[Adium-devl] Room/Server Bookmarking UI Design

[E. E. Beerepoot]

While designing the bookmarking UI, I came upon a few difficulties.  
My primary concern is with UI continuity/simplicity. The objective is  
to design an effective bookmarking system that's quick  & simple to  
use. Although this *could* be put in the join chat window/panel, this  
hardly seems quick. The first alternative that comes to mind is  
putting these bookmarks in the contact list.

Upon thinking about it some more, and talking it over with a few  
others, it seems the best two solutions are: using tabs, or using  
groups.

Tabs:
This idea involves adding tabs to the contact list. One tab would be  
the contact list, the other would be bookmarks/conferences. I believe  
this solution has the advantage of keeping the contact list &  
bookmarks seperate, which I feel is nice from a user interaction  
point of view. In addition, it keeps the contact list more compact,  
which I assume is already a problem for quite a few people.

On the other side of the medallion, it does not provide the user with  
a quick overview of his or her bookmarks, and I see it as possibly  
taking more code to add features on like: dragging users into a  
conference using your bookmarks, snapping your bookmarks group off  
and rearranging on your desktop, quickly adding bookmarks, and  
possibly more. In addition, I feel it sort of interrupts the flow.

Here's a mockup:
http://beerepoot.org/adium-mockup.png



Groups:
Using groups to bookmark chats involves having one or more separate  
groups containing bookmarked servers and rooms. These groups should  
have a clear identifier, so as to seperate them from regular groups.  
Although this solution adds on to contact list clutter, this could be  
alleviated somewhat by the snapping groups project.  Groups would  
have the advantages of being quick & simple to use. It's easy to add  
dragging contacts over to the conferences, to quickly add & remove  
bookmarks, and more.

Here's a mockup:
http://www.beerepoot.org/adium-clean-virtualroom.png

Feedback?



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