[Adium-devl] Some discussed preference changes

[disposable at infinitenexus.com]

On Apr 23, 2006, at 5:36 PM, Evan Schoenberg wrote:

>
> On Apr 23, 2006, at 4:08 PM, disposable at infinitenexus.com wrote:
>
>> A few weeks ago several of us hopped onto an IRC channel and  
>> discussed some preference changes. Instead of plowing ahead on  
>> things I thought I'd share some mockups to see what everyone  
>> thought of the proposed changes.
>>
>> Note 1: General is the first preference pane in the toolbar to  
>> match all other OS X apps.
>>
> General first is common.. however, Accounts its a pretty important  
> pane.  Is there an HIG expectation that General be first, or is  
> this just a generic consistency thing?
>

It's a generic consistency thing because we are the only app I could  
find that doesn't have General as the first pane. Given that Accounts  
is rarely (after initial use) hit, especially with the Personal pane,  
and that we remember the last pane, order is not heavily important  
but consistency is.

>> Note 2: the image view + button is replaced by the contact list's  
>> snazzy icon selector instead
> I like.  I think we should give it a border, or a recessed well, or  
> something, to set it off from the area around it -- basically look  
> a lot like it does in current source, except making use of the  
> recent pics selector.
>

Well, the button should stay gone :) making the hover effect be the  
permanent effect for that well would be good IMO.

>> Note 3: informative text of some kind would likely be useful, but  
>> I didn't put a ton of thought into some :)
> What do you think needs saying, in general?  Something along the  
> lines of, "These settings can be overridden on a per-account basis  
> via the Accounts pane."?

Yah, just something to reinforce what they need to know, rather than  
recall that these are global settings and whatnot. The suggested text  
is a good start along the way, I was just lazy :D

>
>> Although I'm sure you've all seen the selector in action I've  
>> included a shot below. For this section it would be customized to  
>> remove the account selecting parts (since this is a global picker)
> That bit's easily done, fo shizzle :)
>
> Chris wrote:
>> Also, how does it look without the divider line?
> Bad.  The previous incarnation had the right half in a shaded  
> curved-edges box, which I was a fan of... though after using the  
> dividing line for a couple days I think it's basically six one way  
> half dozen the other.  Definitely some division between the two  
> halves is needed.

The reason I switched these was to save room and provide a bit of  
clarity, since group boxes should be used sparingly for  
distinguishing distinct groups of controls. In this case it's not  
that the 2 parts are that distinct, it's that they are different  
types (image versus text) The vertical separator provides the logical  
break while not overwhelming the feel to draw such focus on those  
text fields.


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