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

[Adrian Kreher]

On Wednesday 10 October 2007 11:16:37 pm Charliep wrote:
> 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 have Pidgin running almost all the time on Linux (which is turned on 24/7), 
and sometimes have two instances running. I am continuously in 3 IRC chats 
(with varied activity) as well. I have never seen any significant CPU usage 
associated with it unless a large amount of activity is occurring.

> 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.

My opinion is that skins are a horrible idea for all programs. All popular 
skins that I have seen make a program look terribly misplaced from my desktop 
and it violates many of the usability concepts found across many programs.

> 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.

Please read this: 
http://www.pidgin.im/~seanegan/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/momentum.html

The only times I have had to deal with protocols at all since using Pidgin 
have been for adding new contacts. I like not seeing the clutter of all those 
icons for whatever service someone happens to be using at the moment. It's 
nice to not see the branding of 4 different IM networks all the time.

> 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.

Space conservation has been a popular topic recently, and the recent changes 
in the IM window make it look much better and save a significant amount of 
space.

> 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.

I have 4 types of IM accounts signed on at all times. If you are using a 
client that supports multiple types, you'll probably have me added on more 
than one. I also use GTalk when I am connected remotely into my computer, but 
I don't want to disturb my regular Pidgin session. Quick, which one am I 
actually using at a given time?

Also, I remember the relative position of people in my buddy list easier than 
their protocol, and my buddy list is fairly simple as far as protocol variety 
(~95% are AIM users).

> 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.

Wrong, it's Pidgin, not Pigeon. "A pidgin is a simplified language... Pidgins 
are not the native language of any speech community, but are instead learned 
as second languages." - Wikipedia page on pidgin languages (the namesake for 
Pidgin, the IM client). This is a good definition of a bunch of IM services.

Also, I think you will find that the Pidgin developers are the very same ones 
who worked on Gaim.
-- 
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Adrian Kreher