"Personal bar" mock-up

[Elisée Maurer]

Hello,

I'm a happy user of Pidgin, which, though not perfect, is a valuable
application that I enjoy using. I've been previously using other IM
clients including emesene, WLM, Gajim, Skype, etc.

First of all, thanks to everyone involved for the hard work that has
been put to create Pidgin.

I've been reading the Pidgin devel mailing list for a while now, and
thought I'd do a mock-up with a few changes in the contact list window
to (hopefully) address some issues.

The mock-up is available online here:
http://polyprograms.free.fr/pidgin-contact-list/

There are 2 images, the contact list alone and the contact list along
with explanations.

>From my point of view, the mock-up presents a more user-friendly UI than
the current one. People should have no problem changing their status or
personal message with the modified drop-down menu.

It also clearly separate the two different concepts of status and
personal message, which correspond to different use cases. It also
provides a protocol-transparent way to combine status info and personal
msg, circumventing the protocols' limitations.

I think getting feedback of your current identity (display name, status
and personal message) at a glance is rather important, thus the "me" bar
(which could be placed at the bottom instead of the top).

Based on my knowledge of GTK+, I think all the proposed UI changes are
implementable without requiring to design new widgets or anything.

I hope this helps in some way :). Feel free to comment or ignore.

--
Elisée