Adium Reborn - UI proposal

[Oskar Krawczyk]

Hi Folks,

Just a quick introduction, my name's Oskar, I'm a UI/UX designer/developer.

Some of you might already know me by the quick... "chat" I had with Colin over twitter, yesterday :-)

You're all probably busy people so I'll get the the point.

In February, I tweeted about how the messenger market for mac is lacking, mentioning Adium in the process. Robert Vehse replied saying that if I have a suggestion I should create something, so I teamed up with a great UI designer and friend of mine (Dawid), and started working on a completely rethought frontend for Adium.

There were a few private mails between Robert and me just in order to have a more presentable version of our proposal, but the word got out (on Hacker News), so we need to present what we've came up with now.

The initial blog post about the Adium Case Study http://nouincolor.com/blog/adium-reborn/ (click on the screen for a full presentation - click to change the slide).

Most of the screens from the presentation are self-explanatory. One thing that might need some introduction is the Active Input, this is basically something like Fantastical has ? an intelligent input that figures out the stuff you?re trying to do, like:
chat Robert
chat Robert and Luke
message Robert
yesterdays chat with Robert
Robert history from yesterday
status away
add oskar.krawczyk at gmail.com to Friends
?
As I've mentioned before, this UI is not as polished as I'd like it to be. Plus, if you guys would be interested in this proposal, Dawid and myself, we'd spend more time in refining and getting all of the screens ready.

I've been using Adium for years (remember this or this), as much as I like it, I'd love if this project could take a bolder move, and adopt a minimalistic UI as we've created - this could potentially open the doors to a completely new user-base.

If you folks are not planning on taking Adium in a slightly different direction, no hard feelings, we've tried, and we're happy :-)

Best Regards,
Oskar

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[Sherif S.]

Post by Oskar Krawczyk
Just a quick introduction, my name's Oskar, I'm a UI/UX designer/developer.

Hello Oskar,

I'm not a dev, but I'm a passionate user (and briefly tester) of Adium, so I'll throw in my two cents.

Post by Oskar Krawczyk
In February, I tweeted about how the messenger market for mac is lacking, mentioning Adium in the process. Robert Vehse replied saying that if I have a suggestion I should create something, so I teamed up with a great UI designer and friend of mine (Dawid), and started working on a completely rethought frontend for Adium.
The initial blog post about the Adium Case Study http://nouincolor.com/blog/adium-reborn/ (click on the screen for a full presentation - click to change the slide).

First of all, really nicely-designed website. Kudos.

Functional things that I really like:

1- Pinned messages: yes! so awesome. That would make scrolling up to see a reference message so much easier (well, unnecessary) (however see ** below)

2- Better menu-bar list: Active Study a la Fantastical would be really cool. I love using Fantastical's natural language parsing, and it could benefit Adium a lot, as long as it's not done while replacing the actions in menus or contextual menus.

3- Dropbox attachment zone: do I even need to say anything? That's just sexy.

Post by Oskar Krawczyk
I've been using Adium for years (remember this or this), as much as I like it, I'd love if this project could take a bolder move, and adopt a minimalistic UI as we've created - this could potentially open the doors to a completely new user-base.

** This is the part that I don't like so much. There has been a trend in Mac software design for less information density and much more spacing out, and I don't know how many other people feel the same way, but I strongly, strongly dislike it. I bought a refurbed 17" MBP because I want the real estate and want to have tons of information available without having to scroll or move things, and since Apple's taken that away, I already have to imagine going down to a 15" in a number of years. I don't want to also have less information per square-inch.

Some of the things I love about current Adium

- I can have 10s of contacts and channels in my contact list and see them all without having to click on a menu or scroll a lot. If I understand the design correctly, the user will have to click on the menu to see their contacts, and then there's going to be a lot of scrolling.

- I can have many tabs on the bottom of the conversation window and see them all without having to scroll, until there is truly too many of them. This design is a lot like Messages, with way less contacts in the same area than current Adium.

- I can see tons of text in the conversation window without having to scroll (and I picked a Message Style and font that makes that happen). I don't know if Message Styles are considered for this design, but it seems to aim for/prefer a much more spaced-out message view. More like iMessage/texting than heavy IM-ing.

As for the user base, this has been discussed a couple of times on the #adium-devl IRC channel. I don't know that this will bring over a whole new demographic. I don't think Adium's user base is not bigger because people don't see a minimalist/modern-y design, it's because not that many people IM, and they text/iMessage/WhatsApp more. My guess ? which could very well be wrong ? is that people who want Adium for IM like having the customizability and high information density provided by current Adium. Those who don't just use GTalk in the browser.

I hope I didn't ramble too much. I know that is not the final design, and they're just screenshots, but those are my current thoughts on what I could see. Whatever happens, there is some functionality there that would be awesome for current Adium to get.

Cheers,

? Sherif

[Daniel Alexander Guzman]

Overall, I like the direction you've taken with the UI. I'm not a huge fan of Messages, which it seems you've gone to a certain extent emulating, but the simplicity definitely does appeal to me. I especially like the removal of a lot of the icon clutter, one of my few annoyances with Adium. However, the menubar contacts are a bit iffy for me; I very, very rarely use the menubar for anything more than display. The only app I use regularly resident in it, Mint Quickview, is hardly a favorite of mine for that exact reason. Perhaps as an option, for those who choose to use it, but I definitely prefer a regular, dedicated window.

Moreover, the sidebar with current conversations is nice, but I think it could be curious to go the route of Google Talk:

Loading Image...

Rather than a separate list of conversations, it could integrate the buddy list and conversations, by moving up and differentiating contacts who are currently engaged in conversations with you. This works well and saves space.

The active input is especially curious, and I wonder how useful it'll be. I often use a lot of keyboard-driven interfaces (I use Spotlight to launch just about everything), but I've never really thought about it for my instant messenger. I figure if it's done well, though, I'd use the hell out of it.

Overall, I really do like the more simple and clean direction you took. The entire chat 'bubble' style isn't exactly my favorite, so I figure it'd be nice (and likely not incredibly hard) to retain the traditional configurability of the chat view. Currently, I've got it with something clean and simple like so:

http://cl.ly/image/1o1u3q2l0c41

Nothing incredibly fancy, but just a preference. I've never been a fan of bubbles.

Overall, though, I love the direction. If this ever does come together into something, I'd love to give it a shot.

On May 2, 2013, at 3:07 PM, Oskar Krawczyk <oskar.krawczyk at gmail.com<mailto:oskar.krawczyk at gmail.com>> wrote:

Hi Folks,

Just a quick introduction, my name's Oskar, I'm a UI/UX designer/developer.

Some of you might already know me by the quick... "chat" I had with Colin over twitter, yesterday :-)

You're all probably busy people so I'll get the the point.

In February, I tweeted about how the messenger market for mac is lacking, mentioning Adium in the process. Robert Vehse replied saying that if I have a suggestion I should create something, so I teamed up with a great UI designer and friend of mine (Dawid), and started working on a completely rethought frontend for Adium.

There were a few private mails between Robert and me just in order to have a more presentable version of our proposal, but the word got out (on Hacker News), so we need to present what we've came up with now.

The initial blog post about the Adium Case Study http://nouincolor.com/blog/adium-reborn/ (click on the screen for a full presentation - click to change the slide).

Most of the screens from the presentation are self-explanatory. One thing that might need some introduction is the Active Input, this is basically something like Fantastical has ? an intelligent input that figures out the stuff you?re trying to do, like:

* chat Robert
* chat Robert and Luke
* message Robert
* yesterdays chat with Robert
* Robert history from yesterday
* status away
* add oskar.krawczyk at gmail.com<mailto:oskar.krawczyk at gmail.com> to Friends
* ?

As I've mentioned before, this UI is not as polished as I'd like it to be. Plus, if you guys would be interested in this proposal, Dawid and myself, we'd spend more time in refining and getting all of the screens ready.

I've been using Adium for years (remember this<http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=3655> or this<http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=6218>), as much as I like it, I'd love if this project could take a bolder move, and adopt a minimalistic UI as we've created - this could potentially open the doors to a completely new user-base.

If you folks are not planning on taking Adium in a slightly different direction, no hard feelings, we've tried, and we're happy :-)

Best Regards,
Oskar


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[Christopher Forsythe]

There was a large conversation about a whole redesign that was started by
George Lambrou. Have you looked at that at all?

Overall, I like the direction you've taken with the UI. I'm not a *huge* fan
of Messages, which it seems you've gone to a certain extent emulating, but
the simplicity definitely does appeal to me. I especially like the removal
of a lot of the icon clutter, one of my few annoyances with Adium. However,
the menubar contacts are a bit iffy for me; I very, very rarely use the
menubar for anything more than display. The only app I use regularly
resident in it, Mint Quickview, is hardly a favorite of mine for that exact
reason. Perhaps as an option, for those who choose to use it, but I
definitely prefer a regular, dedicated window.
Moreover, the sidebar with current conversations is nice, but I think it
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z5w4yczdz9h21v0/2013-05-03-04.30.48.png
Rather than a separate list of conversations, it could integrate the
buddy list and conversations, by moving up and differentiating contacts who
are currently engaged in conversations with you. This works well and saves
space.
The active input is especially curious, and I wonder how useful it'll
be. I often use a lot of keyboard-driven interfaces (I use Spotlight to
launch just about everything), but I've never really thought about it for
my instant messenger. I figure if it's done well, though, I'd use the hell
out of it.
Overall, I really do like the more simple and clean direction you took.
The entire chat 'bubble' style isn't exactly my favorite, so I figure it'd
be nice (and likely not incredibly hard) to retain the traditional
configurability of the chat view. Currently, I've got it with something
http://cl.ly/image/1o1u3q2l0c41
Nothing incredibly fancy, but just a preference. I've never been a fan of bubbles.
Overall, though, I love the direction. If this ever does come together
into something, I'd love to give it a shot.
On May 2, 2013, at 3:07 PM, Oskar Krawczyk <oskar.krawczyk at gmail.com>
Hi Folks,
Just a quick introduction, my name's Oskar, I'm a UI/UX
designer/developer.
Some of you might already know me by the quick... "chat" I had with
Colin over twitter, yesterday :-)
You're all probably busy people so I'll get the the point.
In February, I tweeted about how the messenger market for mac is
lacking, mentioning Adium in the process. Robert Vehse replied saying that
if I have a suggestion I should create something, so I teamed up with a
great UI designer and friend of mine (Dawid), and started working on a
completely rethought frontend for Adium.
There were a few private mails between Robert and me just in order to
have a more presentable version of our proposal, but the word got out (on
Hacker News), so we need to present what we've came up with now.
The initial blog post about the Adium Case Study
http://nouincolor.com/blog/adium-reborn/ (click on the screen for a full
presentation - click to change the slide).
Most of the screens from the presentation are self-explanatory. One
thing that might need some introduction is the Active Input, this is
basically something like Fantastical has ? an intelligent input that
- *chat* Robert
- *chat* Robert *and* Luke
- *message* Robert
- *yesterdays* *chat* with Robert
- Robert *history* from *yesterday*
- *status* away
- *add* oskar.krawczyk at gmail.com *to* Friends
- ?
As I've mentioned before, this UI is not as polished as I'd like it to be.
Plus, if you guys would be interested in this proposal, Dawid and myself,
we'd spend more time in refining and getting all of the screens ready.
I've been using Adium for years (remember this<http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=3655>
or this <http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=6218>), as
much as I like it, I'd love if this project could take a bolder move, and
adopt a minimalistic UI as we've created - this could potentially open the
doors to a completely new user-base.
If you folks are not planning on taking Adium in a slightly different
direction, no hard feelings, we've tried, and we're happy :-)
Best Regards,
Oskar

[Oskar Krawczyk]

No. I just joined the ML yesterday with a very specific idea for the UI in mind.

Best,
Oskar

There was a large conversation about a whole redesign that was started by George Lambrou. Have you looked at that at all?
Overall, I like the direction you've taken with the UI. I'm not a huge fan of Messages, which it seems you've gone to a certain extent emulating, but the simplicity definitely does appeal to me. I especially like the removal of a lot of the icon clutter, one of my few annoyances with Adium. However, the menubar contacts are a bit iffy for me; I very, very rarely use the menubar for anything more than display. The only app I use regularly resident in it, Mint Quickview, is hardly a favorite of mine for that exact reason. Perhaps as an option, for those who choose to use it, but I definitely prefer a regular, dedicated window.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z5w4yczdz9h21v0/2013-05-03-04.30.48.png
Rather than a separate list of conversations, it could integrate the buddy list and conversations, by moving up and differentiating contacts who are currently engaged in conversations with you. This works well and saves space.
The active input is especially curious, and I wonder how useful it'll be. I often use a lot of keyboard-driven interfaces (I use Spotlight to launch just about everything), but I've never really thought about it for my instant messenger. I figure if it's done well, though, I'd use the hell out of it.
http://cl.ly/image/1o1u3q2l0c41
Nothing incredibly fancy, but just a preference. I've never been a fan of bubbles.
Overall, though, I love the direction. If this ever does come together into something, I'd love to give it a shot.

Post by Oskar Krawczyk
Hi Folks,
Just a quick introduction, my name's Oskar, I'm a UI/UX designer/developer.
Some of you might already know me by the quick... "chat" I had with Colin over twitter, yesterday :-)
You're all probably busy people so I'll get the the point.
In February, I tweeted about how the messenger market for mac is lacking, mentioning Adium in the process. Robert Vehse replied saying that if I have a suggestion I should create something, so I teamed up with a great UI designer and friend of mine (Dawid), and started working on a completely rethought frontend for Adium.
There were a few private mails between Robert and me just in order to have a more presentable version of our proposal, but the word got out (on Hacker News), so we need to present what we've came up with now.
The initial blog post about the Adium Case Study http://nouincolor.com/blog/adium-reborn/ (click on the screen for a full presentation - click to change the slide).
chat Robert
chat Robert and Luke
message Robert
yesterdays chat with Robert
Robert history from yesterday
status away
add oskar.krawczyk at gmail.com to Friends
?
As I've mentioned before, this UI is not as polished as I'd like it to be. Plus, if you guys would be interested in this proposal, Dawid and myself, we'd spend more time in refining and getting all of the screens ready.
I've been using Adium for years (remember this or this), as much as I like it, I'd love if this project could take a bolder move, and adopt a minimalistic UI as we've created - this could potentially open the doors to a completely new user-base.
If you folks are not planning on taking Adium in a slightly different direction, no hard feelings, we've tried, and we're happy :-)
Best Regards,
Oskar

--
Chris Forsythe
@The_Tick

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[Matthew]

That conversation can be read in the archives at
http://adium.im/pipermail/devel_adium.im/2011-August/008666.html.


Matthew

Post by Oskar Krawczyk
No. I just joined the ML yesterday with a very specific idea for the UI in mind.
Best,
Oskar
There was a large conversation about a whole redesign that was started by
George Lambrou. Have you looked at that at all?

Overall, I like the direction you've taken with the UI. I'm not a *huge* fan
of Messages, which it seems you've gone to a certain extent emulating, but
the simplicity definitely does appeal to me. I especially like the removal
of a lot of the icon clutter, one of my few annoyances with Adium. However,
the menubar contacts are a bit iffy for me; I very, very rarely use the
menubar for anything more than display. The only app I use regularly
resident in it, Mint Quickview, is hardly a favorite of mine for that exact
reason. Perhaps as an option, for those who choose to use it, but I
definitely prefer a regular, dedicated window.
Moreover, the sidebar with current conversations is nice, but I think
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z5w4yczdz9h21v0/2013-05-03-04.30.48.png
Rather than a separate list of conversations, it could integrate the
buddy list and conversations, by moving up and differentiating contacts who
are currently engaged in conversations with you. This works well and saves
space.
The active input is especially curious, and I wonder how useful it'll
be. I often use a lot of keyboard-driven interfaces (I use Spotlight to
launch just about everything), but I've never really thought about it for
my instant messenger. I figure if it's done well, though, I'd use the hell
out of it.
Overall, I really do like the more simple and clean direction you took.
The entire chat 'bubble' style isn't exactly my favorite, so I figure it'd
be nice (and likely not incredibly hard) to retain the traditional
configurability of the chat view. Currently, I've got it with something
http://cl.ly/image/1o1u3q2l0c41
Nothing incredibly fancy, but just a preference. I've never been a fan of bubbles.
Overall, though, I love the direction. If this ever does come together
into something, I'd love to give it a shot.
Hi Folks,
Just a quick introduction, my name's Oskar, I'm a UI/UX
designer/developer.
Some of you might already know me by the quick... "chat" I had with
Colin over twitter, yesterday :-)
You're all probably busy people so I'll get the the point.
In February, I tweeted about how the messenger market for mac is
lacking, mentioning Adium in the process. Robert Vehse replied saying that
if I have a suggestion I should create something, so I teamed up with a
great UI designer and friend of mine (Dawid), and started working on a
completely rethought frontend for Adium.
There were a few private mails between Robert and me just in order to
have a more presentable version of our proposal, but the word got out (on
Hacker News), so we need to present what we've came up with now.
The initial blog post about the Adium Case Study
http://nouincolor.com/blog/adium-reborn/ (click on the screen for a full
presentation - click to change the slide).
Most of the screens from the presentation are self-explanatory. One
thing that might need some introduction is the Active Input, this is
basically something like Fantastical has ? an intelligent input that
- *chat* Robert
- *chat* Robert *and* Luke
- *message* Robert
- *yesterdays* *chat* with Robert
- Robert *history* from *yesterday*
- *status* away
- *add* oskar.krawczyk at gmail.com *to* Friends
- ?
As I've mentioned before, this UI is not as polished as I'd like it to
be. Plus, if you guys would be interested in this proposal, Dawid and
myself, we'd spend more time in refining and getting all of the screens
ready.
I've been using Adium for years (remember this<http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=3655>
or this <http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=6218>), as
much as I like it, I'd love if this project could take a bolder move, and
adopt a minimalistic UI as we've created - this could potentially open the
doors to a completely new user-base.
If you folks are not planning on taking Adium in a slightly different
direction, no hard feelings, we've tried, and we're happy :-)
Best Regards,
Oskar

--
Chris Forsythe
@The_Tick <http://twitter.com/The_Tick>

[Robert Vehse]

Hey everyone,

First of all, thanks a lot for your work, Oskar and Dawid.

Here are some thoughts I have on the proposal. I will pick aspects that I find most interesting.

Visual/aesthetic aspects
The presentation seems to suggest a completely custom-coded window. I'd venture to say it's unlikely for someone to come around and re-code the entire chat window. Also, in my opinion, customisability, especially in the visual department (contact list, message view), is one of Adium's strengths, I'd rather not lose that. As a result, my approach to realising some of what the concept envisions would be an evolutionary, pragmatic one. I'm thinking about how aspects could be implemented based on the current state of Adium as an app and as a project.

To me, the most visually striking aspect of the concept is its minimalism. The most prevalent colour is white. That way, relevant parts of the UI, its content (user names, status, messages etc.), are highlighted which is a good thing.

So the question is: how can we tone down Adium's UI to achieve this minimalism? Well, obviously the message view part wouldn't be too hard. A message style should easily accomplish this. I suspect styling the toolbar and the tabs is a lot more difficult. As of 10.8 the toolbar is still somewhat of a system standard in OS X so we would probably want to start with the styling of the tabs. I really do think the tabs could use some work.

Functional aspects
Chat window: message view
- emoticons in the input box: this idea has been around for some time (https://trac.adium.im/ticket/484) and its implementation isn't far from being done, I believe, Adrian just needs to finish the work he did in his branch (http://hg.adium.im/adium/shortlog/b06ab45b7b91)
- inline images: I believe the message view supports this, at least in theory?
- inline video: there's an outdated plugin for Youtube videos: http://www.adiumxtras.com/?a=xtras&xtra_id=6655. Would (message view) performance take a hit with inline videos? I think I wouldn't mind them if they are not displayed too large.
- message read/replied indication: I like that.
- setting status in the chat window: it's a good idea but I prefer the idea of implementing this in the toolbar the way George Lambrou suggested it with his "Me button" in his "Adium Next" concept (http://markmail.org/search/?q=lambrou&q=list%3Aim.adium.devel#query:lambrou%20list%3Aim.adium.devel+page:1+mid:b7sn4zfroaxy42mv+state:results, PDF attachment included)

Chat window: toolbar
- reducing the default amount of items in the toolbar has been suggested numerous times before (Paul Wilde last brought this up: https://trac.adium.im/ticket/15400) and rightly so. The default toolbar is way too crammed. In fact, I was going to address this here on the mailing list soon and I still intend to do so

Chat window: tabs
- service icons on user icons: I'm not fan of this idea, Adium tries to be service-agnostic.

Dropbox integration
I feel the message view isn't the most logical place for a drop zone, maybe a toolbar items would be suited for this? We could allow integration of other services such as Cloud.app or Droplr as plugins.

Menu bar item
- active input: maybe a bit too geeky for the average user

So much from now. I'd be interested in hearing the opinions of others, especially our active developers. :)

Cheers,
Robbie
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[Oskar Krawczyk]

Hey Robbie,

I agree with most of the points, and understand where you're coming from in regards to the evolution instead of revolution, but revolution was obviously our intention.

I went through what George Lambrou did, and I mostly like the UX, especially the attached contact list.

Anyway, I'd love to get more feedback from all active developers and the PM - preferably with a decision on wether our UI proposal is something that you'd pursue. I'd need some kind of a decision, so we (Dawid and me) know where we stand, if we should book some time off on getting more UI done :-)

Kind Regards,
Oskar

Post by Robert Vehse
Hey everyone,
First of all, thanks a lot for your work, Oskar and Dawid.
Here are some thoughts I have on the proposal. I will pick aspects that I find most interesting.
Visual/aesthetic aspects
The presentation seems to suggest a completely custom-coded window. I'd venture to say it's unlikely for someone to come around and re-code the entire chat window. Also, in my opinion, customisability, especially in the visual department (contact list, message view), is one of Adium's strengths, I'd rather not lose that. As a result, my approach to realising some of what the concept envisions would be an evolutionary, pragmatic one. I'm thinking about how aspects could be implemented based on the current state of Adium as an app and as a project.
To me, the most visually striking aspect of the concept is its minimalism. The most prevalent colour is white. That way, relevant parts of the UI, its content (user names, status, messages etc.), are highlighted which is a good thing.
So the question is: how can we tone down Adium's UI to achieve this minimalism? Well, obviously the message view part wouldn't be too hard. A message style should easily accomplish this. I suspect styling the toolbar and the tabs is a lot more difficult. As of 10.8 the toolbar is still somewhat of a system standard in OS X so we would probably want to start with the styling of the tabs. I really do think the tabs could use some work.
Functional aspects
Chat window: message view
- emoticons in the input box: this idea has been around for some time (https://trac.adium.im/ticket/484) and its implementation isn't far from being done, I believe, Adrian just needs to finish the work he did in his branch (http://hg.adium.im/adium/shortlog/b06ab45b7b91)
- inline images: I believe the message view supports this, at least in theory?
- inline video: there's an outdated plugin for Youtube videos: http://www.adiumxtras.com/?a=xtras&xtra_id=6655. Would (message view) performance take a hit with inline videos? I think I wouldn't mind them if they are not displayed too large.
- message read/replied indication: I like that.
- setting status in the chat window: it's a good idea but I prefer the idea of implementing this in the toolbar the way George Lambrou suggested it with his "Me button" in his "Adium Next" concept (http://markmail.org/search/?q=lambrou&q=list%3Aim.adium.devel#query:lambrou%20list%3Aim.adium.devel+page:1+mid:b7sn4zfroaxy42mv+state:results, PDF attachment included)
Chat window: toolbar
- reducing the default amount of items in the toolbar has been suggested numerous times before (Paul Wilde last brought this up: https://trac.adium.im/ticket/15400) and rightly so. The default toolbar is way too crammed. In fact, I was going to address this here on the mailing list soon and I still intend to do so
Chat window: tabs
- service icons on user icons: I'm not fan of this idea, Adium tries to be service-agnostic.
Dropbox integration
I feel the message view isn't the most logical place for a drop zone, maybe a toolbar items would be suited for this? We could allow integration of other services such as Cloud.app or Droplr as plugins.
Menu bar item
- active input: maybe a bit too geeky for the average user
So much from now. I'd be interested in hearing the opinions of others, especially our active developers. :)
Cheers,
Robbie

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[Moses Lei]

Post by Robert Vehse
Menu bar item
- active input: maybe a bit too geeky for the average user
I disagree. iCal has this and it's mostly self explanatory, you type in

some text like "lunch with Alana on Friday 8pm" and it parses it and
creates your event. Natural language parsing has a lot of uses (for example
this could be extended to cover voice when Siri comes to the Mac), and is
often faster than hunting for a menu item or a particular contact among
hundreds.

On the other side of the argument, I'm not sure I care about the "average
user"... Ideally, Adium users are above average. (: More to the point, I
think we attract a different user audience with Adium than, say, Messages--
someone who wants more control over their IM experience. Something like
this active input field (maybe "Quick Chat" by analogy to "Quick Event" in
iCal?) would be interesting to these users.
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[Thijs Alkemade]

Post by Robert Vehse

Post by Robert Vehse
Menu bar item
- active input: maybe a bit too geeky for the average user

I disagree. iCal has this and it's mostly self explanatory, you type in
some text like "lunch with Alana on Friday 8pm" and it parses it and
creates your event. Natural language parsing has a lot of uses (for example
this could be extended to cover voice when Siri comes to the Mac), and is
often faster than hunting for a menu item or a particular contact among
hundreds.

I agree with Robert that 90% of the users will probably not understand the
"active input" field. iCal has a relatively easy job in this regard, as it
has only one different action: creating an event. Of course there is extra
data, like the time, date and place, but not much else. The proposal already
mentions a number of different actions that can be entered into the field:
starting group chats, adding contacts, sending messages, etc. When you start
to add every way somebody could try to express "start a group chat with John
and Steve" in all ~27 languages Adium supports, you're looking at a massive
amount of work.


Now for my general input on the proposal. I'm going to write this with the
assumption that the message view stays theme-able, preferably in
a backwards-compatible way.

* Message pinning: technically already possible from a message style (with
some JS), but that wouldn't persist.

* Message settings: what does this mean?

* Inline images and video: already possible, there are plugins for this
(only for load URLs, not file transfers). Given the security risks, I'm
not sure something like this should be included by default.

* Dropbox-integration: I dislike Dropbox, but don't let that stop anyone
else from adding it.

* The toolbar: Adium's toolbar is pretty dated and crowded (at least by
default). Most other OS X applications are now using toolbars with only
rectangular, gray buttons with a black image. Between that and this,
I think this proposal fits Adium better.

* The tab bar: I quite like the proposal. Seeing the latest message on the
tab sounds like a nice addition. I have some doubts about how this would
scale with many group chats, though.

Although I kept calling them "tabs", the area there actually looks more like
the contact list. With the current customizability of the contact list
(barring missing features like the message read indicator and latest
message), it is already possible to obtain a list pretty similar to this.

From the comments on this proposal on other sites, I've noticed two
different groups of people: those who prefer Adium to stay compact and out
of the way and those who would like a single-window layout for Adium.

So what I was thinking about is replacing the tab bar with a view that is
basically the same view as the contact list. There should be an option to
make it show the full contact list, basically making Adium single-window. It
should also be possible to keep the separate-window contact list around,
then this view will only show the currently open chats. This will also make
the "tab bar" scrollable (I quite dislike the current tab overflow menu).

Possible problems with this include:

* Dragging a tab by its handle now creates a new window. Dragging contacts
moves them between groups.
* The tab bar on the bottom and the top make no sense anymore (did top
ever make sense? :P )


That's all I have for now.

Thijs
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[Moses Lei]

Post by Thijs Alkemade
I agree with Robert that 90% of the users will probably not understand the
"active input" field. iCal has a relatively easy job in this regard, as it
has only one different action: creating an event. Of course there is extra
data, like the time, date and place, but not much else. The proposal already
starting group chats, adding contacts, sending messages, etc. When you start
to add every way somebody could try to express "start a group chat with John
and Steve" in all ~27 languages Adium supports, you're looking at a massive
amount of work.

The natural place to start would be, of course, English, and then it could
be localized, which is the same way any other feature of Adium is
developed. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be work, but it might be less
work than one might expect-- there are already fairly decent libraries for
natural language parsing that would probably work for Adium's purposes (The
focus is on English but can be adapted for other languages):

http://nltk.org/
http://www-nlp.stanford.edu/software/corenlp.shtml

This isn't new technology or anything. At the worst, we could do as well as
interactive fiction (text dungeon) games, which have a simple allowable set
of commands with synonyms. This would be relatively easy to localize.

Of course, this discussion is silly unless someone steps up to the plate
and takes the feature...

Moses
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[Eric Richie]

Post by Moses Lei

Post by Robert Vehse
Menu bar item
- active input: maybe a bit too geeky for the average user
I disagree. iCal has this and it's mostly self explanatory, you type in

some text like "lunch with Alana on Friday 8pm" and it parses it and
creates your event. Natural language parsing has a lot of uses (for example
this could be extended to cover voice when Siri comes to the Mac), and is
often faster than hunting for a menu item or a particular contact among
hundreds.
On the other side of the argument, I'm not sure I care about the "average
user"... Ideally, Adium users are above average. (: More to the point, I
think we attract a different user audience with Adium than, say, Messages--
someone who wants more control over their IM experience. Something like
this active input field (maybe "Quick Chat" by analogy to "Quick Event" in
iCal?) would be interesting to these users.

[Quick reply on this specific feature, longer reply later when I get a
chance to write it up.]

I think the active input is actually one of my favorite parts of this
proposal. I'd love to see more apps move in a similar direction. The idea
that someone can just start typing and get to where they want without
needing to remember the menu option or shortcut or icon to click is really
powerful and enables some really cool interactions. I think we could even
benefit from something like this in our current form (as a starting point).
Imagine if we made the contact search box a little smarter? It could be
pretty awesome.

Of course I also need to play the role of wet blanket? All of these
proposals are fantastic, but we also need to have the people to work on it.
If the ideas can generate enough excitement for those with the time to
contribute to the endeavor, great! However, if we don't have anyone with
the time/desire/skill set/whatever-other-things-might-be-needed to make
some headway on it, that could just lead to disappointment. I certainly
hope that wouldn't be the case, but it's my responsibility to put that out
there.

That said, I really hope we can get some traction towards a refresh.
Whether it's a complete re-write or an incremental refresh, progress is
progress. Whether we like it or not, visual changes are what gets people's
attention. I'm not naive enough to think that it would bring 30 new
developers with their entire summers to devote to the project, but if we
could attract a few that otherwise might not have given working on Adium a
second thought? That's a win for all of us; Users and Devs alike.

-Eric
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