Re: Link dialog and Undo for linking

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

2011/12/21 Erick Pérez Castellanos <erick red gmail com>:
> On Wed, 2011-12-21 at 18:54 +0000, Allan Day wrote:
>> 2011/12/20 Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>:
>> > On Tue, 2011-12-20 at 15:55 -0500, Erick Pérez Castellanos wrote:
>> >> Allan has been MIA all day long. We want to talk about Link Dialog and
>> >> it's design. So, if you have any suggestion, any tips in the mockups
>> >> ( and I don't know which of those are final ) shoot. Let's tackle that
>> >> next.
>> >
>> > I think this is the current design:
>> >
>> > https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/raw/master/contacts/png/contact-selector-linking.png
>> >
>> > Sound like a good thing to work on.
>> > I will continue with the contact pane, there is still some details to be
>> > worked out there.
>>
>> Yep, this definitely something that needs doing.
>>
>> The updated design for contact linking is very simple - someone will
>> select 'Link...' from a context menu and then simply select the
>> contact that they want to link to.
>>
>> However, I'm vacilating a little wrt the selection UI for this. I had
>> a grid approach until recently (see the mockup that Alex links to
>> above). I'm not sure that will work with portrait screen orientations,
>> however, so a straight list [1] seems more appropriate. I'm also
>> wondering whether we need to provide more information on the contact
>> that is being linked - hence the use of a preview pane in the new
>> mockup [1].
>>
> The problem with showing a preview pane with some data, is that the user
> can't multiselect a bunch of contacts to link toone, so in case the user
> want to link two/three contacts to one, you make him click and open the
> link dialog twice/thrice .
>
>> Anybody else got a view on this? I'll give it some more thought. In
>> the mean time, you could always make a start on linking using a simple
>> list dialog.
>
> And, I think we're missing some kind on filtering in both mockups.
> Something like the actual link dialog allows.

The plan is to expose search in the way that it is going to be
presented in the other GNOME 3 mockups. There is also a video that
gives you an idea [0]. You can totally use a static search bar if you
don't fancy tackling that yet though. :)

Having thought about this topic over the Christmas break, I'm coming
to the view that we need a bit of a rethink of our approach to
linking. Currently, GNOME Contacts presents every persona (in libfolks
speak) as a contact. This creates a number of issues:

1. Some contact stores aren't writeable, leaving us in the unfortunate
position of presenting contacts that cannot be changed

2. GNOME Contacts could become flooded with personas from social
networking sites

3. It isn't clear where 'my contacts' are being stored

Another problem with the current linking design is that link
suggestions are buried in a dialog, and will therefore typically not
be discovered.

One way to deal with these problems is to make a distinction between
'my contacts' and 'other contacts'. My contacts are those contacts
whose details I personally administer. They are recorded in a personal
repository of contact data which I have control over. Other contacts
are those contacts whose details only exist in other repositories of
contact data. A contact who I only have details for in Twitter or
Facebook does not belong to my contacts.

This distinction between my contacts and other contacts is quite
common. Gmail has the concept of 'My Contacts' Android has something
called 'All Contacts' (which roughly conforms to what I have described
as 'other contacts'). I think it is useful, in that it is close to how
people tend to think about their contact data.

There are a few ways in which we can organise GNOME Contacts around
the distinction between my and other contacts:

 * The default persona store can be treated as 'my contacts'. The list
of contacts presented by GNOME Contacts can be the contacts in the
default store, with any personas that are linked to them displayed
inline. Other contacts (personas that aren't in the default store and
which aren't linked to a persona from the default store) can be
displayed in search results as a separate category [1].

 * Other contacts can be presented differently, and can have an option
to link them to a contact in the default store [1].

 * Use inline linking suggestions [2, 3]

 * On first run, if there is more than one online account capable of
being the default store, ask which one to use [4]. If there is no
online account for contacts, prompt the user to create one or to use
the local address book [5].

 * If there are no contacts in the default store, prompt the user to
either import contacts or change address books [6].

 * When linking, the contact selector should operate in two modes -
one for linking to my contacts [7] and one for linking to other
contacts [8]. When linking to my contacts, only other contacts should
be displayed in the dialog, and vice versa.

Hope that makes sense. What do you think?

Best,

Allan

[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iKMnakR8kw

[1] https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/raw/master/contacts/png/search-results.png

[2] https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/raw/master/contacts/png/inline-link-suggestions.png

[3] https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/raw/master/contacts/png/search-results-with-suggestion.png

[4] https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/raw/master/contacts/png/select-address-book.png

[5] https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/raw/master/contacts/png/first-run-no-online-account.png

[6] https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/raw/master/contacts/png/no-contacts.png

[7] https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/raw/master/contacts/png/link-to-my-contacts.png

[8] https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/raw/master/contacts/png/link-to-other-contact.png

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