Re: People widgets plans

[Marina Zhurakhinskaya <marinaz redhat com>]

> > Hovering to bring up the details dialog seems inconsistent with the rest of
> > the bigboard. We usually just show some tooltip when you hover over
> > something. Also, currently, if you hover over the currently played music
> > information which can be a part of the person item view, it brings up the
> > music details. On the other hand, right click in the Files stock shows the
> > slideout.  Maybe we can do the same in the people stock.
> >     
>
> I agree with Owen that right click is not discoverable enough.
>   
Yeah, I agree that right click is not discoverable enough. But hovering 
introduces some problems, mainly the one with the user being able to get 
into the slideout to click inside it. It can be tested out though. We 
originally wanted to have the slideouts show up when you hover over an 
item in a stock, but were deterred by having to have an algorithm for 
"mousing over" to the slideout described by Owen.
>   
> > Though I too find it confusing that clicking on some sections of the person
> > item brings up the chat, and clicking on other sections brings up the
> > details slideout, I am not sure that using the left click on any part of the
> > person item should be dedicated to opening the chat. I find that I want to
> > lookup some details (such as an e-mail or an external account) about the
> > person at least as often as I want to open a chat dialog. Maybe we can just
> > have an explicit "Chat" link next to a presence icon.
> >     
>
> I think we should try to simplify the item view and to push actions
> out to details dialog. The space on the bigboard is limited and the
> repetition of the same action link for each of the items is visually
> distracting.
>
> What about making left click mean "talk with"? It would start a chat
> when possible and fallback to email. It's a good default because it
> should apply to almost all the items displayed, it's the most direct
> action and it's something that people will want to do very often.
>   
Defaulting to an e-mail is fine, but than we run in into the problem 
that we'll try to open a local mail application that might not be set up 
or be set up for an account the user would rather not use for writing an 
e-mail (i.e. work account vs. the user wanting to write an e-mail from 
their Gmail account).

Making the person items in the people stock more compact would be great 
though!
> > It is also good to keep in mind that there is a people browser view that you
> > get when you click More on the people stock, and develop these views in
> > parallel. Left-clicking on the items there currently shows the person's
> > details in the view on the left.
> >     
>
> I don't think we need consistency there, they are different kind of UI
> objects (proof in the fact that right click is more discoverable in
> the browser than in the widget).
>   
Ok, that's true, we don't need consistency between stock UI and browser 
UI. Also, the Files browser needs to have some work done on it to make 
it more consistent with other browsers (i.e. have a details view on the 
left to show file details, and have those come up on left-click).
> > Also, I noticed that the default action for the people search results right
> > now is to open a Mugshot page. This needs to change, since IM contacts or
> > people who have not accepted a Mugshot invitation do not have a Mugshot
> > page. I think we should open a people browser with the person item selected
> > and the details showing in all cases.
> >     
>
> Do we have a mail address in this case?
>
> In the case we don't have a mail, nor an im contact, I think left
> click could just show the details dialog.
>   
I think we have email addresses in most cases. Definitely in the case of 
Mugshot, and I guess it is likely that an IM protocol would provide us 
with an e-mail address too.

I was talking about clicking on a search result in the search stock 
here, which itself is a slideout. So showing another slideout won't 
quite work. Showing the details dialog in the people browser in that 
case would make most sense. In general, I think it's a better action for 
the search results. Otherwise, if you want to do something other than 
talk to the person, you'd have to search for that person again in the 
people browser after finding them through the search results in the 
search stock.

Marina