Re: Initial Thoughts

[Andreas Nilsson <nisses mail home se>]

On 11/05/2010 11:35 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> Bastien Nocera wrote on 04/11/10 19:32:
> > On Thu, 2010-11-04 at 15:05 +0000, Calum K Pringle wrote:
> > ...
> > > *   Another thought I would like to raise is that of application
> > >      specific settings; for example Empathy has instant messaging
> > >      accounts that are used mainly in Empathy but could be used in
> > >      other applications as well, so should the setting exist inside
> > >      empathy or separate like “Messaging and Voip Accounts”. Should
> > >      these be retitled to settings for those applications only, and
> > >      then live inside an “Internet” heading of preferences? This
> > >      then acknowledges the rapidly changing use of social network
> > >      applications, and when people download applications, there is
> > >      opportunity for developers to have a separate preference
> > >      option?
> > This should all be integrated into "Web Accounts". Did you look at the
> > mockups available at:
> > http://gitorious.org/gnome-design/gnome-design ?
> >
> > There's already a mockup for the web accounts stuff, just need a person
> > to work on it.
> > ...
> For example, if you were using an OS with a version of Gnome released
> only three years ago, and the "Web Accounts" panel had existed in Gnome
> back then, possibly it would know about Facebook, but it wouldn't know
> about Twitter. Meanwhile, the version of Gwibber you installed on that
> OS would have its own interface for setting up both, regardless of what
> Gnome did.
Sorry for coming back to this only much later. In this case, both 
Gwibber and GNOME, and indeed Ubuntu are all on a six month release 
schedule. So not so sure about that specific example (but I shouldn't 
get caught up in examples, sure :) )
I can see the risk of this panel becoming outdated, but at the same 
time, it would be really cool if both my chat app, photo app and 
microblog app would all pick my Facebook settings (ie. have my system 
become facebook-ready right away, instead of setting the same thing up 3 
times), and there was one place to turn that off the day you become 
dissatisfied with Facebook's new privacy policy.
There is a general trend for services to provide several services with 
the same account, and it would be neat if we could take advantage of that.
At the same time, there is the question if we should really push people 
towards one specific silo of their choice with our interfaces, but with 
the checkboxes in Allans latest mockup (all turned on or off by 
default?) would provide what part of the services one would specifically 
be interested in making use of.
- Andreas