Re: ThreePointOne: Contacts

[Travis Reitter <travis reitter collabora co uk>]

On Tue, 2011-04-19 at 10:01 +0200, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-04-18 at 11:52 -0700, Travis Reitter wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2011-04-18 at 20:29 +0200, Johannes Schmid wrote:
>  
> > > 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>
> 
> By meta you mean the "windows key" thing?

Right.

> > 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).
> 
> Yeah, this sounds like about the right thing. I'm thinking we could have
> a new tab in addition to the windows and applications one listing
> people, probably showing the online ones first, or at least making that
> information prominent. Clicking on a person should let you easily send
> mail, start a im conversation or send a file. Additionally these should
> show up on the search results, and be possible to put in the dash.

Yeah, a people tab makes sense too.

Note that FolksIndividuals (ie, people) can be marked as favorites. If
it's feasible, it'd be nice to determine membership in the dash based on
whether contacts are favorites, though we may want to confirm that users
generally only set a few people as favorites, since the dash quickly
gets crowded even just with programs. And I'm guessing we'd want a gap
to separate programs and people.

> > > 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.
> 
> Yeah, I think this is somewhat analogous to the file management
> situation. If you just want to find or open a file you can use the
> shell, but if you want to do more work you'd start the file manager.
> 
> So, the gnome-shell integrated part is about day-to-day using of the
> already set up stuff, whereas the contacts app is where you'd fill in
> information, or do more complex stuff like link contacts or create
> groups. 
> 
> There are other integration points we must think about too. Whatever we
> come up with should imho replace the contacts pane in evolution, and
> must allow interaction with evolution (dnd onto composer windows, etc).
> Also, we should have something that corresponds to clicking on the "to"
> button in the evo compositor to select a single email (or im if used for
> elsewhere) address to add.

There are vague/undefined plans to create folks-gtk at some point to
supply an "Open Person..." dialog, a type-ahead completer, etc, since
that would be generally-useful in a people-filled desktop.

-Travis