953671 - Display more information in the buddy list

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Instantbird Graveyard :: Contacts window, enhancement)

Description

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

*** Original post on bio 225 at 2009-08-24 18:17:00 UTC ***

*** Due to BzAPI limitations, the initial description is in comment 1 ***

Comment 1

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

Attachment: WIP

*** Original post on bio 225 as attmnt 211 at 2009-08-24 18:17:00 UTC ***

The buddy list should have 2 different presentations, controlled by a
preference.

The first (default?) one should be very similar to the current one, but when
the display name doesn't take all the space, we should append in gray text the
status message.

The other should use bigger icons for the protocol and current status, it
should use 2 lines of text: the first for the display name, the second for the
status message. And it should display the buddy icon.
This presentation would be somewhat similar to:
http://pidgin.im/shared/img/contact_window.png

The attached very early work in progress gives an example of how the status
message can be accessed.

Comment 2

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

*** Original post on bio 225 at 2009-08-24 18:25:23 UTC ***

Oh, I forgot to note here:
The goal here is to improve the buddy list, not to rework it completely. It should give 0.2 users the impression that something has changed there (and is now better) since 0.1.

Having a really good buddy list is planned for 0.3.

Comment 3

[Benedikt Pfeifer]

*** Original post on bio 225 at 2009-08-24 20:15:03 UTC ***

(In reply to comment #1)
> Oh, I forgot to note here:
> The goal here is to improve the buddy list, not to rework it completely. It
> should give 0.2 users the impression that something has changed there (and is
> now better) since 0.1.
> 
> Having a really good buddy list is planned for 0.3.

If you create a compact listitem and a more detailed one anyways, you could create a third option and combine them into one list. This way you would get the best of both worlds. Especially you wouldn't need to hover and wait for the tooltip to pop up anymore but get the details straight ahead.

Compare Skype buddy list:
http://www.upstarts.net/article21p/gilat1.gif

(Please note: it's just the selected contact that is shown in expanded layout, so in total the contacts don't shift their position when clicking/going with keyboard through the list ('things staying where they are' is good in my opinion))

Comment 4

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

*** Original post on bio 225 at 2009-08-24 20:43:12 UTC ***

(In reply to comment #2)

Having a different treatment for the selected item is something interesting to try. I think we will explore this for 0.3.

There are several advantages:
 - it gives more space to provide buttons for commons actions (start a conversation, view history, block, whatever...).
 - we could make the display name editable: this would be a very lightweight UI for changing the alias of the buddy.
 - we can display a list of tags the buddy has, and so, make the tags attached to the buddy very easily editable.
 - it provides a bigger drop target for the use case of grouping several buddies into a contact using drag and drop. (only works if the selection changes on mouseup and not on mousedown of course...)

Comment 5

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

*** Original post on bio 225 at 2009-08-24 20:46:48 UTC ***

(In reply to comment #3)

>  - it gives more space to provide buttons
Just to be clear: the buttons would be just small icons. The descriptive text would be in a tooltip.

Comment 6

[Benedikt Pfeifer]

*** Original post on bio 225 at 2010-08-05 15:03:40 UTC ***

Screenshot of quick example for the first idea from comment 0 (a very simple implementation with some css and a few lines of xul/xbl in the buddy binding):

https://wiki.instantbird.org/File:BuddyEnhanced3.png

Comment 7

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

*** Original post on bio 225 at 2010-08-09 23:13:19 UTC ***

(In reply to comment #5)
> Screenshot of quick example for the first idea from comment 0 (a very simple
> implementation with some css and a few lines of xul/xbl in the buddy binding):
> 
> https://wiki.instantbird.org/File:BuddyEnhanced3.png

This looks cool! :)
I'm not a fan of the smaller font size for the status message though. The display name is already relatively small, some people would have a hard time reading the smaller gray text.

I would like to try using the same font size, and separating the display name and the status message by " - " (would be gray too).

Comment 8

[Benedikt Pfeifer]

*** Original post on bio 225 at 2011-05-04 09:00:11 UTC ***

Is there anything else in the scope of this bug or did landing of the contacts with the extended view fix it already?

Comment 9

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

*** Original post on bio 225 at 2011-05-04 10:39:42 UTC ***

(In reply to comment #7)
> Is there anything else in the scope of this bug or did landing of the contacts
> with the extended view fix it already?

There could be more things (displaying the list of tags a contact has in the extended view for example), but it's mostly fixed by https://hg.instantbird.org/instantbird/rev/60cf5556e90a from bug 954133 (bio 698), so I think for clarity it's better to resolve this and file new bugs for specific additional enhancements.