Registering new accounts

Sean Egan seanegan at gmail.com
Tue May 8 16:30:56 EDT 2007


When adding an XMPP Account to Pidgin, the user is presented with
three buttons after filling out their credentials: Register, Cancel,
and Save.

Cancel aborts the process of adding an account. Save adds the account
to Pidgin and logs it on. Register attemtps to create a new account
with these credentials on the server.

It is extremely common for people to have no idea what the difference
between Register and Add is, and to hit "Register" after adding their
e.g. Google Talk account information, then getting some cryptic error
message.

There are a few things we should probably do. Replacing "Save" with
"Add" might make it more obvious what it does. "Save" is kinda vague.

"Register" should also be clearer. "Register new account," "Register
with server," all might work. They may be a bit long for a button. It
might be worthwhile to make it a checkbox along the lines of "Create
this account on the server" or some such.

The trick is making sure it's clear the difference between 'new to
Pidgin' and 'new to the server."

The harder, but more foolproof alternative would be to create a wholly
new "Create a new account" UI that contained this dialog for prpls
that supported it, and linked to places like http://screenname.aol.com
for other accounts.

-s.



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