Contacts managment

[Alessandro Crismani <alessandro crismani gmail com>]

Hi everybody,

Since chat replies landed in the message tray I wondered whether the 
shell may benefit from a better contact managment. I really like to 
possibility to chat straight from the message tray, it allows me to 
quickly reply back or to ignore the message and mess with it later.

However, it seems to me that a too many click are required to start a 
new conversation. I have to open empathy, search in my accounts the 
contact and open a new window. I saw a nice mockup 
(http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/DesignerPlayground/PeopleOverlay) 
which groups contact in another "overlay tab" (which may be moved to the 
left?). I also thought that maybe contacts may be integrated within the 
searching in the current overlay by adding a Contacts part under the 
places and devices. Another idea may be to add a way to search throught 
contacts via the menu with the user name on the right of the panel 
(which sounds related to IM stuff or am I wrong)

I am sorry but I am a completely disaster with graphic tools and I don't 
really now how to make some mockups, I hope you got the idea.

PS This is the first email to a mailing list I ever send, feel free to 
reply if ideas are pure rubbish or if I did something wrong