unity-design team mailing list archive

[Apoorva Sharma <appi2012@xxxxxxxxx>]

Right now, the Messaging Menu and MeMenu are kind of connected, in that the
functionality of the MeMenu changes by clicks in the Messaging Menu. For
example, to get a text box for a broadcast account in the MeMenu, the user
has to go to the Messaging Menu to start Gwibber. Furthermore, to actually
use the inactive status buttons in the MeMenu, the user has to start chat
from the messaging menu, To me, this split functionality causes some
problems. Especially since the two menus are separated by a large
date-time-weather applet, how is a user supposed to know how to use the
MeMenu, since all its functions need to be activated from the messaging
menu?

One solution could be merging the two menus, but that could create too large
a menu. A better solution could be to have the textbox and buttons appear
when the user sets up the two accounts for the first time, and to keep them
active. Thus, if the user selects something other than offline as their
status, the chat service should automatically start running in the
background. Also, if someone types in the textbox, an Gwibber isn't running
in the background, it should start by itself. This has the advantage of
allowing the functionalities of the MeMenu to be easily discovered and used,
while still keeping a separation between the "new message" indicator, and
the "my status" menu.

I would like to know what the rationale for the current functionality is.