OK, I've been reading through our threads and looking over the screen shots again - especially the 'accounts' dialog was a missing piece in the puzzle - and actually the design as planned looks pretty great.
A few additional comments though, some more feature than GUI wise: (1) Call display area The area where you display caller id and codec for active (resp. incoming calls when multiple lines are available) could as well contain the stuff now shown in the status bar, especially call duration. That way all call specific data is centrally displayed and logically organized for the benefit of the user. No space is lost, since you then might actually remove the otherwise idle status bar area. XLite example of centralized call display: http://leafsite.org/pics/softphones/xlite-main-1.jpg (2) Current Server Among the servers registered on, the 'current' one is the server where calls go if not given a complete URL. I.e. dialing a simple number would dial it on that server. Now, most softphones require you to go to options and specify a 'default' server or account. This of course is bad. Iaxcomm is the only exception, as it offers a dropdown selection list of registered accounts in the main window, and the currently selected account is the current server ('schioetz' in this case) : http://leafsite.org/pics/softphones/iaxcomm.jpg This of course is not bad but rather cool. (3) Multiple lines A feature I understand only planned for the future, but why not dwell on it right now. Since I already included screen caps of other phones, a look at them might give some good ideas. In the above XLite cap you see three buttons below the call display. Those are the three lines XLite offers, no more no less. New calls will arrive on a different line than the one you're currently in and the button 'LED' will blink. Of course you click to accept/switch. Iaxcomm has that scrollable list below the volume controls. All active resp. held calls are shown there. A click on a specific line puts other calls on hold and makes the clicked call active. Clicking on the empty line enables you to place a new call, while all others are held. Obviously, that approach is nice. There is no visual limitation of lines, switching is very easy, and all that is integrated with a (terse) call display area which is just one line. Another imaginable approach could be a dropdown list box which lists: * all calls currently active or held with caller id * a 'New' item to place a new call (while putting the currently active on hold, of course). Finally, a maybe offtopic remark: if you show the dial input box at the top all the time (i.e. with all the tabs), it could make sense to to that with * current account/server selection * multiple line chooser * and maybe even the call display area as well. E.g. you already show the display area on all tabs. Why not move it to the top (although it doesn't necessarily need to be dockable). Also, the current server is linked to the history of the dial input box. That history contains numbers likely dialed on different servers, so it'd make sense to group them logically together. All the latter, as said, only as starting points for further thoughts. That's all which comes to my mind right now. Thanks, Bruno. _______________________________________________ GnomeMeeting-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnomemeeting-list
