735334 - TB-IM: Without chat accounts set up, need to disable respective toolbar controls (and other nitfixes)

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Instant Messaging, defect)

Description

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #735301 +++

We now have a nice chat client, let's polish the behaviour and UI a little to improve the out-of-the box experience for newbie users...

STR

current TB 13 trunk with IM client
without any IM accounts set up yet

1 press Chat button from Mail toolbar to open chat tab (curious newbie...)
2 try all the exciting new buttons on the toolbar
2a) Add contact, Join chat
2b) the green icon next to "Available"
2c) the caption of "Available"
2d) Show accounts

Current behaviour

2a) Add contact dialogue flashes and disappears; same for "Join chat". That's useless and confusing - where do I go from here?

2b) surprise: there's a dropdown (but no dropdown indicator?), and if I pick "Unavailable", all of a sudden the nice caption "Available" changes and explodes to [                                        ] (empty text input box, still with old tooltip "Available": more nitfixes required...), while the "Show accounts" button and the search box jump away to the right (odd, another nitfix candidate). As a newbie, I have no clue what I am supposed to do here. Clicking on the big grey background area on the right-center of the screen does not even remove the focus from that ghasty box. And I still really can't do anything useful here as long as I don't have a chat account set up.

2c) clicking the caption "Available" acts like a button if click slightly below (wrong, as it doesn't trigger the dropdown), and if actually click the caption, I get the exploding blank box again (see 2b).

2d) Show accounts: flashing dialogue "Instant Messaging status", immediately covered by "Chat account wizard" --> see bug 735272

Expected Result

2a) disable "Add contact" in this scenario (no chat accounts set up yet)
2b) disable "Join chat" in this scenario
2c) disable "Available" dropdown in this scenario

For these three, there is really no point of enabling them before the user has set up a chat account (ux-userfeedback). We should guide the newbie user and make it easier to find the one and only button that does something useful in this scenario: "Get started" (ux-discovery)

2d) either disable "Show accounts" button, or do something smarter (see bug 735272)

Furthermore, when the respective elements are enabled:
- consider adding a dropdown arrow next to the "Available" icon, to correctly indicate this is a dropdown menu where I can choose from (e.g. because all other dropdowns in TB have a dropdown indicator! -> ux-consistency, ux-discovery)
- move the "Available" caption out of the <button> element, what's the use of pretending to be the button (with push-down-effect on the caption) if I can't get the dropdown button functionality from here?
- make the text input box smaller, and pls avoid pushing other UI elements to the left: Jumping UI buttons create this unpleasant impression of hobby developers and instable UI...

Some of these might require new bugs.

Comment 1

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #0)

> 2a) Add contact dialogue flashes and disappears; same for "Join chat".
> That's useless and confusing - where do I go from here?

Disabling these 2 buttons when they can't do anything useful has been filed as bug 735701.

> 2b) surprise: there's a dropdown (but no dropdown indicator?), and if I pick
> "Unavailable", all of a sudden the nice caption "Available" changes and
> explodes to [                                        ] (empty text input
> box, still with old tooltip "Available": more nitfixes required...)

Discoverability issues of the status selector are covered by bug 735658. It may not fix all the nits you have identified with it, but it should make it way less confusing/surprising.

> the "Show accounts" button and the search box jump away to the right (odd,
> another nitfix candidate).

This has been fixed in bug 736819.

> We should guide the newbie user
> and make it easier to find the one and only button that does something
> useful in this scenario: "Get started" (ux-discovery)

Seems like bug 735292.

> Some of these might require new bugs.

I'm not sure if issues described here that aren't covered by other bugs I've just mentioned remain. It's generally easier to track and fix issues if we have one bug report per issues. Anyway, thanks for the feedback! :-)

Comment 2

[Stefan Weiss [:sir_none]]

(In reply to Florian Quèze [:florian] [:flo] from comment #1)

can we mark this as fixed, because all the parts/bugs that are part of this are already fixed!?
anyone think we need to keep this?

Comment 3

[Patrick Cloke [:clokep]]

I'm resolving this as INCOMPLETE since nothing was actually fixed in this bug.

I'll echo Florian's sentiment: thank you for the feedback. If you see other issues, please file them individually in separate specific bugs. Thanks!