On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 18:32, Shane Fagan
<shanepatrickfagan@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ok so ive been thinking a lot about chat and empathy/telepathy is
awesome but Shell is pulling away from unity in terms of how to best
use it. At the moment we have the default empathy so we have the
window and messaging menu system.
While Shell has a special chat notifier that you can see the chat
history and type but still continue with what you are doing and type
on the fly. I think this is a lot faster, easier and better looking in
general.
yeah, Shell works well with Empathy, up to the point that Empathy becomes a background engine.
The fact that Empathy's UI is the Chat UI we use in Unity is not so fresh, and your mail raises important questions.
Im not saying build a new chat and notification system specifically
for empathy chat but a quick window in the right corner with the last
few messages or something and a text box would do and it would only
pop up if the user clicks on the messaging menu item for that chat. I
think it would be pretty nice to use.
Thoughts?
I think it would make a lot more sense to focus on messaging, especially in the Instant Messaging way you suggest, in the Messaging Menu, than to fill that menu with application launchers, for which purpose we already have the Unity launcher. I think clicking the envelope or whatever other symbolic icon will represent "Conversation" or "Message" in the future should present me with just that: conversations.
Every other thing would be semantically misaligned.