Re: [Ayatana] What do app authors do for Account Dialogs?

[Luke Benstead <kazade@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I'm sort of thread hijacking a little here (apologies for that), but this is actually close to something I've been meaning to bring up here for a while.

On my phone, when I set it up for the first time I was asked if I want to set up certain accounts (e.g. flickr, Facebook, Twitter etc.) and by doing so I unlocked features (e.g. downloading contact pictures, uploading pictures to flickr etc.).

What with Ubuntu becoming "social" I'm wondering if we should be doing something similar, a sort of online account manager which manages the accounts across the desktop.

Here's my thinking, imagine the first time you login to Ubuntu you are provided with an account setup wizard that allows you to register accounts for different purposes. For example:

* Imgur, Flickr, ImageShack, Picasa TwitPic, FB* (image hosting services)
* Twitter, Facebook*, Identica, Google Buzz (social networking)
* Ubuntu One, Dropbox (file hosting services)
* Google Talk, MSN, Jabber (IM services)
* Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo (email services)

Adding each of these would add them to the appropriate application (e.g Gwibber, Evolution, Empathy) but would also unlock features (e.g. Right clicking and image in Nautilus might have a "Share on Flickr" option). 

I think some kind of global account system, with an API would allow us to code some really cool stuff into the desktop. So, as a concrete example, Shotwell might be able to query for a list of available image hosting services that the user has accounts for, and provide an "Upload to..." option.

I'm also thinking that the account manager itself could use a extension system for the accounts, so installing packages like account-manager-flickr would add it to the account manager... or something like that.

Anyway, sorry to take this slightly OT, just thought I'd throw this out there,

Luke.

On 8 October 2010 14:03, Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx wrote on 08/10/10 09:48:
>...

> On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 02:37, Jorge O. Castro <jorge@xxxxxxxxxx

>...

>> I have an upstream working on an application, he wants to add an
>> account dialog to his application, this is what he came up with:
>> http://i.imgur.com/9vFZF.png
>>
>> So at first glance I thought "That doesn't look right". Here's
>> gwibber's account dialog: http://i.imgur.com/e504n.png
>>
>> Gwibber's is based on Empathy. Ken decided that it was important for
>> the Gwibber account manager to operate as a separate application
>> outside of Gwibber itself. While he was reimplementing it, he took the
>> opportunity to streamline it and change the design to make it more
>> consistent with the account dialog that Empathy had at the time.
>> (Because hey, why not, make them behave the same!)

Empathy's has improved a bit, partly influenced by a design I did for it
a year ago. <http://live.gnome.org/Empathy/AccountsAndSettings>

I still think it's an annoying problem for Empathy's "Accounts",
"Personal Information", and "Preferences" to be three separate windows.

>> Here's a separate design that Ryan had come up with (just to put it
>> out here): http://s3.amazonaws.com/scrnshots.com/screenshots/191324/gwibber-home-screenpng

That's probably giving it undue prominence.

>> From playing with both the empathy and gwibber dialogs they seem
>> similar enough for most people to not care -- though there are some
>> small inconsistencies that should be fixed. Evolution is different, as
>> well as other apps. Searching through the GNOME wiki and HIG doesn't
>> seem to give me any answers. Has anyone out there done research into
>> this topic? Is there supposed to be an example application where can I
>> point upstream application authors to emulate when it comes to adding
>> account information? Is anyone aware of GNOME handling what app
>> authors should do? I'd be more than happy to take the conversation
>> upstream if that's where it should be.

I haven't seen any Ubuntu application present accounts well yet. So I'd
rather see more experimentation, than projects agreeing on a
consistently bad design.

> Luke started a thread a while ago.. he addressed the User Accounts
> dialog, but this is a beautiful solution that can also work for many
> other types of account setup wizards etc..
>
> On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 16:10, Allan Day <allanpday@xxxxxxxxx

> <mailto:allanpday@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>...

>> [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UserAccountDialog
>
> i think this is the most reasonable thing to look at for now, if one
> is looking for a good design to model an accounts dialog after..

>...

The main issue with that design (as I told its developers a couple of
years ago) is the excessive modality. There shouldn't need to be a
separate "Changing password for" dialog, or a separate "Restrictions"/
"Account Information" dialog.

- --
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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