745369 - When there is activity in one of the chat channels the tab needs to flash or draw attention

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Instant Messaging, enhancement)

Description

[Matt]

Currently there is no visual prompts that there is activity in the chat channel. Chatzilla changes the color of the tab and without this sort of visual prompt the chat is not really useful unless your spending your time checking for activity.

Comment 1

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

- When a message is directed to you (rather than just any message in a channel), the Chat tab title is changed to include the unread message count.

- The discussion in bug 740358 is somehow related, although the problem we are trying to address there isn't really the same.

Blake, any idea of how we can show activity for messages that aren't directed to the user without being too obtrusive?

Comment 2

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

Given how frequently people talk in most of the IRC rooms I'm in, this wouldn't be a useful thing to have by default for me.  So, given the drastically different use cases we're trying to support, having a way for the user to tune the level of notification they get seems like a good idea.  (Something in the Chat preferences, perhaps?)

Thanks,
Blake.

Comment 3

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Colloquy also changes the colour of icons on tabs (from blue to yellow) whenever somebody speaks. That's quite useful as a separate window as I can see where activity is on channels at a glance.

For direct messages or highlights, the icon goes to red and there's an option to hook it up to a sound and an alert (new mail style) which also allows hooking it up to growl, which gives further configuration options.

These generally work well for me although having it app-configurable would also let people customise as necessary.