On Sat, Aug 28, 2004 at 08:22:00AM +0100, alexd wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-08-27 at 12:52 -0700, Dave West wrote:
> > Any ideas about this idea or how we can make it better? I'd like to get a
> > good handle on how this would work and what the Right Way(tm) to approach
> > this would be and add this into part of the status rewrite.
> You could have two tabs on the buddy list, one tab with all the current
> online buddies, and one tab that shows all the accounts and their
> associated on- and off-line buddies, with an icon for each account.
> Perhaps in this second tab, you could have a further list of 'buddies':
> all the ones that are currently blocked, but obviously only if the user
> has chosen to block a specific list of buddies.
I have read through this entire thread and seen a lot of suggestions for
how to implement this, and as an extensive _user_ of gaim, let me say
that the best one that I have heard so far is the idea of tabbing the
buddy list interface. From a user perspective tabbed interfaces are an
extremely efficient and intuitive means of presenting different kinds of
information. I would personally like to see something like:
[ This ASCII art will only look good with a fixed-width font. What are
you doing looking at email with variable width fonts? =) ]
___________________________
|_|_______________________|X|
| Buddies | Tools | Help |
|---------------------------|
| \Buddy Lists/ \Accounts/ |
|---------------------------|
The accounts tab should by default look like the Account editor does
now. When you select the Accounts tab you should get a list of accounts
with check boxes for Online and Autologin next to each account name. If
you mouseover the account you should get more details about it in a
tooltip (Buddy List mouseover-style) that should at least give you the
account's protocol, etc. The buttonbar at the bottom of the Buddy list
window that has buttons for "IM | Get Info | Chat | Away" should change
when you select the account tab to the buttonbar at the bottom of the
account editor. The buttons should be "Add | Modify | Delete". Each
account should be expandable with a buddy-list style expansion arrow.
When expanded, you should see complete buddy lists under the account
with a special group entry for blocked users. You should be able to
add/remove/modify buddies using the same buttons at the bottom you'd use
to add/modify/delete accounts, depending on where your mouse selection
This should make it easier to do something which is currently difficult
if not impossible in gaim: dragging buddies between accounts. When I
get a new SN and I want to transfer my buddies to it, in gaim I have to
manually add a new buddy to the new account, then delete the old one. I
have to do this for every user I want to migrate to the new SN. I
should be able to grab a buddy with my mouse and drag it from one
account to the other, or make multiple selections with mouse+ctrl or
mouse+shift, or grab a buddy list group, and drag the whole lot of them
to a new account (provided they're on the same protocol, if the user
drags from one protocol to another you either have have to reject the
drag and drop or prompt the user for what to do). Presently when I want
to migrate to a new SN I fire up the official Linux AIM client because I
can export and import buddy lists between accounts. I feel that some
easier way to migrate between accounts is a sorely needed feature in
I'm not much of a GTK hacker or I'd tend to be more forthcoming with the
patches. I am however a heavy enough user of gaim to be more than
willing to help out anyone willing to work on a feature set like this
with testing/feedback/patches to their patches, etc. In other words, I
didn't subscribe here because I needed more mail in my INBOX (because I
need that like a hole in the head).
