[Adium-devl] [potential bikeshed] Quit confirmation

[Augie Fackler]

On Sep 22, 2007, at 3:53 PM, Eric Richie wrote:

> On 9/22/07 3:37 PM, "Augie Fackler" <lists at durin42.com> wrote:
>
>> The new "show confirmation before quit by default" behavior should
>> change. Adium is the *only* app on my system out of many (I've used
>> 38 different apps this week according to Spotlight) that has such a
>> dialog. As such, I feel it's not Mac-like and violates the spirit of
>> the Mac user experience.
>
> I'm not quite sure why this violates the spirit of the Mac user  
> experience.
> The rationality behind it is that an IM client is a communication  
> medium and
> as such something that most people keep open.  Therefore I  
> implemented this
> feature to prevent accidental quits.  This behavior is pretty much a
> standard in Windows IM clients (yes, I know that doesn't help prove  
> that
> it's mac like behavior.)  I'm still not sure how this will  
> negatively impact
> the experience though because if you tell it not to show again you  
> won't
> ever see it after that.

It adds a confirmation step that's uncommon in the Mac world - I know  
it's standard in Windows IM clients, but iChat doesn't do it, and I  
think iChat is better evidence than Win32. It always has annoyed me  
when apps that take as little time to launch as Adium ask me if I'm  
sure I meant to quit.

I've heard from many friends (non-techie types) that we present a lot  
of annoying dialog boxes - the quit confirmation is, IMO, just  
another step away from ease-of-use.

Accidental quits are, in my experience, very very rare. It's possible  
that I'm a more coordinated typist than most, but I suspect that the  
bulk of users quit intentionally far more often than they  
accidentally exit. My anecdotal evidence suggests network flakiness  
is a bigger cause of unintentional signoffs than actual user error,  
especially with how common wireless networks are these days.

>
>> Honestly, I think this is something that should have a checkbox if
>> people really want it.
>
> This was my initial plan but there was some bristling on devl about  
> the idea
> of a pref so I opted to make it hidden.  I also had planned on  
> leaving it
> disabled initially but after some discussion we decided (because of  
> the
> aforementioned option to never see it again) that turning it on by  
> default
> would be a better way to handle it.

Honestly, I'm fine with having the feature present, and even a  
checkbox, as long as it is hidden. I know several other (IMO wrong)  
users that would like this feature, but I think that being "more mac- 
like," as nebulous and subjective as that is, should remain  
important. Maybe we can throw this in as a checkbox underneath  
"Global Shortcut" in General?

>
>> That's my 2¢ - if nobody objects, I'll rip it out next weekend.
>
> I would be ok with simply changing the pref from a 1 to a 0 but I  
> would put
> up a fight over "ripping it out".  I think this is something useful  
> and has
> been requested by a number of other people.

A number of people != a good idea. People also requested Adium-in- 
dashboard when the dashboard became available, and we didn't do that  
either. Given that lots of people want it though, let's prefify the  
thing. Off by default would be my vote, but I hate this window - can  
we get some feedback from other devs on this?

Augie

>
> -Eric