Re: [Ayatana] Me & Messaging Indicator Menu

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx wrote on 28/12/10 20:40:
>
> MPT, here's shot at it, i took my time to do it in Inkscape now ;)
>
> it portrays a new Me/Messaging Menu layout.

That's intriguing. I don't understand what the gap is for, though, or
how the bottom items work. Are they expanding sections?

So that people can easily tell where where one menu stops and the next
begins, all menu titles need to be one icon and/or (preferably or) one
piece of text. Three icons plus text is way too much.

> state:
> * DoNotDisturb is off
> * About Me needs a good place to go

I think Gnome 3 is (finally!) abandoning About Me anyway.

> * no new IM conversations ('cause i'm not sure how to populate that
> view best)
> * no status text field for now..

A design for something like this needs to still look okay when including
all possible elements. You can decide to abolish particular elements,
but it needs to be deliberate. :-)

> * real name in panel, consistent with GDM greeter

That should still be optional (because some people have wide names), so
if we don't have About Me, we'd need to figure out somewhere else to put
the option.

> tbh, i still don't see the significance of having available, invisible
> and offline in the menu, nevertheless here it is, by the spec.

They're three distinct states in most IM clients. But that's probably
better discussed in the "do not disturb" thread.

> In our effort to reduce the number of "icons" in the UI, i also omitted
> the dot that would identify which Presence state is currently enabled.
> I think that should be obvious, since it is shown in the panel already,
> and there are more icon-free ways of highlighting stuff as "active",
> Perhaps the text "busy" should be bold-faced?
>...

Whether the status is in the title depends on how you fix the title (to
not have three icons any more). But regardless, simplifying this menu by
presenting a one-of-several state (IM status) in a custom way would make
Ubuntu's *overall* interface more complex. People would need to learn
two ways that Ubuntu presented one-of-several states, rather than one.

- -- 
mpt
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