cocoaforge

I had a thought about a design feature today but am not sure if its been suggested before. Sorry if it has!

I have a contact list as transparent bubbles, with display pics. The thought occurred to me, would it be possible that when Adium isnt in the foreground if the bubbles shrink to the side of the screen like the dock or windows startbar, leaving just the display pics of the users visible? Then when the mouse goes over each display pic the bubble slides out again...im picturing some smooth grpahical transitions but dont know if this is possible..

Just a thought..

I think this is very possible!

Yeah, I remember building a revision of the .9 svn a while ago, that had a dock hiding feature, but that hid the entire contact list. I like your Idea

Tipo 61 wrote:Yeah, I remember building a revision of the .9 svn a while ago, that had a dock hiding feature, but that hid the entire contact list. I like your Idea

Yes there is something that. But this is useless; it adds another preference for one, and no one I know would use it. You said transparent; maybe you should make the transparency 0% or something very close so you can’t see the background well, but still get the feeling of a floating contact list.

EDIT: Fine. It MIGHT work if it was a “transparent when in background” option. But it won’t slide back, maybe fade instead.

i know i would use it

I would too

Same here.

So it would be kind of an Exposé look?

Wasn't that the reason for developing a dashboard widget for the contact list?

I think it'd be pretty cool. It'd work like a lot of mouseover menus do: It'd take up minimal screen real-estate while providing you with basic info (Buddy icon and status icon. Or name and status icon), and when you mouse over it, it'd expand to the "normal" kind of contact list that includes name, time, away message, whatever crazy stuff you have included.

zaudragon, the fading thing you're thinking of isn't the same thing at all. Unless I'm totally misreading you. We don't want the contact list to go away. Hiding Adium would accomplish that fine.

I've been trying to think of a web example, and I finally got one that sort-of works. Bungie.net has a navbar at the bottom of the page. When you mouse over one of the categories, the bar expands to show the info.

That sort of thing. You'd have a little list, something like this:
this, this, or this, and on mouseover, it'd expand to something more like that.

i would use it

Rita wrote:Wasn't that the reason for developing a dashboard widget for the contact list?

That's exactly why I made it and am working on a new, faster version.

Githon wrote:zaudragon, the fading thing you're thinking of isn't the same thing at all. Unless I'm totally misreading you. We don't want the contact list to go away. Hiding Adium would accomplish that fine.

I said “transparent in background”. So this is what will happen:
1. You switch to another app.
2. Adium goes to the background.
3. The background of the contact list fades (much like the Contact List Transparency option).
4. Only the contact names and icons are left.

Isn’t that what you want?

I think he was initially suggesting something more like the dock's automatically hiding feature. Except instead of hiding ALL the information, it leaves some basic information.

Thinking about it, it's more like Classic OS's window shades. When a window was minimized, it took up far less screen realestate, but still gave you basic info about what was contained within (The window's name, be it the name of the program, or the folder, or the file).

Here's my super-lazy mockup:


The view on the left is when it's left alone. The view on the right is when it pops out (Like the Dock) when you mouse over it.

At least, that's what I thought his idea was, and if it wasn't, then I like what I thought his idea was better anyway

Right. Like that except only ONE contact comes out at a time, sort of like magnification in the dock. I think thats what he's saying.

LuxuryChair wrote:Right. Like that except only ONE contact comes out at a time, sort of like magnification in the dock. I think thats what he's saying.

I see no reason for that. Tooltips serve that purpose. If anything is implemented, it would be the “fade when in background” one, since it fulfills the basic needs. Hiding all “unneccesary information” would be pointless; some people have no icons (like me) and status icons only won’t do much good. This would also add A LOT of preferences to deal with; not good.