Providing visualizations for conversations

Technologies are generally described for providing a system for visualizing items and conversations in a communication application. Conversations are presented as a list of items in the communication application. A quantity of presented items is limited based on a size of a client device employed for viewing the items. Visualizations are applied to the presented items to attempt to maximize a number of items that are presented while providing information about the items to enable a user to preview content and take actions on the items. The visualizations include different templates applied to each item based on a type of item and content associated with the item, and the templates may be are dynamically updated based on user interactions with the items. The templates for items are determined by applying a set of rules and factors to each item to determine a most appropriate visualization for each item.