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Bug 671873 - Review of the update accounts UI
Review of the update accounts UI
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: empathy
Classification: Core
Component: Accounts
3.3.x
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: empathy-maint
empathy-maint
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2012-03-12 09:32 UTC by Sjoerd Simons
Modified: 2018-05-22 15:25 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
Online xmpp account (143.46 KB, image/png)
2012-03-12 09:32 UTC, Sjoerd Simons
Details
offline account (87.82 KB, image/png)
2012-03-12 09:32 UTC, Sjoerd Simons
Details
quick mockup (12.32 KB, image/png)
2012-03-13 13:21 UTC, Allan Day
Details
A small proposal (69.84 KB, image/png)
2012-03-13 14:25 UTC, Felipe Erias Morandeira
Details

Description Sjoerd Simons 2012-03-12 09:32:31 UTC
Created attachment 209464 [details]
Online xmpp account

As discussed on IRC one bug for all my niggles about the update accounts UI. I've attached 2 screenshots, one for editting an online account, one for editting an offline account.

Some of these probably need an actual designer looking at it though :)

For the online account:
  * Personal details arrangement is horrible (too long strings in the key, birthday widgets is horrible)
  * It has an "Edit connection parameters" button.  Connection isn't really used anywhere else to talk to the
     user about their account settings. 
  * The avatar button strangely floats (not aligned at the top or bottom)
  * There is an Identifier field. What is an identifier ?
  * There is an Account field, which is a copy of what's in the banner
  * The field names should probably be right aligned (see prior art in the control center, e.g. user accounts
     or system info dialogs)
  * The avatar button should probably behave in the same way as it does in the user accounts dialog instead of 
     simply throwing a filechooser in ones face.
  * Suggestion: remove account and identifier fields, lay out alias and avatar like avatar and user-name are in the
     user accounts dialog.

For offline/disabled account:
  * User is told to go online. They might well be online (globally), but the current account is disconnected. 
    This should probably be explained differently (e.g. This account must be online to edit personal info or 
    enable this account and  go online). 
  * No information at all is displayed, while we can't edit it, we should still know the alias and the avatar
     if the account has ever gone online. On most IM accounts these shouldn't be configurable if offline though,
     but we can still at least show them. 
  * General nitpick, the banner says the account is disabled, but it has an on/off button next to it. 
      Do we need the text at all ? or should it say the account is turned off ?


* As a general note, all the connection parameters editors look horrible, especially when it comes to editting
   advanced settings. although it looks like this could mostly be fixed if the advanced settings part wasn't in a
   scrollable.
Comment 1 Sjoerd Simons 2012-03-12 09:32:54 UTC
Created attachment 209465 [details]
offline account
Comment 2 Allan Day 2012-03-13 13:21:59 UTC
Created attachment 209607 [details]
quick mockup

Here's a quick mockup for a revised layout.
Comment 3 Felipe Erias Morandeira 2012-03-13 14:25:15 UTC
Created attachment 209610 [details]
A small proposal

This small proposal tries to fix some of the reported problems.

There is a clearer layout. Some labels have been changed (e.g. "Account Settings...") and others trimmed (e.g. "E-mail Address"). The birthday could be represented by a button which displays a date picker when clicked. Offline information is still displayed but can not be changed; a label informs the user of this.

What do you think?
Comment 4 Guillaume Desmottes 2012-03-14 09:10:40 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)
>   * Personal details arrangement is horrible (too long strings in the key,
> birthday widgets is horrible)

bug  #671981 and bug #671983
Comment 5 Guillaume Desmottes 2012-03-14 10:02:11 UTC
(In reply to comment #3)
> Created an attachment (id=209610) [details]
> A small proposal
> 
> This small proposal tries to fix some of the reported problems.
> 
> There is a clearer layout. Some labels have been changed (e.g. "Account
> Settings...") and others trimmed (e.g. "E-mail Address"). The birthday could be
> represented by a button which displays a date picker when clicked. Offline
> information is still displayed but can not be changed; a label informs the user
> of this.
> 
> What do you think?

I really like it. Unfortunattelly it won't be that trivial to implement as we don't have access to these date when the account is offline. I guess we could implement some caching if we really need to but it could be outdated if user changed them using another device.
Comment 6 Felipe Erias Morandeira 2012-03-14 11:32:10 UTC
(In reply to comment #5)

In that case, I guess that we could simply remove them.

Nevertheless, we could assume that some fields would change far less often than others: it might make sense to cache and display the full name or the birthday, but maybe not something like the location (?).
Comment 7 Guillaume Desmottes 2012-03-14 12:18:26 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> Created an attachment (id=209607) [details]
> quick mockup
> 
> Here's a quick mockup for a revised layout.

We should really display the user identifier (like badger@gmail.com) as that's a very strong identifier of the account. In some cases it may be redundant with the account display name (displayed in the top infobar) but users are able to edit this one so it may not be displayed in some cases.

(In reply to comment #0)
>   * It has an "Edit connection parameters" button.  Connection isn't really
> used anywhere else to talk to the
>      user about their account settings. 

Would you use "Edit account parameters"? Some would say that the personal info are also account parameters.

>   * The avatar button strangely floats (not aligned at the top or bottom)

Right, Allan's design fixes this.

>   * There is an Identifier field. What is an identifier ?

bug #672035

>   * There is an Account field, which is a copy of what's in the banner

bug #672036

>   * The field names should probably be right aligned (see prior art in the
> control center, e.g. user accounts
>      or system info dialog)

bug #672037

>   * The avatar button should probably behave in the same way as it does in the
> user accounts dialog instead of 
>      simply throwing a filechooser in ones face.

Agreed, that's bug #657097

>   * Suggestion: remove account and identifier fields, lay out alias and avatar
> like avatar and user-name are in the
>      user accounts dialog.

As said above, I think the identifier is worth keeping.
Comment 8 Guillaume Desmottes 2012-03-15 10:47:03 UTC
Ideall the new design should have a way to tag vCard fields when supported; see bug #672034
Comment 9 GNOME Infrastructure Team 2018-05-22 15:25:14 UTC
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