506853 - Just show the Weave icon in the status bar without the username text

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Sync, defect)

Description

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Showing the username isn't that useful to users in the common case as s/he probably only has one account.

Developers might have multiple test accounts, so it's still useful to have the information somewhere in the UI.

Also, users should still know at a glance if they're logged in or not..

Comment 1

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Attachment: v1

Comment 2

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Absence of a negative indicator isn't really great.  What's the goal here?  Minimizing visual clutter?

Comment 3

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Negative indicator as in the user isn't logged in? When Weave is offline, the icon is slightly faded, but yes that's a lot more subtle than a full "Sign in" text.

But I would assume that most users leave Weave on auto-login (it's checked by default), so in the common case, we end up showing the username.. which isn't very useful for those who only have one username. No need to remind that all the time.

Comment 4

[Anant Narayanan [:anant]]

How about showing just the Weave icon when you're signed in, but 'Sign In' text when you're not? That way we only add text to the status bar in the negative case.

Comment 5

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Yeah, I was thinking about that as well.. it is simpler to change.

We had some issues displaying the right status text before, so I figured I would just rid of it all including bogus status texts like status.active = Working... ???

Comment 6

[Fritz]

(In reply to comment #4)
> How about showing just the Weave icon when you're signed in, but 'Sign In' text
> when you're not? That way we only add text to the status bar in the negative
> case.

I agree with only a weave logo when signed in.  When signed out maybe a Weave logo with the "no smoking" type red circle around it or something similar like that.  Or even the two ends of the wires not touching which is a pretty widely recognized sign for not connecting.  No need to take up any more screen real estate if not cluttered.

I think the _main_ reason for this is people who take screenshots often don't want identifiable information in them.  But, I can imagine at times having / using two accounts and some people wanting to see.  It wouldn't be too hard to have an about:config preference would it be?  Logo behavior could be the same for each mode but when signed in you'd have username next to it and when not signed in you'd have "sign in"

Comment 7

[Dan Mills [:thunder]]

We've been discussing with Alex potential multi-user UX, Cc'ing him here.

Comment 8

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

Well, we aren't quite there for multi-user support though.. so that UX discussion will be useful for the future. But for that.. I wonder if we'll end up showing icons/images for users (like how OS logins typically have an image with the user name..)

For now, I don't think we need to show the username in the common case. If we still want to show "Sign in" instead of a faded weave logo, I can revert that and only implement removal of the username text.

Comment 9

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Can we just punt on this until we have multi-user support worked out?  I'd rather stay focused on bigger issues right now.

Comment 10

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

http://hg.mozilla.org/labs/weave/rev/e388ba9e12a9
Just drop the label when the user is logged in for now.. we'll reinvestigate when we support multiple users. 

>:O just watch! people will complain about the empty space next to the icon now ! :p

Comment 11

[Dan Mills [:thunder]]

(In reply to comment #10)
> http://hg.mozilla.org/labs/weave/rev/e388ba9e12a9
> Just drop the label when the user is logged in for now.. we'll reinvestigate
> when we support multiple users. 

I would have rather left this bug open, rather than commit your patch and have to revert it later.

Comment 12

[Ed Lee :Mardak]

backed out
http://hg.mozilla.org/labs/weave/rev/4f46ec136e60

Comment 13

[Dan Mills [:thunder]]

Thanks.

As an interim solution, how about an about:config option to hide the text?

Comment 14

[Mihai Capotă]

I think there should also be an option to make the whole information in the status bar static. It's very distracting to see the text and icon constantly change during sync. Should I fill in another bug report?

Comment 15

[Roger Ye]

The idea in Comment 6 by Fritz makes the most sense, behind this request there's a privacy concern. I don't want my weave account name displayed explicitly.

The weave account name can be looked up and configured in its preference page. 

And weave already has an 'busy' icon when it's syncing. it shouldn't be difficult to add a 'offline' icon.

Please also consider that the space in status bar is a precious screen estate. This becomes quite obvious when there are more than 10 icons in status bar.

Therefore this request doesn't have much to do with multiple weave accounts support, for this it should go to the preference page.

Thanks

Comment 16

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

We no longer show the username.  We also don't have status bar UI anymore in Fx4 and up.