Re: ThreePointOne: Contacts

[Travis Reitter <travis reitter collabora co uk>]

Hi Johannes,

On Mon, 2011-04-18 at 20:29 +0200, Johannes Schmid wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> > As far as the actual UX, I think the combination of contact search from
> > the shell Activities view (like Morten Mjelva's SoC idea [4] and the
> > feature bug I've filed [5]) and a "contact center" like Allan Day/Daniel
> > Siegel/Salomon Sickert/et al mocked up [6][7] would make our Contacts
> > support in Gnome 3.2 really nice.
> 
> While using GNOME 3.0 on my desktop now for a week I wanted to share my
> thoughs on the UI. The problem in the current situation is that the
> shell provides a nice chat integration but to start a new chat you have
> to use the "Contact List" window of empathy which feels totally
> out-of-place. It is also one of the windows you really don't want to see
> in the overview.

Agreed. I'd like my general chat process to just be:

<Meta>, <start typing person's name>+<Enter>

which is the same way I launch all my applications in Gnome Shell (and
is one of the most compelling features of it, I think). Like launching
programs, you would be able to pause to see the full results list and
perform more-specific actions (such as selecting the exact account and
contact you want to initiate the chat from and to, as Empathy lets you
do now).

> So for 3.2 it would be great to totally replace the "Contact List"
> window with a "People" (or whatever) tab in Activities. Of course all
> the libfolks stuff to integrate e-mail contacts and other stuff is a
> prerequirement here but it would be a good time for the designers now to
> give a basic idea of the look and feel independant from the backend
> work.

> What Daniel and Salamon mocked-up is certainly a nice start but I think
> a dedicated window for it doesn't fit with the overall shell design
> well.

I think it makes sense to have both. The shell search provider would
focus on communicating with existing contacts (similar to launching
programs), whereas the stand-alone program would be more focused on
adding and managing contacts (which are much-rarer actions). And it
still makes sense to have the communication buttons in the stand-alone
program to make the use case of "add a person, start chat/call with
them" smoother than adding them there, then going to the Activities tab
to start the communication.

-Travis