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Bug 661713 - [design] Figure out how to integrate new IM design
[design] Figure out how to integrate new IM design
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: empathy
Classification: Core
Component: General
2.33.x
Other Linux
: Normal enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: empathy-maint
empathy-maint
Depends on: 629902 639877 669482 669484 676082
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2011-10-13 21:09 UTC by Guillaume Desmottes
Modified: 2018-05-22 15:08 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
Buddy list mockup (411.17 KB, image/png)
2012-01-27 12:34 UTC, Allan Day
Details

Description Guillaume Desmottes 2011-10-13 21:09:38 UTC
There are a bunch of IM related designs floating around. It would be good to think and discuss about the best way those fit with the "IM in GNOME story" and especially with Empathy.

I'm aware of 2 designs.

https://live.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Chat
Looking at its mockup, this one is more a 'Conversation' app (it doesn't have a contact list).
We talked about it during the social hackfest: https://live.gnome.org/Hackfests/IMContacts%20Social2011/Tasks/ConversationDesignBrainstorming
Our conclusion was basically that's an interesting idea to explore but it's not our top priority atm; best to focus on polishing the existing pieces.

http://gitorious.org/gnome-design/gnome-design/blobs/master/mockups/empathy/empathy.png
which is actually http://people.collabora.com/~wjt/tmp/empathy.png (thanks gitorious...)

This one looks more like a polished version of Empathy. I'm all for incrementally improving/cleaning Emapthy to make it look more like this design.
Comment 1 Allan Day 2011-10-14 09:23:45 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)
> There are a bunch of IM related designs floating around. It would be good to
> think and discuss about the best way those fit with the "IM in GNOME story" and
> especially with Empathy.
> 
> I'm aware of 2 designs.
> 
> https://live.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Chat
> Looking at its mockup, this one is more a 'Conversation' app (it doesn't have a
> contact list).

The aim is to make chat conversation focused. It'll need a contact list as well though, since you need a way to initiate new conversations.

> We talked about it during the social hackfest:
> https://live.gnome.org/Hackfests/IMContacts%20Social2011/Tasks/ConversationDesignBrainstorming
> Our conclusion was basically that's an interesting idea to explore but it's not
> our top priority atm; best to focus on polishing the existing pieces.
> 
> http://gitorious.org/gnome-design/gnome-design/blobs/master/mockups/empathy/empathy.png
> which is actually http://people.collabora.com/~wjt/tmp/empathy.png (thanks
> gitorious...)
> 
> This one looks more like a polished version of Empathy. I'm all for
> incrementally improving/cleaning Emapthy to make it look more like this design.

That second one is much older...

I'm strongly in favour of an approach that uses a single window most of the time. Separate chat windows create lots of problems, such as bug 658043.
Comment 2 Allan Day 2012-01-27 12:34:34 UTC
Created attachment 206259 [details]
Buddy list mockup

Giving the existing Empathy UI more of a GNOME 3 look and feel would be a good way to get going with this. I think that the buddy list would be a great way to start, and would be beneficial to current Empathy users anyway.

I've attached an initial redesign for the Empathy buddy list. Note that this does not address the menu bar or toolbar - the design is purely for the list. It does a few things:

 * Makes the contacts look consistent with GNOME Contacts

 * Clears out some visual noise (no repetition of 'Available', symbolic icons rather than detailed ones, etc)

 * Bigger avatar images, which makes it more expressive

 * Additional padding lets the content breathe
Comment 3 Guillaume Desmottes 2012-02-06 15:01:45 UTC
So, we discussed design plans during FOSDEM; here is the short/middle term plan:

- Switch to empathy-call for 3.4 (bug #629902); should be done for 3.4
- Focus our re-design efforts on the contact list for now. I opened bug #669484 about Allan's new design. Will be done for 3.4 or 3.6.
- Others pieces (the chat window, log viewer, etc) will be done later and eventually merged together at some point.
- Start relying more on gnome-contacts (when linking contacts for example: bug #669482)

I suggest to keep this bug as a meta-contact and more specific bugs to discuss details.
Comment 4 Allan Day 2012-03-13 13:00:54 UTC
A few other bugs that are worth looking at for this:

 - show the log in the chat window - bug #639877
 - start using the application menu - bug #656634
Comment 5 Allan Day 2012-03-13 17:02:58 UTC
cc'ing Matthew Solle
Comment 6 Antonio Ospite 2012-05-15 18:00:21 UTC
Hi,

I too would like to have a single window with both messages and the contact list (maybe the latter can slide away?), an extra window for video chat looks acceptable: at least in my use case video chats are interactive and "short" compared to text conversations with messages that can be received even when idle.

The ideas in https://live.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Chat?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=Chat.png look promising, should I open an actual "single window" bug to get more focus on this?

Thanks,
   Antonio
Comment 7 Allan Day 2012-06-20 12:42:34 UTC
Now that the app menu has been done and the buddy list updated (yay!), it's a good time to review what needs doing. For me, the current priorities are:

 * Make it possible to browse and search chat history from conversation windows (bug bug #639877)
 * Create a conversation list to exist alongside the buddy list
 * Remove the menubar from conversation windows (bug #676082)

Once that has happened, it should be possible to combine the buddy list and conversations into a single window.

There are plenty of other things it would be good to improve, but this is the most important, in my opinion. It will also serve as a good basis for further polishing and clean up in the future.
Comment 8 Guillaume Desmottes 2012-06-20 13:02:49 UTC
(In reply to comment #7)
>  * Create a conversation list to exist alongside the buddy list

We can use bug #631945 for that, but it's still pretty much an open question atm.
Comment 9 GNOME Infrastructure Team 2018-05-22 15:08:54 UTC
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity.

You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/empathy/issues/447.