
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• MacOS: Chrome / Safari
• MacOS: Desktop

Screenshots/Videos

Add any screenshot/video evidence

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[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @JmillsExpensify (NewFeature), see https://stackoverflowteams.com/c/expensify/questions/14418#:~:text=BugZero%20process%20steps%20for%20feature%20requests for more details.

[trjExpensify]

Going to close this as a dupe, as we're working on making this a reality already. From the long list of dependencies, there's this one to support image caching: #12603

Unfortunately, the latest PR for it was deployed and then reverted on Friday last week. So we need to revisit that with @kidroca to fix and redeploy.

After which, we can get back to implementing a solution for this feature request here. I've put that issue in #vip-vsb as a medium to track. 👍