unity-design team mailing list archive

[Frederik Nnaji <frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Conscious ;)

On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 19:04, Conscious User <conscioususer@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>
> > I think an error-based-offline is an alert condition. In other words, if
> > you set yourself to be Available, and the network disconnects or the
> > server kicks you off, THEN it might be worth putting a red glow or other
> > highlight / feature to draw attention to being offline.
>
> Come to think of it, the concept of "offline" is indeed ambiguous.
>
> Without even going into the color discussion, there should be
> different icons for "offline because you want to" and "offline
> because something happened".
>

yeah, "offline" is ambiguous.
The term belongs into networking and has nothing to do with the MeMenu's
representation of Availability status.
Availability is "Available", "Busy/DoNotDisturb", "Away" and the property
"Invisible". You can be signed out or signed in, "online" and "offline" are
incorrect descriptors that originate in slang rather than proper terms for
what we are discussing. Using these words in order to describe Availability
states would inevitably lead to confusion, since they are reserved
expressions that have something to do with whether or not a system is ready
to communicate via the www.