Use case for per-protocol icons

[Josh Williams]

On 8/7/07, Sean Egan <seanegan at gmail.com> wrote:
> It does. It is desirable to have, and we are currently developing a
> consistent, API and user interface for this "get alert" (nudge, buzz,
> etc) feature.

I'm actually starting to like this idea, believe it or not. For those
protocols which don't support it, perhaps you it could send a message
like "**I WANT YOUR ATTENTION**" or some such message =)

>             You seem to be stuck in a box defined by your habits
> that you can't get out of and see that there are better ways to handle
> these things than showing protocol icons.

I'm beginning to understand your side better now.

> Such a what? We tend not to support features that have very little
> wide-spread support.

I mentioned the smiley shortcuts in another thread, but none of the
developers seem to care about the fact that the smiley shortcuts are
different from one standard (meaning the proprietary) IM client to the
next. For instance, in AIM, the surprised face is =-o but in MSN,  the
shortcut is :o . I cannot begin to tell you how many times I've gotten
these messed up since you removed the protocol icons.

> Perhaps we should make tooltips work if you're using keyboard
> navigation. Perhaps if you navigate to a blist node via your keyboard
> keys, that causes its tooltip to show off to the side.

That's a good idea.

> *Nobody* has *ever* said they don't care about your problems. We're
> just encouraging you to look outside of the box you've fallen into
> through habit. We eagerly want to hear your actual problems and
> determine how to best fix them. We've already fixed a whole bunch of
> problems that have reveled themselves by removing protocol icons, and
> we'd love to do more.

Okay, then I have a suggestion for the emoticons. The shortcuts should
be automatically replaced if they're incorrect for that protocol, such
as the surprised smiley that I mentioned above.

See, I really don't mind losing the protocol icons so much. What
bothers me is the rude responses I've gotten and the fact that it was
released _without_ these alternatives you speak of. It reminds me of
when Microsoft decided to remove the "classic toolbar" from a lot of
programs by default, such as IE7. They did not introduce _any_
alternative; they simply removed functionality from the default
settings (and they totally screwed up the placement if you *do* turn
it on, but that's beside the point).