Pidgin 2.1 UI Ideas (with mockups!)

[Steven Brown]

Hylke Bons wrote:
> I like your ideas.
Thanks.  :)

> The "extended pane" looks a lot like my mockup, but how does it look
> when there is no avatar or a smaller one (different protocols).
> Personally I would switch the status message and username. The toggle
> button you mentioned sounds reasonable for people who like their pane
> small/larger.
If there is no avatar, I think a generic one should be put in its place. 
  There should always be something, unless the user has specified not to 
display them.  If it's a user, a generic person graphic.  If it's an IRC 
channel, maybe the chat-bubble graphic... and the infopane could be used 
to display the channel topic (clickable and selectable, of course!), 
like in xchat-gnome.
http://xchat-gnome.navi.cx/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/main.png

If the avatar is smaller, then it should either be centred within the 
available space, or stretched to fit it.  I'm not sure what the min/max 
sizes on protocol icons are, so I'm not sure what the worst-case 
stretching would be.  But I think the vertical space will eventually be 
needed by many protocols anyway.

The button could be a gtk expander (arrow thing that rotates), but all 3 
states would be nice: full infopane, small infopane, no infopane. 
Including the expander on the infopane and the current "Show Buddy 
Details" toggle preference could work, or the preference could be 
changed to a drop-down with the 3 options.


> I think this protocol button could really work! The "Send To" entry in
> the menu bar always looked a little weird to me. But be aware that a
> grouped contact can contain more then one contact with the same protocol.
Me too!  I only just discovered how it worked too!  hah.  :P  As long as 
the dropdown contains the protocol username, I don't see this being a 
problem.