I agree with a lot of this, except for sounds. I hear (haha) what he's saying and don't disagree that we could probably turn a few off, but "No sounds by default" is a bad idea -- it hides the feature which a lot of people do use and like. FWIW iChat also has sounds on by default.
If someone wanted to make like a google doc or spreadsheet of our current defaults, that would probably go a long way to helping us sort all this out. Btw, for those who don't know, Rick is a long time Mac dev, currently working at Black Pixel. One of his past projects was Bodega. He knows his shit. -Colin (via thumbs) On Feb 12, 2012, at 11:36 AM, Peter Hosey <bore...@adium.im> wrote: > This is a lot of valid criticism that deserves greater developer hearing and > consideration. > > Begin forwarded message: >> From: Rick Fillion <r...@centrix.ca> >> Subject: Adium Defaults >> Date: February 12, 2012 11:18:28 >> To: feedb...@adium.im >> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1257) >> List-Archive: <http://adium.im/mailman/private/feedback_adium.im> > > Hi Guys, > > I bitched on Twitter the other day about Adium's defaults being terrible, and > RV requested that I send you extended feedback. So here's some. My tone in > these emails sometimes comes across as super harsh… note that that's not my > intent. I tend to swear a lot, but usually that's an indication of me being > good-humoured about something. > > I just want to start by saying that I really truly do like Adium. It's a > good app, and I use it heavily every day. Before I rant away about things I > dislike, I want to mention some of the things that I really like: > - The fact that clicking an 'install' button on a website is all it takes to > install an add-on. You did this very right. I want to copy this behaviour > for some of my apps. > - It remembers my non-standard Jabber conference id, so I don't need to > retype it every time I join a jabber room. > - It does a great job of taking the different protocols and treating them > basically all the same. > - I don't remember the last crash I had with it. > - I abuse tabs. In the sense that I just never close them. It's routine for > me to have 15-25 tabs open at once, each one with a bunch of history, and > performance has never seemed to be an issue. Similar apps have performance > issues with this. Good job. > > I get a lot of people asking me what the best way to get MSN or AIM on a Mac. > The answer for this is very clear in my mind: Adium. And so that's what I > recommend. Basically everyone I recommend it to goes and tries it out. But > very very few end up sticking with it. Why? Cause the default install turns > just about everyone off except those of us who know that we can go and tweak > it to turn down the suck. > > I don't want to hear "well that's fine, we don't necessarily want more users… > what do we care, it's open source, we don't gain anything by having more > users." (typical OSS answer for complaints) Absolutely you should care. > You should want users. You're working on this thing that you know is great. > You want others to think it's great, because your name is associated with it. > Anyone who takes pride in what they do should want it to be as great as it > can be, and in the case of software a big measure of that is how many people > use it and enjoy it. > > So… let's get on with some real stuff. > > - Message Styles/themes. The default themes that ship with Adium are pretty > terrible. Seriously. Gone Dark? Stockholm isn't bad, but the others pretty > much all reek of "We got a dev to whip up some CSS". One of the first things > I do when I get Adium is go download PlasticMod. It's not gorgeous, but it's > sufficiently easy on the eyes. It's not flashy, and that's OK. It's an IM > app, I'm not expecting flashy. > - I hate the duck icon. Hate. As a stand alone icon, I think it's fine. > When the little bastard starts jumping around in my dock, holy hell… :P So > next up, I have to change the dock icon to something more subtle. In this > case you guys provide The Duck In Every Primary Color. And Milk? Is that one > standard? I don't mind Milk, but I like colour to give me information when > I'm command-tabbing around, so I go and get Classy-N-Glassy. Your app icon > is the duck, and so making the default running icon anything but the duck > would be wrong. But just tone down the obnoxiousness of the thing. > - Contact List. IIRC, the default options are theme: Aqualicious, window > style: Regular window, with automatic sizing horizontally. And then a bunch > of minute options inside of Customize that I've changed. But let's just > start with those. I actually like the toolbar part of the "Regular Window" > style, at least as far as looks go. But it just doesn't fit with the rest of > the window. The top part says "This is a regular window." And then the > contents beg to differ. It clashes. So I end up having to change the window > style to something like Group Bubbles. Who thought Contact Bubbles was a > good idea? It's not. You're adding a ton of visual clutter there with no > real benefit. Don't get me started on Contact Bubbles (to fit). Awful. > With 'Size to Fit' horizontally, the list is almost always going to be too > thin to be easy on the eyes. It needs a bit of negative space. So I have to > uncheck that and set a width usually around 200px. And I've now got > something that is OK-looking. > - Sounds. It's tacky. Unless my Mac has something VERY important to tell > me, it better not make a peep. Certainly not every time I get a message. I > turn that off immediately. All sounds. > - Growl Messages. Treat it like sound, only a smidge less severe. It's not > cute, it's not flashy, it's annoying. A growl alert takes my focus away from > whatever I was doing (usually something significantly more important than > IM). Tell me something important, something that warrants my attention. > Think _hard_ about that one. "Jimmy left the group chat." Oh really? What > action do you want me to do based on that? There's really nothing I can do > about it, and I can't really think of what anyone would. Therefore: not > important enough to break my attention. Go through all of your > notifications. They pretty much all growl by default. Stop that. Growl at > me when something important happens. An example of this that I actually > appreciate: it now growls by default when a file transfer is offered. This > was a pain point for me before with Adium. Someone would offer me a file, > and I wouldn't get notified at all until I happened to go into that tab. > Sometimes that'd be too late. I believe the new default is to growl, and > accept-file by default : good. > - Status menu icon. Not a bad thing to have, but ... now look at this, by > default when something happens you're: bouncing the dock icon, playing sounds > at me, growling, and changing a status menu icon. Unless the world is > ending, this level of LOOK AT ME! is completely inappropriate. I turn that > little guy off just to have one less aspect of Adium in my face. > > This is really just scratching the surface. > > I think just doing these types of changes alone would be a HUGE step forward > for Adium. Like I said before, it's a good app, but most potential-users I > know end up getting turned off by it. Defaults for an app are really really > hard to get right, but it's super important as it's what provides the user > with their first impressions. I'm not saying "You have to take my > suggestions and what I do, and make those the default." I don't think that's > the answer. What I'm saying is that someone with a very critical eye should > look at every default option you're setting, and justify it. Everything. > Why are we doing that? Is that really what's going to benefit the most > users, or are we just doing it this way because we've always done it this > way, or because it was easy to implement this way? > > While I'm providing feedback… The Xtras section on the site. Please please > please have someone curate that. If you want to show every dock icon, etc… > that's ever been submitted, then that's cool. But I have zero interest in > browsing them all. Show me the 10 that one of you think are best, and I'd > gladly pick from that. Fewer options is often times better. Humans have > trouble picking when there are too many options, as we get stuck in a "well > what if the next page has one better?" mode. Providing less options up front > and a barrier before they wade into every option ever is a good way to let > them make a choice quickly that they'll be happy with. When they choose an > option from a very long list without going through that whole list they're > left with a feeling of "well maybe if i had looked at it all I'd have found > something I would have liked better." I'm not just spouting bullshit here, > there's actually science that backs this up. :) > > I think if you provided better defaults, users would find themselves wanting > to tweak things less, which in turn would start to make some options less > needed. Here are some options that I really believe you should work towards > removing: > - Contact List Opacity : Make it a property on the contact list style. This > way the person who designs the style can be assured that the alpha value they > specify is what the user sees, not some multiplication of it. > - Basically everything in Contact List Color Theme Customize. > - Basically everything in Contact List List Layout Customize. I'll be > honest, I tweaked stuff in there, but I firmly believe that I shouldn't have > to. If the default was "good enough" there, there should be no need. > - Custom Background on message styles. Let the theme dictate that. > > Nit Pick: > All of your tabs in Preferences are the same width plus or minus 10px. > Standardize that so that the window grows only vertically. > > I really hope that this email came across as I intended. Thank you for > making Adium, I really do appreciate it. I just want to see it be as good as > I know it can be. :) > > Cheers. > > Rick Fillion > r...@centrix.ca > >
