I am a huge fan of this design - very nicely done George! Chris / The Tick had long ago envisioned a single window Adium, many years before the single window Skype 5.0 and any of this iOS feature merging stuff, and I was always a fan of the concept. I think for novice users there are quite a few benefits to having a single window (in many ways window management is the bane of novice user's existence).
For me it's about simplicity - I've got so many windows open already across applications that dealing with additional windows within an application is such an annoyance. This also why I have come to love the Skype 5.0 interface. The benefit of this mock-up is that it looks even more pretty than Skype and seems considerably more functional. I already use side-tabs which makes having the full contact list in that same position practically no additional window area. Those that use tabs on top or below will likely have to suffer through the changes until they forget about it a few versions later. Those using borderless windows are another story - I used to have Adium running like that all the time, but for one reason or another I switched to regular window. I think primarily because I can simply hide the app with cmd-h quite easily. I understand the benefit of those styles of window and I also seem to recall the amount of headache maintaining the code for those window styles has been: your regular ol' double edged sword right there. There's a couple ways for Adium to still have a borderless mode despite this massive overhaul of the design: 1. We support a 'classic' mode for Adium that uses borderless styles and the separate chat window. This would be feature frozen and bugs would be low priority for this mode. It would essentially be a 'minimal' mod for the UI. 2. Those who are massive fans of borderless mode could fork the code before this new UI is introduced and then pick and choose change sets to merge over to their fork. Adium *is* an open source project after all. I hope this is the way things eventually go as it seems the cleanest to me. I'm sure there's bound to be other complaints about the changes (aside from merged windows and the lack of a borderless option), but one way or another people adapt. It seems to be working for Skype and every time there's a Facebook design overhaul it works for them. Plus, let's be honest here, there's not very much competition for Adium on the Mac, but those that do exist have the benefit of being designed fairly recently with fancy new user interfaces. Adium's UI looks old and in that department the others have a competitive advantage. This refresh would certainly take care of that problem and could definitely bring some needed new life to the application! I'll keep my fingers crossed. Jordan e: jas8...@gmail.com w: jordan.schelew.com c: 902-449-4678 ---- Sent with Sparrow (http://www.sparrowmailapp.com) On Thursday, 25 August, 2011 at 6:23 PM, George Lambrou wrote: > This is a proposal I've made for Adium. However, before you go ahead and open > it, I'd like to ask that you look at this not as an evolution of the current > Adium, but simply a new Adium. Yes, it does retain many old features, but at > the expense of others as well. It's an idea for a new direction, one with a > focus on ease-of-use, simplicity, and better consistency with Mac OS. It > takes full advantage of Lion's new iOS-inspired design direction, the perfect > excuse for this kind of a clean break; as such, I have not attempted to make > compromises or accommodations for Snow Leopard. This was created for Lion. > > Anyways, without further ado, I would like to present to you the sum of four > months of work, and the first step down a new road for Adium: the Main Window > of Adium Next. > > > Please keep in mind that this is not 100% complete; there are still some > things that I haven't covered in this document, but the vast majority of it > is there. Any constructive comments that you may offer are greatly > appreciated, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have; thank you > for your time. :) > > George > > Attachments: > - Adium Next - Message Window.pdf >
