unity-design team mailing list archive

[Remco <remco47@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 17:35, Jeremy Nickurak <jeremy@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> How do you access an addressbook of 2,000 entries with a traditional window?
> That seems like a daunting task by itself, so I'd be curious to know what
> the strategy there is.

In the Contact List of Empathy, if you start typing the name of the
one you are looking for, a search box will appear. You'll end up
selecting the entry. There are a number of problems with this:

* The search box is invisible until you start typing, making it
difficult to discover. Maybe the status text box should be moved to
the bottom, like in Pidgin, so that an always-visible search box can
be placed at the top of the list.

* It only searches contacts that are initially visible in the list.
Offline contacts are usually hidden. You should be able to also find
offline contacts, who you could then send an offline message or an
email (that last functionality does not currently exist though).

* When doing the search, non-matching entries remain visible. It's
just that the selection moves to the first visible entry.

* The search only matches the beginning of entries. You can't type
"Doe" and expect to find John Doe. You have to start with "J".

In the Messaging Menu, I would not place a list of all contacts. That
could get messy with 2000 contacts. It's better to just put a search
box there. If you start typing in the search box, matching contacts
will start appearing in the menu. Maybe the concept of "favorite
contacts" could be introduced, so you can have a couple of contacts
that appear in the menu before searching.

-- 
Remco