[Adium-devl] Adium tooltip redesign

Mon Jun 18 04:16:10 UTC 2007

On Jun 17, 2007, at 8:59 PM, Chris Forsythe wrote:

> 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?

I think at this point it's better to consider this a mini contact  
inspector and not a tooltip. Forcing different behavior under an old  
name doesn't work well.

- brian 'bgannin' ganninger

>
>
> 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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>
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