unity-design team mailing list archive

[Jeremy Nickurak <jeremy@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

We've been talking a bit about the advanced capabilities a volume-control
indicator menu could have, and that's got me thinking a bit about how the
empathy contact list works...

We go to the indicator to open the contact list. We select items there, and
interact a bit. Then (if you're like me) you close the contact list window
so it's out of the way until you want it again.

This sounds a lot like the behavior of a menu.

What if opening an 'IM' indicator opened as a menu that you could interact
with, that would show the contacts, their status (with icons) and options to
interact with it (start conversations, voip sessions, add/remove contacts,
join conferences, etc).

This would do a couple really interesting things in my mind:

1) I used to like the 'systray' behavior for empathy, because it gave me one
location on the panel where I could show/hide the empathy window. With a
menu-like approach, all the open/close behavior for the contact-list dialog
becomes unified at one location again.
2) The 'close' vs 'hide' debate over what the big 'X' on the contact list
window's titlebar becomes irrelevant... there's never a real window any
more.

If you're like me, the 'contact list' window is usually long and narrow
(like a menu), with a  long vertical list of entries to interact with (like
a menu).

This would also play nicely with the other IM/social-networking interfaces
that go into indicator menus, like the status-setting UI.

Thoughts?

-- 
Jeremy Nickurak -= Email/XMPP: jeremy@xxxxxxxxxxx =-