On 9 nov 2010, at 03:13, George Lambrou wrote: > I might be able to help with the interface for voice chat; I know it hasn't > been asked for, but I've been working on this for a little while, and I > thought you guys might be able to find it useful: > > <Audio Bar (Docked).png><Audio Bar (Floating).png> > > Proposed Feature Breakdown > HUD: Displays the recipient's display picture (if present), rounding the > corners and adding a white inner stroke and engraving shadow to help it stand > out. Also displays the recipient's name as well as the status of the chat > (Connecting…, Chatting since/for [time], Chat paused, etc.) below it; > clicking this should allow the user to see different stats. (this should be > displayed in Lucida Grande, but Inkscape doesn't support truetype collection > fonts OR dfonts). > End Call Button > Pause/Hold & Record Buttons: Pause mutes both sides of the chat, while record > saves the chat to file in a location predefined by the user. > Volume Controls & Displays: Sliders that control both input and output > volumes; the slider grips also act as mute buttons. The current decibel level > of the stream is displayed on the sliders themselves; both streams are shown > at maximum intensity above in the docked mockup, while the floating window > shows the off states. > Floating Window Mode: I had this idea where the bar could be undocked from > its parent window to become a standalone, floating window, not unlike > QuickTime X. It features the same controls as the docked bar, with the > addition of standard close, minimize, and zoom buttons on the left, and a > resizing grip on the right. I thought that when the close button here is > clicked, it should make the bar reappear in its former parent window; if you > think redocking should be handled some other way, don't hesitate to tell me. > The Undock button is all the way on the left in the docked toolbar's mockup. > Resolution Independence: I've built the entire mockup here using vectors, so > scaling it up for future displays shouldn't be too big of an issue, provided > I can find a decent way to export the images to PDF (Inkscape's > implementation is a bit shaky, and the results it produced when I tried it > plain weren't good enough). > > This is just an idea I thought I would offer you guys; if you like it, I can > post the individual image components here (probably PNG to start, until I get > the chance to make some decent PDFs at school using Illustrator) as well as > the dimensions of the controls, etc. I have no coding experience yet, so I > don't know if what I've proposed can be implemented easily or not, etc., and > I can't help much in its development if you guys choose to use it. I don't > want to end up dropping a basket baby on your doorstep, though; if there's > anything that I might be able to help with, I'd be more than happy to take > care of it. I hope this helps! > > George Lambrou > > P.S. I'm currently working on a couple other ideas (in mockup form) for > potential improvements to Adium's UI that I'd really like to show you guys > for your consideration in future versions of Adium; if I were to post them, > would it be more appropriate to do so here or on the feedback list?
Hi all, This discussion is quite old, and moved on to video, but I want to stir it up again. On Aqueous' branch I've been working on getting the basics of the UI done, and I'm looking for some feedback before I continue. Currently, it works with 1 window per VV session. The window changes it contents as it goes through calling/pending/active, as can be seen on <http://xnyhps.nl/~thijs/linked/adium/vv_movie2.mov>. Closing the window will automatically end the call. I think this is close to how Pidgin (though I never used it successfully), iChat and Skype < 5 do it. I think the docked bar is a good idea, but I'm not sure it will be very intuitive in practice. I think it would be confusing what would happen if you close the tab of the current call. Some users might want to close it, as they're not chatting with that person anyway, but where would the controls go? On the other hand, it makes a lot of sense to show video in the chat window tab, so for consistency it would be better to have audio controls there too. So I don't mean to flame the idea, I'm just wondering if you're sure it is the way to go and if you have thought about these problems, as implementing it as a bar would be a bit more complex than a standalone window. Regards, Thijs
