Tab display feature requests

Tres Finocchiaro tres.finocchiaro at gmail.com
Wed Nov 28 11:05:18 EST 2012


Dexx,

I took the time to read your feedback and I think you are asking for an
enhancement to the way tabs are handled as well as a bug fix to the
notification colors.

The developers call these "bug reports".  Even though one is an enhancement
request, still follow the same process, just categorize it as an
enhancement.

The most direct way to communicate your issues to the Pidgin developers is
to open a bug report.  One for each item.  Generally, bug fixes get
prioritized over enhancement requests.  For example, if this tab
functionality was created by GTK (a framework that Pidgin uses), the Pidgin
developers may not be able to readily fix this and additional reporting to
the GTK project may be needed.

Pidgin provides a great way to get involved with bug reports and offers a
subscription to the bug so that you can be notified when changes are made
to it, or duplicates of that bug are reported.

https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/TipsForBugReports

-Tres



On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 9:13 AM, Dexx Mandele <probatos at gmail.com> wrote:

> First of all the obligatory (though entirely honest) gushing praise for
> the product. You guys make my work so much easier, thank you.
>
> Now to get down to brass tacks: there are two, admittedly minor, problems
> that have been bugging me for ages, both regarding your tab system.
>
> 1) I have a very narrow chat window and my open windows are listed at the
> top of my window. This means that I usually have more tabs open than can
> comfortably fit. Fortunately Pidgin crops those off the screen, allowing me
> to access them with either ctrl+tab or by clicking the tiny arrows left and
> right of the visible tabs. This is pretty close to my ideal solution, it
> allows easy access to out-of-sight tabs without distorting my chat window
> too much. My problem is with the left and right arrow keys (as mentioned
> before, the ones to the left and right of the visible tabs), which shift
> the focus of my current window one tab to the left or right on click. This
> makes absolutely no sense to me. If I wanted to shift focus from one
> visible tab to another I'd simply be clicking the other tab as it is far
> more visible and easier to pinpoint than the tiny arrow. The arrow should
> be shifting the entire selection of visible tabs. To illustrate:
>
> I'm talking to Hank, and at the top of my screen I see (all-caps = the tab
> with focus)
>
> <HANK/Jane/Margaret/Tom>
>
> If I want to talk to Jeff (who I know is in a tab to the right of Tom), I
> naturally click >, which I presume will leave me with
>
> <DON/Jeff/Lisa/Dolly>
>
> With either Don having focus or focus remaining on Hank, either makes some
> degree of sense. I now have access to four more tabs, with a significant
> chance of locating and finding the person I'm looking for, all with a
> single click.
>
> Instead, Pidgin gives me
>
> <Hank/JANE/Margaret/Tom>
>
> Once again, if I wanted to talk to Jane, I'd be clicking Jane, instead of
> finding the tiny little arrow button and clicking that. If I want to
> navigate to an invisible tab I have to click the button three more times
> before finally having just one more tab appear. Slightly more ideal is
> clicking Tom and then clicking the arrow key, which still leaves me with
> just one previously invisible tab and at least one superfluous click.
>
> In practice the lack of a practical tab searching system means I often
> switch back to my buddy list and finding a user there, even though I know I
> already have a conversation with that person open, simply because it's
> faster than ctrl+tabbing my way through 10+ tabs one by one.
>
> 2) When I have a new message waiting for me in a tab, the tab title turns
> blue. When I open that tab and view the contents, the title switches back
> to black. I love that. The simple and intuitive visualization is obvious
> without being obtrusive. What I don't get is why that can't be implemented
> for 'user is typing' and 'user has stopped typing'. Respectively, these
> states change the title color to yellow and green. However, if I click the
> tab, thereby acknowledging the change in state, the title remains yellow or
> green! Only if the other user submits his message (turning the title blue)
> does the system allow me to revert the message title to black. This
> wouldn't be a significant problem if all messages ever started were also
> submitted within a reasonable time-frame. However, in my less than ideal
> world users often start typing something, think better of it, and end up
> responding hours later (if at all). This leaves me with a green/yellow
> warning title that constantly catches my eye and triggers a curious 'hey,
> did I get a new message?' response without actually providing new info.
>
> In short; please revert the message title to black after I open a window
> in which a user is typing/has stopped typing.
>
>
> In conclusion: love you guys, great product, keep up the good work, and
> thanks in advance for anything you could do to help me out with my horrific
> first world problems.
>
>
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-- 
- Tres.Finocchiaro at gmail.com
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