Hey everyone, First of all, thanks a lot for your work, Oskar and Dawid.
Here are some thoughts I have on the proposal. I will pick aspects that I find most interesting. Visual/aesthetic aspects The presentation seems to suggest a completely custom-coded window. I'd venture to say it's unlikely for someone to come around and re-code the entire chat window. Also, in my opinion, customisability, especially in the visual department (contact list, message view), is one of Adium's strengths, I'd rather not lose that. As a result, my approach to realising some of what the concept envisions would be an evolutionary, pragmatic one. I'm thinking about how aspects could be implemented based on the current state of Adium as an app and as a project. To me, the most visually striking aspect of the concept is its minimalism. The most prevalent colour is white. That way, relevant parts of the UI, its content (user names, status, messages etc.), are highlighted which is a good thing. So the question is: how can we tone down Adium's UI to achieve this minimalism? Well, obviously the message view part wouldn't be too hard. A message style should easily accomplish this. I suspect styling the toolbar and the tabs is a lot more difficult. As of 10.8 the toolbar is still somewhat of a system standard in OS X so we would probably want to start with the styling of the tabs. I really do think the tabs could use some work. Functional aspects Chat window: message view - emoticons in the input box: this idea has been around for some time (https://trac.adium.im/ticket/484) and its implementation isn't far from being done, I believe, Adrian just needs to finish the work he did in his branch (http://hg.adium.im/adium/shortlog/b06ab45b7b91) - inline images: I believe the message view supports this, at least in theory? - inline video: there's an outdated plugin for Youtube videos: http://www.adiumxtras.com/?a=xtras&xtra_id=6655. Would (message view) performance take a hit with inline videos? I think I wouldn't mind them if they are not displayed too large. - message read/replied indication: I like that. - setting status in the chat window: it's a good idea but I prefer the idea of implementing this in the toolbar the way George Lambrou suggested it with his "Me button" in his "Adium Next" concept (http://markmail.org/search/?q=lambrou&q=list%3Aim.adium.devel#query:lambrou%20list%3Aim.adium.devel+page:1+mid:b7sn4zfroaxy42mv+state:results, PDF attachment included) Chat window: toolbar - reducing the default amount of items in the toolbar has been suggested numerous times before (Paul Wilde last brought this up: https://trac.adium.im/ticket/15400) and rightly so. The default toolbar is way too crammed. In fact, I was going to address this here on the mailing list soon and I still intend to do so Chat window: tabs - service icons on user icons: I'm not fan of this idea, Adium tries to be service-agnostic. Dropbox integration I feel the message view isn't the most logical place for a drop zone, maybe a toolbar items would be suited for this? We could allow integration of other services such as Cloud.app or Droplr as plugins. Menu bar item - active input: maybe a bit too geeky for the average user So much from now. I'd be interested in hearing the opinions of others, especially our active developers. :) Cheers, Robbie
