unity-design team mailing list archive

[James Putt <putt.james@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 24 June 2010 06:07, Frederik Nnaji <frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 14:46, Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> On 21/06/10 10:42, James Putt wrote:
>>
>> I agree colour is significant. I was considering that the top menu by
>> convention is monochromatic with certain colours having a particular
>> meaning, and how having different icons in the drop down menu to the icons
>> representing the menu would play out.
>>
>> In order to avoid the panel going gaudy, and to keep colour significant,
>> we should only use colour for "off-nominal and exceptional" situations.
>
> yes one can indicate presence status without color, see here:
> http://tango.freedesktop.org/Icon_Metaphors
> yet the first thing is to replace the bubbles in the MeMenu with symbolic
> icons that represent not solely chat.
>
>>
>> So we need to think carefully about whether being offline is an "alert"
>> condition or not. I don't really think it is.

Neither do I :)

>
> Online/offline status doesn't belong into the Me Menu.
>
> The statuses the MeMenu wants to indicate, IIRC, are presence status and
> sign-in status of social services, not online status.

So if my sign-in status is "i'm not signed in", how would the MeMenu's
status convey this?

>
> Offline/Online belongs somewhere else.
> Martin Owens registered a blueprint for this last year, you can find it
> here:
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/lucid-online-status
>

That blueprint is about network connectivity, not social service
connectivity... I agree that is a separate concern from the MeMenu.
Instead of saying "offline" maybe I'll stick to "signed out".