Re: GNOME 3.2 ideas and plans

[Guillaume Desmottes <gdesmott gnome org>]

Hi Martyn,


Thanks for this very detailed list.

Le mardi 22 mars 2011 à 18:58 +0000, Martyn Russell a écrit :
> For me (and these are regressions since Gossip, possibly related to 
> cross protocol compatibility in places?):
> 
> - Can't name favourite chatrooms so they have a hideous title in tabs

Good catch. I opened https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=646077

> - Chat windows expand horizontally when typing a lot of text.

That's actually a GTK+ bug:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=587441

> - My nick constantly resets to my Jabber ID (previously the part before 
> '@' was at least used as a fallback).

That's a nasty one. We recently fixed various place which could lead to
this bug, so I'd be interested to know if you are still experiencing
this issue with a recent Empathy and telepathy-mission-control.
If you do, please comment on
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=631730

> - Showing messages to me in the actual group chat window would be nice, 
> currently we just highlight the tab if we get a message directly, but 
> for historical purposes, I miss not seeing it when I scroll back up.

You mean highlighting the message itself in the chat window?

> - Showing the date on every message in group chat is irritating 
> especially when copy/pasting. Once per "block" or per 5 minutes would 
> make more sense. It would also reduce the UI noise.

Good point; I opened https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=646081

> Other than that, UI wise, my eye notices things like:
> 
> - Protocols dialog needs some love and is not aligned or spaced our 
> nicely in some cases.

You mean the accounts dialog? We've done some tweaks in it this cycle.
Let us know if you observe any specific issue.

> - Contacts menu item in a group chat window has no menu items?! It 
> should be removed/hidden in that case.

It's now unsensitive.

> - Tabs menu in group chats should be removed entirely. You can do all 
> these things with keyboard shortcuts and even with those I don't ever do 
> it. IMO it's just UI clutter (IIRC we removed this in Gossip).

Don't know, Epiphany has one and I think it's good to stay coherent
here.

> - The rooms menu list (favourites) would be much nicer if they were 
> grouped according to protocol. Listing IRC/Jabber groups together would 
> look much nicer.

Not sure; alphabetic order could make more sense for most users to who
the protocol is just an implementation detail.
 
> - Why can I expand the "Rooms List" in the join group chat for FaceBook 
> accounts if there are no rooms? This should be insensitive really.

Facebook is a strange beast.
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26823 is about detecting
Facebook connection in Gabble and disable unsupported features.

> - File Transfers dialog has no "Close" button, like every other dialog.

I can't believe I never noticed that before. I opened
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=646084

> - The information dialog looks really unaligned regarding the widgets 
> packed in there. I know this dialog is quite hard to get right, we 
> constantly refactored this in Gossip due to the dynamic nature of the 
> data that can be shown there. There is also a frame round the details at 
> the top for some reason which I don't think the HIG suggests.

Yeah this dialog is a real pain. :(

> - Why do we show the contact's presence information in the "Edit Contact 
> Information", it doesn't seem useful to put that there. The protocol 
> icon is though, nice touch ;)

Good point. I opened https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=646085

> - The "Edit Contact Information" used to have a "Fetch" so you could get 
> the default from the v-card (in cases where you have a local 
> alternative). I actually missed that recently when I wanted it. Perhaps 
> I am being a bit eccentric though :)

We have some plan to make the distinction between the alias (defined by
the contact) and the pet name (defined by the user), but that can be
tricky from an UI pov.

> - In group chats, I see other people's avatars, but not my own for my 
> messages?

That's a Gabble bug: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32017

> Features I would like to see (and wanted in Gossip actually):
> 
> - Highlighting when words are mentioned (like xchat does), not just my 
> nick in a room.

I guess this could be implemented as a plugin at some point?
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=547208 is about adding
plugins support.

> - I quite like the horizontal line which xchat uses so you know how far 
> in the back log you need to read to be up to date.

So am I: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=443884
That's a bit tricky to implement though. Adium themes seems to have a
way to display unread messages, maybe that could be an alternative to
that.

> - Remembering the last protocol I joined a room with in the "Rooms List" 
> dialog would be good too, I only do it from 1 or 2 of them (Jabber/IRC) 
> anyway.

Good idea: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=646087

> - Previous conversations view should really select the protocol which 
> you last sent a message to/received one from. I always have to select a 
> protocol which isn't ever used because it is the last in the list it 
> seems? This widget seems the same all over the app and I have the same 
> issue everywhere it is used (i.e. wrong protocol).

Makes sense. This should be less of an issue with our new log viewer
design though: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=619866

> - Time the person has been away would be really nice.

Most (all?) protocols don't give us this information, so the only way to
do it is to record it ourself. But yeah, I guess that can be useful:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=646089

> Don't take this as a personal thing (given the history with Gossip), I 
> know how hard it is to integrate n protocols into 1 workable UI. Just 
> thought I would share the things which, to me, could be improved upon 
> from my daily experience.

Sure, don't worry, such mail is very interesting for us to have a better
idea of what's bothering people and know about new issues.


	G.

-- 
Guillaume Desmottes <gdesmott gnome org>
Jabber <cassidy jabber belnet be>
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