Meta-Contacts

[Crest]

Adium is a realy greate im-client in fact one of the bests i know, but one little thing is realy missing: Meta-Contacts (the ability to unite serveral contacts witch are using different protocolls to one). Is this planed to be added in the future?

[Ders]

It already was added. I have all my contacts listed in my address book and they are combined when necessary.

[Crest]

so ich have to use the address book to combine my contacts?

[dchoby98]

Metacontacts can be created in two ways:

If you use the Address Book, create an entry for a person, and enter all of their screennames. If those names are on your Adium accounts, we'll automatically combine them for you.

If you like making metacontacts by hand, just hold down the option key and drag one contact onto the other. The mouse pointer will have a small "+" icon, just like copying a file in the Finder. Voila!

You can see whether someone is a metacontact by mousing over their name. Their tooltip will say "Meta" and show a list of the accounts in it. Alternately, get info on them for the same information.

[David Munch]

0.8 should have a big flashing window on primary launch:

"META-CONTACTS ARE IN DAMNED!!!!!"


8)

[tedger]

Hopefully by the time .8 rolls around there will be a built in help viewer pages at least to help with things like this. Again, no promises but I hope to get them in there by then.

[BlueRevolution]

Hopefully by the time .8 rolls around there will be a built in help viewer pages at least to help with things like this. Again, no promises but I hope to get them in there by then.

that would be awesome! then you could reply to stupid questions "search the forum OR the help files"

btw if you need someone to write 'em I'm good at that kinda stuff

[The_Tick]

Meta contacts are in, but aren't too apparent. One thing we could do is allow drag+drop instead of option+drag+drop.

Another is bring up a confirmation dialogue when manually creating a meta.

As I've been repeating for a bit, about 5 people know about the option key. This thread is evidence of that I think. These aren't the only ways to resolve it, but something else could be done to make it more intuitive. Thoughts?

[TheSilverFox06]

The problem with regular drag n drop is that you could accidentally create a meta-contact when simply trying to move a contact from one group to another. This could result in some confusion if you didn't notice that this is what you did.

[The_Tick]

The problem with regular drag n drop is that you could accidentally create a meta-contact when simply trying to move a contact from one group to another. This could result in some confusion if you didn't notice that this is what you did.

Right, which is why a dialogue asking if this is what you want to do would be useful.

[BlueRevolution]

and an option to turn it off

I think it would be sweet if you could expand metas in the contact list like you can groups, so then if you dragged a contact into a meta by accident you could just drag it out again

[tedger]

I think an intuitive way to do it would be to allow simple drag and drop with a confirmation message, and drag and drop with option held suppressed the message.

[evands]

But what about manual ordering?

[The_Tick]

I would think manual ordering is more advanced configuration, so how we do it now in the get info box might work well. We could also do a thing like Gaim does and do the exanding thing, but I have found myself quite annoyed with the way trillian does that at times. I think manual ordering in get info is pretty snazzy as is.

[evands]

I would think manual ordering is more advanced configuration, so how we do it now in the get info box might work well. We could also do a thing like Gaim does and do the exanding thing, but I have found myself quite annoyed with the way trillian does that at times. I think manual ordering in get info is pretty snazzy as is.

I have no idea what you're talking about here

[The_Tick]

Neither do I


Don't we do manual ordering via the drawer in get info for the contact?

[bgannin]

I believe Evan was referring to to manual sort ordering in the contact list and how drag+drop meta-transforming would impact that.

[The_Tick]

Bah, I use address book, I have no ideas there.

[Somethingiateforlunch]

i think things are good as they are, what about including a help document integrated in adium so when u can go to if u need help--> adium help.... and then search for what you need? or perhaps there could be a list of features included, with a brief list of features, and u when u click on them it links u up to how to utalize it...

how many times do you need to make metacontacts? and when you do need to make them, how hard is it to push option?

i think the only thing thats missing is a help document, maybe something that pops up asking you to consult a pre-made tutorial for features?

p.s. im to sick to spell check :-P :-D

[The_Tick]

i think things are good as they are, what about including a help document integrated in adium so when u can go to if u need help--> adium help.... and then search for what you need? or perhaps there could be a list of features included, with a brief list of features, and u when u click on them it links u up to how to utalize it...

how many times do you need to make metacontacts? and when you do need to make them, how hard is it to push option?

i think the only thing thats missing is a help document, maybe something that pops up asking you to consult a pre-made tutorial for features?

p.s. im to sick to spell check :-P :-D

That's not the point of the discussion here. Mac interfaces are supposed to be designed to not require documentation. Documentation is of course nice, but the user shouldn't be required to search help to find out how to do something, it should be apparent and intuitive.