[Adium-devl] Adium tooltip redesign

[Chris Forsythe]

3 things:

1) Is the tooltip showing up from the side? If so that's really weird  
and I can honestly say I hate it.

2) I don't like the button because a tooltip should be transient  
data, and a button makes it something more than that. If someone can  
respond to this concern as to how a tooltip should not be considered  
transient data, or something like that, that'd be cool.

3) I'm not sure about the raising up part of showing off the contact  
which is being moused over. What's the idea there?


Chris


On Jun 17, 2007, at 10:35 PM, Peter Hosey wrote:

> On Friday, while we were at WWDC, David, Colin, Devin Lane (DevG5  
> on IRC), and I set about redesigning the Contact List tooltip.
>
> You see, it breaks on Leopard, and while investigating, Colin found  
> that the current implementation of the tooltip just doesn't make  
> sense. It has no instance methods whatsoever, draws into its view  
> rather than having the view do that, etc. Basically, it's bad, and  
> ought to be replaced outright. Doing so will hopefully fix the  
> strange behavior on Leopard as well.
>
> So there we sat, in the Compatibility Lab (thinking it was the UI  
> Lab—oops), mocking up alternative UIs for the contact list.  
> Shortly after we began, Andy Matuschak (creator of Sparkle) arrived  
> and provided some user feedback for us. So we got a lot done.
>
> In addition to David working in Photoshop, I drew sketches on a  
> sheet in my sketchbook. Here are the two pages, showing the tooltip  
> as it evolved on paper from what we have now to what we ended up with:
>
> 	http://flickr.com/photos/boredzo/559105967
> 	http://flickr.com/photos/boredzo/559105971
>
> Since it shows everything, Chris (I showed it to him last night,  
> after arriving home) found the sketch somewhat hard-to-follow. I've  
> since added descriptions of what's going on, and here's a mock-up  
> that I made in Lineform (also after arriving home) showing only the  
> current plan for the tooltip:
>
> <Adium contact list tooltip mockup 200706162257-nq8.png>
>
> Also, David's mock-up in Photoshop shows the tooltip and the  
> selected row offset to the right by roughly 16 points. I'm not sure  
> how I feel about that.
>
> One idea that we had that isn't in that mock-up (it's in the paper  
> one) is some buttons, with this appearance:
>
> 	
> <Gray plastic button-nq8.png>
>
> We whittled the list down to:
>
> 	New Chat ▼
> 	More Info…
> 	Transcripts
> 	Send File…
>
> New Chat would eventually be a pull-down menu like the PDF menu in  
> the Print sheet, but unless there's an audio or video plug-in  
> installed, it'd just be a plain button labeled New Group Chat.  
> Somebody suggested cutting out Send File as well, so that's struck  
> out in the paper sketch.
>
> Chris and Andy both were not particular fans of the buttons, though  
> I will say that there is precedent (but I can't say what it is).  
> And of course the New Chat button is bound to be at least as  
> controversial as the PDF button.
>
> We thought of several different ways to bring up the new tooltip.
>
> ⁃ One way would be simply hovering, like the current tooltip.
> ⁃ An application I cannot name (*cough*it'sinLeopard*cough*) has a  
> simple “i” button (like that found in various toolbars, e.g.  
> Xcode's) on each row of its table view; clicking that button brings  
> up a view not unlike the one shown above.
> ⁃ David suggested that clicking once on the row should summon the  
> tooltip. I further suggested that pressing right arrow while it's  
> selected should bring it up (a small overload of standard outline- 
> view behavior, though the tooltip would not necessarily be inline  
> in the view). The disadvantage to a click is that it differs from  
> the existing just-select-it behavior.
> ⁃ I think somebody suggested double-click, but we dismissed this  
> quickly, since it would break the double-click-to-open-a-chat  
> standard. I list it here for completeness.
> ⁃ Later, David also thought of having a little tab that protrudes  
> from the row, probably on hover. That tab would have the “i”  
> button in it. This is shown in the paper mock-up, on page 2. (The  
> expansion effect depicted was posited separately, and would  
> probably be applied no matter what method is used to summon the  
> tooltip.)
> ___________________________________
> \ Peter Hosey / boredzo at adiumx.com
> PGP public key ID: C6550423 (since 2007-01-01)
>
>
> <Adium contact list tooltip mockup 200706162257-nq8.png>
> <Gray plastic button-nq8.png>
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