ulc-devs team mailing list archive

[Patrick Seemann <patsee14@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello everyone,

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 10:55 PM, Thibaut Brandscheid <randaltor@xxxxxx>wrote:

>
> 2011/11/26 Frederik Elwert <frederik.elwert@xxxxxx>
>
>>     1. What categories make sense for our lens? (Categories are the
>>        sections the main dash view provides for displaying results,
>>        like “most used apps”, “installed apps”, and “downloadable apps”
>>        for the application lens.)
>
> 1. Online Contacts (what if nobody is online - empty first category???)
>

The "online contacts" category would indeed by empty and therefore not be
displayed. The categories only become visible if there is at least one item
to show. Hope this answers your question :)

2. *Attachments & Links* (would display attachments and links the user has
> recently sent or received through mail or IM)
> 3. All Contacts
>
> About Attachments & Links:
> Unconventional, but could be a very useful category. This is only possible
> in the Dash. The Dash displays information from a global perspective and
> not from an application centric perspective, so why not take the chance and
> merge useful contact related information and present them to the user?
>

sounds interesting. I'm not sure if I know what you mean. What would that
look like? Would we display let's say a picture that I've sent
or received in an email (sometime in the past) as a separate item in the
category "attachments and links"? So that you could search for <some name>
and directly open attachments and links from the dash?



>     3. How to display results in the dash?
>>
> I'm one of the 'Community Proposed Unity Design' authors, the idea of
> displaying contact information directly in the Dash was to show contact
> information as fast as possible. Since it is not possible (right now),
> let's use GNOME contacts - as suggested - *but add to the Dash output →
> Icon + Name + Mobile number* (if the Dash supports line breaks).
> Let's use the vertical renderer.
>

I'm not sure if a vertical renderer would work if we want to display
additional information, as you said, I also don't know if we can work with
line breaks. If we can't use the vertical renderer, maybe a filter option
"show contact details" could be helpful. Clicking this option would make
the dash switch to using horizontal renderers instead, which would give us
some more space for additional text. That way we have a clean initial
layout (vertical) with the possibility to switch to showing more
information.

I don't know about you all, but I think I don't ever need to look up any
mobile numbers. Mainly because I have them all stored in my cell phone and
if I want to call someone, I just use my phones contacts app. So I think
showing the mobile number below each name wouldn't really give me any extra
(useful) information.



> An other idea I had last week was to display the *user-and-I activity* by
> a colored bar at the bottom of the user icon (green, orange, gray). This
> feature would allow to get a quick overview on the sea of Dash icons
> (negative: it would reduce the overall image size of the icon).
> green = active, a lot of communication
> orange = medium
> gray = no communication for at last e.g. 6 months
>
> If we are able to receive user activity data, it would be consistent to
> include it as Dash filter, too. Like the file size feature in the files &
> folder lens, it would be possible to display only contacts that match a
> specific activity like: don't show inactive (grey) contacts or show only
> active contacts.
>

good idea! I think we should keep that in mind and look into it again when
we have the lens and its essential functionality working.


>
> I don't know if my suggested ideas are technically feasible. Lets think of
> what would be cool, then of what we can get. Ideas like to grow, your
> invited to evolve them further.
> :)
>

yes definitely! Thinking about lots of different scenarios and use cases is
a good thing to do. If we are eventually able to implement what we come up
with is another question :P

Regards,
-- 
Patrick Seemann

launchpad: ~patrickseemann
irc.freenode.net: patsee14