GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 357160
New roster view has no collapse/expand triangle
Last modified: 2006-09-24 09:46:13 UTC
The new group names in the roster view have no collapse/expand buttons, making it hard to discover how to hide/view the underlying contact (double click works). Perhaps the number of contacts in the group can be displayed as well, eg. "Personal (4)".
There is a reason for this. I tried to get the contact list to NOT indent expanders, but that style doesn't seem to work in GTK+2.10? looking at the source it is readonly anyway, so I am not sure it is meant to yet? That only leaves using NO expanders and that means we have to do our own method for expanding and collapsing. Apart from adding a tooltip some how (which I can't remember if it is possible with GTK+ 2.10), we can't really do much else here. If we add our own expander it won't be themeable and it will stick out and look horrible. I really don't think you need an expander here, people will understand how to use it. We have thought about updating the text to have a + or - to show it is open/closed, and I have thought about adding "Personal (4)" with the number of contacts in the group too. I think showing the number of contacts is only really important when it is collapsed so you know how many people you are NOT showing. We could do something like: "MSN (4) ..." when collapsed, and just "MSN" when expanded. Richard, thoughts?
> I really don't think you need an expander here, people will > understand how to use it. That is an incorrect assumption. > I think showing the number of contacts is only > really important when it is collapsed so you know how many people you are NOT > showing. We could do something like: "MSN (4) ..." when collapsed, and just > "MSN" when expanded. This makes sense. Btw, a triangle like the "expander" widget has in the top right of the row would be worth trying too :)
> Btw, a triangle like the "expander" widget has in the top right of the row > would be worth trying too :) Yes, but this is what I mean about theming. Say my theme has a black expander by default, or perhaps a red one? If we use a white one in Gossip, the user will wonder why it is not the same as all other expanders.
Serioulsy , this is work in progress, can we please let the stuff mature a but before complaining?
(In reply to comment #1) > for expanding and collapsing. Apart from adding a tooltip some how (which I > can't remember if it is possible with GTK+ 2.10), we can't really do much else Tooltips on a GtkTreeView isn't yet possible. libsexy has implemented it.
Richard, this is not complaining but "targeted discussion". I really don't like your attitude towards users. When I write software, I *love* feedback, as EARLY as possible.
Heh, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, sorry about that. I just meant that this is a very recently added thing that is not nearly finished yet and the bug report sounded to me like it assumed it was. I wouldn't file a bug on something like that, I would send a question to the list, I guess that's why I interpreted the report as I did.
Regarding the actual topic at hand, the alternatives we have been thinking about are: 1. Add back a normal expander (doesn't really work as it brings back the wasted horizontal space) which we are trying to avoid. 2. Add some kind of "real-looking" expander that looks like the normal one but doesn't waste space. 3. Add icons for +/-, like for example Gajim does. So the finished thing will have some kind of expand/collapse indication. Other things I want to try is to use the selection color (making a bit brighter) for the background to make things look a bit less dull, and to tweak the height of the group rows, and try to get rid of the white space to the right (not sure if that is possible). Having the number of contacts show (only) when the group is collapsed is probably a good idea.
I'm for proposition 3. Instead of get rid of the white space in the right, why not adding a white space in left/top/bottom, I think it can make it nice too. Group name will never be longer than contact's nicknames so I think we have nothing to loose to display always the number of people in the group. I suggest to display "MSN (9/45)" where 9 is numbers of actually connected and 45 the number of contacts in the group.
In my opinion, it will look cluttered to always show the numbers. I vote for just showing the number of visible contacts and only when collapsed, OR even to not show any number at all. (I can't really think of any time I would want/need to see how many contacts I have in total including offline ones...)
« hey look, I've 78 friends, you have only 68, loozer ! » I would agree there is no other utility for that :D
I spoke to Kris and he said he would write a quick cell renderer we could use which would basically be an expander. We could use it on the far right of the group column and it would be in keeping with themes, etc. I also think it would look nice to have the expander at the far right too. As for the group count. There are 2 reasons I suggested only to show it when collapsed is: 1. Same as Richard says, it will look over crowded if shown all the time. 2. When collapsed, if you suddenly realise there is 1 more person online in theat group than the last time you looked, you will know and can expand the group to look. Without this, you would never see some people come online in collapsed groups.
OK, I have just committed Kris' new work and it r0cks! I love it. As far as the number of people in a group is concerned, this might be a little more difficult than I thought, because I would like to set the COL_NAME to the group name, and then modify it after in our special text cell renderer. This is not currently possible and so I will leave it out for the time being.
Cool, looks good.