On Aug 25, 2011, at 7:17 PM, James Gray <ja...@gray.net.au> wrote:
> On 26/08/2011, at 7:54 AM, Luke the Hiesterman wrote: > >> I concur. This design looks lovely and visually appealing but misses the >> reality of how many users interact with IM, which is that it's so often a >> side-activity which is meant to take up a minimum of screen real estate and >> exist on the side of what they're really doing. >> >> Luke > > Not being a fully-fledged Adium dev (still getting my head around the source) > but having been a long term user, I have to say I 100% agree with Luke. I > run Adium the way almost everyone I know runs it: concise theme+layout, > borderless, translucent and tucked away neatly to one side with new chats > appearing in a tabbed window. Whilst I can appreciate the work that has gone > into this new design, my first reaction was "oh no - it looks like Skype!" > although reading through the documentation reveals it has many (beneficial) > differences. > > However, the idea of a full-screen Adium mode poses a glaring question: why? > Just because Lion has (poorly) implemented full-screen apps, does Adium need > a full screen mode? Why would I want an two entire 30" cinema displays > chewed up with IM; how is that beneficial? For those with more than one > screen and running Lion, you would understand the sarcasm in that last > sentence ;) > > Basically, if the consensus is to change the design in the general direction > as indicated, deprecating the concise+translucent+borderless "minimalist" > option, I can honestly say, I'll be looking for a new IM client - as will a > lot of people who use Adium in this fashion. Please don't take this feedback > the wrong way; I love Adium and have for a long time, but quantum shifts in > UI can really alienate the users, especially those who rely on and expect > certain features. Don't deprecate stuff people REALLY like…or to put it > another way; don't f%^& the customer ;) You picked this proposal apart because you didn't like a single aspect of it. There's basically a lot of mini proposals inside of the pdf, and also in the email. You've got 2 big monitors, wheeee! So what about the people on 11 inch macbook air's? ;) I'm on a 25 inch lcd at home, and at work I have a 24 and a 22. I think I might like full screen the way apple is providing it, especially if it's something that I'm used to with applications I enjoy it in (iPhoto, Mail) already. Don't use a single point to dismiss a plethora of suggestions that could really improve Adium. I think the mockups that George sent should be a point of order to think about how people use IM apps in general. I think there are some great ideas in the pdf which really need to be talked about as separate talking points. I also believe that George makes a really, really good point about 10.7 being a good breaking point to do any of these things. I would like to make a suggestion to everyone replying. Evan made a very good list of the things he liked, and explained it thoroughly. I would like to suggest that everyone replying follow suit. If everyone replies with a list of 5 things from the mockup that they like, then there's 5 things that can go right in. That may cut down on the noise here. If you aren't sure as to why something should be how it is in the mockup, ask direct questions (like the first one I sent today) about how something would function and get a response about it before just assuming and then dismissing. This will be my last response on this thread. George has put a lot of work into this, and it would be a travesty if it was all dismissed out of hand over one or two single points. 4 months of work on mockups that are not guaranteed to be liked at all is a pretty brave thing to work on, especially for an OSS group. He put himself out there, the least that could be given is a proper response instead of just hitting on one or two items and dismissing the plethora of ideas out of hand for what could be interpreted as pettiness. Chris
