GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 583433
There is no indication why there are microphone and webcam icon in contact list
Last modified: 2010-09-16 09:10:07 UTC
The contact list now display a microphone and a webcam icon. The reason is that with some servers/protocols we can't add video stream on the fly and so we have to start the conversation with video enabled from the begining. But this is not explained to the user at all, and it too technical to be intuitive. I like having the microphone icon in the contact list because it's an easy way to see contacts that support calling and it's a fast shortcut to start the call. But the webcam icon does not mean the contact has webcam connected on his computer. And it is not obvious that clicking on webcam will start audio/video call and clicking microphone will start audio-only call. I don't like exposing technical details to the user, but in this case we have no choice. I think we should at least have a tooltip on icons that explain the difference. In the contact menu, "Video call" could be renamed to "Audio and Video call" to make clear that it's not video-only. Ideas are welcome.
Also a little detai: When overing the microphone icon in contact list, the webcam icon is highlighted too (and vice-versa).
Created attachment 135104 [details] Mock up This is somewhat related to the conversation Sjoerd and I had online yesterday, where I was complaining that we cannot turn them off. Sjoerd's pov was that they are useful as they easily let you see that contacts have audio video capabilities. I proposed a menu options to remove the icons but Sjoerd rightfully argued that it was not attacking the root problem. So we discussed what other clients were doing. I think the (hidable) toolbar with "Initiate Chat", "Initiate Audio Call", "Initiate Videoconference" were a good alternative. Although, for people unaware of the context menu, it involves extra mouse mileage. Each button would be enabled, disabled based on contact's capabilities capacities. This toolbar, IMHO, would solve this bugs as the toolbar buttons would have tooltips or text.
I don't really like this idea. The microphone/webcam icon have 2 goals: a) inform you that this contact supports audio/video b) a shortcut for starting a call I think a) is definitely the most important one as you can still do b) using the context or Contact menu. With this mockup, we completely break a) as we don't have this information until we click on the contact.
This mockup also remove the one-click make-a-call button on the contact list. This is something I really want to away in Empathy. It is annoying and is inconsistent: starting a chat is double click but a video call is only one.
Well I guess this begs the question then: why does chatting with someone require a double click instead of a single click on that person on the contact list? Makes no sense to me. And to a lot of computer-illiterate users who have no notion of when double-click applies and when it doesn't, but here I don't see the use case of double click, so please enlighten me.
Double click is the standard in Gtk+ to activate a row in a Tree View. A new chat is created when you activate a row. Also, we shouldn't go away from that: every IM clients since ICQ work this way :D
> we shouldn't go away from that: every IM clients since ICQ work this way Doesn't mean that they were right though :) unless we have a toolbar of contextual actions that need a "selection before action", double click makes no sense if it's only a property to turn of in GTK. I can't see the advantages it would have over single click. P.s.: may I remind any of you how shitty the ICQ user interface was?
Right, but changing a "defacto" standard could alienate power users (which have been using IM apps for years). Plus, I doubt this can be changed in Gtk+.
We have contextual menu that react to selected row. I totally agree that double-clik in general is fail since win95. It should be eradicated from all UIs. However for now activating a list row always has been double-click for all programs (windows, gnome and kde at least). I don't think a revolution should be started from empathy on that :p
At the very least, these microphone/webcam icons need to get smaller or relocated. I accidentally started calling someone today because the icons got in the way of my erratic mouse clicking. I really liked the microphone icon before - it was small, out of the way and was useful - but now this just looks silly.
Just a crazy idea... what about not displaying those icons in the contact, list, and requiring the user to either - use the right-click menu - start a normal conversation, and from there "activate" the audio or video chat Lemme elaborate. Inside a normal "text chat" window, we could have some kind of info bar/toolbar (not sure how this would be done visually yet, just throwing a starter idea) that indicates (or verbally says) the user can do audio (and/or) video chats, etc. We could then click buttons to start this. An added benefit is that you could still have the text chat at the same time, if you want to copy and paste stuff or URLs for example. Maybe the text-chat window could be somehow merged with the video chat window. Yeah, I know it's a 2-step process instead of a 1-click shortcut, but it is much cleaner (no clutter in the contact list) and much clearer.
We want to keep those icons in the contact list as they allow you to quickly identify your contacts supporting audio/video.
Interesting :) let me argue the other way and be the devil's advocate: who, except Empathy developers or technology enthusiasts who wish to test video/audio calls, will want to see this information ([un]availability of audio/video chat) at all times in the contact list, vs only seeing it in the contact list tooltips or in the conversation dialog window? Think about it for a minute: normal people don't choose who they interact with "based on their audio/video capabilities". It's the other way around. People pick someone to talk to in their contact list because of the *person* at the other end, and because they have *something in particular to communicate*. The fact that the person only supports text chat or not does not make that person less relevant when you wish to express something. The fact that the person supports audio/video only comes into play *after* the mental decision to start communicating with person X or Y. When you decide "I'll ask Bob about his opinion on foobar", you can click Bob to start communicating, and if the audio/video is available, then you may think "oh, he can use a webcam too, well, why not enable that now". At least that's how I see the mental process behind it (I guess that's a professional deformation ;) I mean I see the reason why you like these icons, I just don't see how it will truly benefit the average user (think: not devs/geeks). And it looks ridiculously cluttered when 50 of your 70 contacts support a/v calls (thanks to Empathy 2.28 and Pidgin 2.6.x). Heck, if we really need a feature for "hmm, I want to use my webcam just for the sake of it tonight", why not add the following items in the "Chat" menu: - "New voice call..." - "New video call..." ...right below the "New conversation..." item?
Created attachment 147627 [details] Alternative mockup Just for the fun of it, here's a quickie mockup (2 screenshots) to back up my previous crazy idea.
Closing this bug as the initial problem (audio/videos icons) has been solved by merging them and adding a call menu. Most of us are pretty happy with the current UI so it probably won't change for now.