Change the Green Online Icon to an Icon reflecting the IM Protocol?

[Charliep]

Wow!

Okay, then forget everything complimentary I just said about Pidgin. What a
stupid program.

After using Pidgin for a few hours I have discovered the incredible penalty
I pay for the stability and ease of installation for this program: It is a
memory and CPU resources FAT PIG. It regularly uses around 12% average of my
CPU cycles for a Pentium M 1.7 GHz. Miranda and Trillian Pro both average at
around ZERO%.

I also cannot use a program where the developers burry their heads in the
dirt and ignore the wishes and the interests of users.

The 'art' of designing a good UI is to LISTEN to your users and to design
something that is functional and easy and intuitive to use. If your users
ask for Skins then you give them Skins. Eventually one user who knows
nothing about programming will develop a great Skin that will become more
popular than the original Skin, and then it will become the standard.

After skimming the threads Gary pointed out I am just dumbfounded that the
developers can be so pig headed. The present icons without protocol serve NO
PURPOSE. They just tell you whether the user is online or away or busy or
whatever. This could EASILY be done by the color of the text for the name of
the user, or if you really insist to be graphical, the shade of the Avatar
or the frame of the Avatar for a particular user.

to the programmers who ask the question "Why do you need to know the
protocol on the buddy list" my answer is "Why do you need to know why I need
to know that?" Just make it work and stop trying to be something you are not
- a UI specialist. 

The EASIEST reason is because that is the way it was built before, so that
is the way it should be built goiing forward because people are used to it.
Make your users happy.

The better reason is the present design provides NO INFORMATION that cannot
be provided in a different manner. It is a stupid, brain dead, redundant,
space wasting design.

Another good reason is that it makes it easier for the user to find a
particular contact within his list of contacts inside Pidgin. He knows he is
looking for an AOL user, so he can ignore all the other icons that are
unrelated to AOL.

It is very unfortunate to see that GAIM has fallen into the hands of a bunch
of programmers who make design decisions without any regard to the opinions
of the users. Pidgins are rats with wings! The choice of this stupid name
accurately reflects the present state of this stupid application.



Gary Kramlich wrote:
> 
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> Charliep wrote:
>> I have a question about Pidgin: Is there a way to Change the Green Online
>> Icon to an Icon reflecting the IM Protocol?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Please see the ridiculously long email threads in the archives[1] about
> this topic as well as trac[2].
> 
> [1] http://pidgin.im/pipermail/devel/
> [2] http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/414
> 
> - --
> Gary Kramlich <grim at reaperworld.com>
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> 
> 

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