unity-design team mailing list archive

[David Prieto <frandavid100@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Matthew,

Only because no-one has done the design work necessary to work out how
> to merge them. Would you like to have a go?
>

Well, I'm probably leaving a ton of stuff out but the most obvious way to
merge them and still include EVERYTHING would be this:

http://i.imgur.com/kkiPP.png

You can see how it's divided into four sections: chat, mail, broadcast and
personal information, all of them with all the combined items of both menus.
One can argue that it takes a lot of space and shows too many options, to
which we would have some solutions:

   - Instead of showing all the chat statuses separately, show them inside a
   "status" menu.
   - Remove the "accounts" items, since they can easily be reached from
   their apps and are unlikely to be used daily; or integrate them as an icon
   in the same line as the "chat" and "broadcast" app launchers, similar to how
   there were pins on Tomboy's panel menu, or make a general "accounts"
   dialogue that handles mail, chat, broadcast and Ubuntu One accounts

Possibly the hardest part is working out how to communicate IM status
> and new-messages status simultaneously.
>

We could choose what indications to show if there aren't any more important
ones:

   1. Disconnected, if there is absolutely nothing else to show.
   2. Status, if Empathy is open and you're connected, and there is nothing
   else to show.
   3. Mail, regardless of your chat status, if you got mail.
   4. Chat, if you got a new chat message, regardless of whether you have
   mail or not.

I chose chat over mail because IM conversations convey more immediacy than
mail, and the user probably wants to answer them before. But it could be the
other way around, and there are yet other options:

   - Show both icons, side by side.
   - Alternate both of them.
   - Use a different icon that shows both events by e.g. combining an
   envelope with a speech bubble, or using a different colour.

What's your take on those, Matthew?

Cheers,

David.