Some suggestions on the infopane of conversation

[Hylke Bons]

About the redundancy.
Maybe it's an idea to have status icons for inactive tabs,
and when a tab becomes active it changes to the Person icon for IM's
and the Chat icon (like chats in the buddy list) for chats.
It avoids redundant information. I know it's still a form of widget
"jumping" (rather changing now),
but not as radical as moving text.

Hylke

Etan Reisner wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 28, 2007 at 08:11:08AM -0700, Sean Egan wrote:
>   
>> On 6/27/07, Ka-Hing Cheung <khc at hxbc.us> wrote:
>>     
>>>>  * The status icon goes back in the tab.
>>>>         
>> If this is really a deal-breaker, I'm ok bringing it back, although
>> I've come to appreciate it beyond it's original "kill redundancy"
>> intention.
>>     
>
> Despite my earlier indications that I don't really use it much, I find
> myself using it more than I realized I did, mostly in order to glance at
> my IM window to see if someone I was having a conversation with has since
> gone offline without needing to open the buddy list window or actually
> focus my conversation window.
>
> So I think I am still in the bring-the-status-icons-back camp. Plus if we
> do this it means we can use that space in the infopane for the protocol
> icon/emblem/etc..
>
> <snip>
>
>   
>>>>  * The protocol-icon replaces the status-icon in the infopane.
>>>>         
>> I'm guessing this was an attempt to kill redundancy. I'm not so
>> convinced that redundancy is a huge problem.
>>     
>
> As mentioned above we could do this to appease people who want it back
> while simultaneously providing extra information and not duplicating
> information. All that being said I don't think it really much matters
> either way.
>
>   
>>>>  * The status message/chat topic goes to the right of the screenname
>>>>    instead of below.
>>>>         
>> What was the rationale of this change? You seem to still have enough
>> room for two lines.
>>     
>
> This I don't think I like at all, the visual distinction of the new line
> is useful for telling them apart above and beyond the formatting
> differences.
>
>   
>>>>  * The tab is displayed even when you have only one tab.
>>>>  * You cannot drag-n-drop the infopane for anything.
>>>>         
>> A few people have mentioned "widget jumping" as the reason they prefer
>> always having tabs. Lots of people think it's silly having tabs when
>> there's only one conversation window is open. I'm impartial (really!).
>> Is "widget jumping" really an issue? I can't honestly imagine it is.
>>     
>
> Widget-jumping aside (and yes I do find it annoying but have been tending
> to always have more than one window open lately and as such haven't
> noticed it much) I've been finding lately that when I close multiple tabs
> at once I always use the tab X button instead of the window X button or my
> wm:s close_frame binding. Given that the fact that the last tab has no
> such button means I need to stop clicking and either move the mouse or
> switch to the binding. That's been a tad annoying recently.
>
> Also, given that we are trying to go for visual consistency I think
> keeping the tab around does that better than removing it. Not to mention
> that this now causes people to need to realize that they can drag and drop
> both the tab and the infopane to move conversations around which is
> something I imagine mostpeople won't assume by default.
>
> But I'll live with either way this part works when all is said and done, I
> just think not making this change will prevent whining that will happen if
> we make it, and the benefits to making it aren't particularly apparent or
> important.
>
> 	-Etan
>
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