[Adium-devl] User Interface Idea's Chat Window and other thoughs

[Peter Hosey]

On Feb 19, 2007, at 05:55:20, Bart van de Biezen wrote:
> I have some remarks about the user interface from the chat window:
> - Emoticon icon is on the top: mouse movements are long. Because  
> people start to point to the input field before they type (mental- 
> image). Therefor I would suggest to move the emoticon icon to  
> bottom of the window.

I leave my mouse wherever it is, but I'm not a typical Adium user, so  
perhaps I ought not to project on that point.

> - Search could be available right in the chat window to that  
> particular person.

That's what we have a Find command for. It likely won't work in the  
message view until Leopard, though—WebKit doesn't have support for a  
Find command in Tiger.

> - Chat input field doesn't really look like an input field. I think  
> this should be more emphasized.

I think the blinking insertion point makes it pretty clear, though I  
certainly have seen people wrestle with the concept of an inputline  
before (on IRC).

Hm. Inputline themes, anyone? ;)

> - Adding a person from address book should work without selecting  
> an im service. Adium should enable all the possible ways of  
> contacting that person.

But you need a Yahoo!* account (registered with Yahoo! and added in  
Adium) both to add their Yahoo! ID as a contact and to chat with  
their Yahoo! ID at all. If there's no Yahoo! account, what do you  
suggest we do with the AB contact's Yahoo! ID?

* For example.

> - When it is someone's birthday the status icon could be a birthday- 
> cake or something?

Haha—I like it; very whimsical.

I'm not sure it'd be right for the core app, but it'd be a nice idea  
for a plug-in. It could morph between the cake and their actual  
status every few seconds.

> - if there is a unread im, the first part of this text could  
> replace the status message of the contact person.

Intriguing.

> - Making the contact list the "tabs". I have to think more about  
> this :)

The problem with that is that some people have a LOT of contacts.  
There would need to be a scroller, and some indication of where the  
active tab is.
___________________________________
\ Peter Hosey / boredzo at adiumx.com
PGP public key ID: C6550423 (since 2007-01-01)


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://adium.im/pipermail/devel_adium.im/attachments/20070219/da437634/attachment.sig>