Re: Empathy account UI freeze break request

[Milo Casagrande <milo casagrande name>]

Hi,

thanks for raising this with the Doc team.

2009/8/24 Frederic Peters <fpeters gnome org>:
> Sjoerd Simons wrote:
>
>>   We'd like to break the UI freeze to add a accounts assistent to Empathy for a
>>   better initial user experience. Screenshots for this assistant are available
>>   at:
>>     http://people.collabora.co.uk/~cosimoc/assistant/
>>
>>   Also we've done  various tweaks to the accounts dialog to make it somewhat
>>   friendlier to use. Screenshots available at:
>>     http://people.collabora.co.uk/~cassidy/empathy-accounts-ui/

I've taken a look at the proposed modifications, I have some questions
on how things will work with the new UI for the accounts dialog, and
also with the new assistant. I can only take a look at the screenshots
since I don't know where these branch are stored. I tested the mc5 one
in empathy, but looks different from the screenshots posted, and
there's no assistant in it.

Looking at screenshots #1 and #4 of the accounts dialog, the Enabled
check-box disappears from #1 to #4, and one button changed its label:
which one will be the default one? In case, how can I disable an
account without removing it if there's no Enabled check-box? Also, the
trash icon to remove an account needs to be described and explained:
it looks rather small in the UI. Does it have a tooltip set? I'm
fearing a little bit about usability (I'm not an expert though).

Looking at the assistant screenshots: the import account feature, will
it be available only with the assistant? If I select "No, I want a new
account", what will it do? Will I be able to automatically register a
new account and with which protocols/services? I knew that only Jabber
is supported in Empathy.

If it is possible, please avoid the use of the "XMPP" word: personally
I always thought about it as a (big) mistake that will lead users to
not understand things. If it's not possible, we will need to address
also that in the documentation, and probably there will be a couple
more topics to modify.

Does XMPP take into account also Google Talk? One of the screenshots
says "What is your Jabber ID?", there will be a specialized one for
Google Talk too? (with the mc5 branch and libpurple installed I don't
have one). As Shaun notes, there is a strong branding in GTalk, I
think normal users don't know that Jabber and GTalk are almost the
same thing, but I think they might be more used in reading "Google
Talk" than "Jabber" or "XMPP" if they want to set up their Google
account, and probably even some Jabber users might be more familiar
with Jabber rather than XMPP (totally unscientific data gathered from
Linux users friends of mine that don't know what XMPP is, but use
Jabber).

As Xavier pointed out: is the desktop sharing working with MC5?

Would it be possible, for documentation purpose, to add a help button
in the assistant? I'm just asking, in case we need it. We need to
figure out exactly how to insert the new topics before starting to
write them, and unfortunately this takes time that we are running
short on and I'm basing my suggestions on the impossibility, right
now, to test things.

> Empathy will be the first module to have its documentation written
> with Mallard, it would be really sad to have it outdated already, the
> following topics are affected:
>  Add a new account
>  Register for a new account
>  Disable an account
>  Create an IRC account
>  Remove an account

Yes, these are the topics that should be modified. Based on the UI
modifications proposed, there could be one or two more topics that
will need to be rethought: the "Import an existing account", the
"Video and audio conversations" (this one mainly for the terminology
used if the XMPP word cannot be avoided), and if the sharing desktop
feature does not work with MC5 we need to remove that topic (maybe we
can leave it in, we can remove it from the Makefile as long as make
doesn't complain, so in the future it will be easier to re-add it and
translations will be already done). The biggest one will probably be
the "Add a new account" since the procedure will be changed: we need
to rethink that and to think of the assistant.