Well, I'm probably leaving a ton of stuff out but the most obvious way to merge them and still include EVERYTHING would be this:
http://i.imgur.com/kkiPP.png
You can see how it's divided into four sections: chat, mail, broadcast and personal information, all of them with all the combined items of both menus. One can argue that it takes a lot of space and shows too many options, to which we would have some solutions:
- Instead of showing all the chat statuses separately, show them inside a "status" menu.
- Remove the "accounts" items, since they can easily be reached from their apps and are unlikely to be used daily; or integrate them as an icon in the same line as the "chat" and "broadcast" app launchers, similar to how there were pins on Tomboy's panel menu, or make a general "accounts" dialogue that handles mail, chat, broadcast and Ubuntu One accounts
We could choose what indications to show if there aren't any more important ones:
- Disconnected, if there is absolutely nothing else to show.
- Status, if Empathy is open and you're connected, and there is nothing else to show.
- Mail, regardless of your chat status, if you got mail.
- Chat, if you got a new chat message, regardless of whether you have mail or not.
I chose chat over mail because IM conversations convey more immediacy than mail, and the user probably wants to answer them before. But it could be the other way around, and there are yet other options:
- Show both icons, side by side.
- Alternate both of them.
- Use a different icon that shows both events by e.g. combining an envelope with a speech bubble, or using a different colour.
What's your take on those, Matthew?
Cheers,
David.
