Conversation window redesign

[John Bailey]

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Sean Egan wrote:
> Here's another version where the layout more closely matches that of
> the buddy list: http://pidgin.im/~seanegan/convwindowmock-2.png
> 
> This eliminates redundancy. The two lines are less cluttered than the
> three, and it makes conceptual sense. It wouldn't be out of the realm
> of reason to give this the blist's tooltip and context menu as well.

I like this.  Then again, I also liked the killing of several UI elements that
have generated a ton of backlash (send button, some icons, etc.).  I definitely
like the idea of giving this pane the blist's tooltips and context menus as well.

I have an additional idea that may prove a pain to implement.  There is an open
ticket requesting notification that the active recipient in a conversation has
changed, and there has been a request to have a conversation switch to the new
priority buddy when the existing one signs off.  Both situations do make a lot
of sense to have a notification for.

By having what is essentially a blist node with the prpl icon in the emblem
column, this presents us an area to provide said notification, by changing the
background color of this pane, or by making it blink, or some other idea I've
not had the foresight to have yet.

Another option that exists with or without this redesign is to have something
similar to the headlines thing in the blist to provide this notification.

As for the toolbar, I know it's a *ton* of added complexity and just as much
additional potential bugginess, but what if we had code that detected the
(visible?) width of the toolbar, and if it is insufficient for the eight--or
however many there are--buttons, change to the condensed form?

> http://pidgin.im/~seanegan/new-conversation-window.png This is Hylke's
> original mockup, which includes -vv features, but we both agree that
> pane was too large.

Hylke's mockup could really benefit from being more like yours.  Instead of the
video and audio buttons being labeled, we could have them be just icons to take
up less space yet still be useful.  If we were to do that though we'd need an
icon that makes it more obvious the mic is actually a mic.

John
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