cocoaforge

I was inspired by the new OmniWeb 5.5 sneaky peek release. You see, its title bar has the "under construction"/achtung stripes pattern - yellow and black in alternating stripes - in the title bar.

The idea is good, but a lot of people hate how it looks. Furthermore, Adium's only central window is the contact list, which lots of people (yes, including me) have on borderless.

So, here's the rub. An icon specifically for SVN builds. A duck in a gi - those white karate suits - and on his head, the ribbon, but it's the yellow/black striped pattern on the ribbon instead of the plain black. In my mind at least, it paints a picture that I think is very suiting - kickass, but still potentially wrecking.

wootest wrote:Adium's only central window is the message window

Fixed

The_Tick wrote:

wootest wrote:Adium's only central window is the message window

Fixed

I knew that was a joke, but still - Bullshit. Lots of times, I'm just online and not talking to anyone at the moment, but staying available, and I don't have the message window open then. In this I know I'm not alone.

wootest wrote:

The_Tick wrote:

wootest wrote:Adium's only central window is the message window

Fixed

I knew that was a joke, but still - Lots of times, I'm just online and not talking to anyone at the moment, but staying available, and I don't have the message window open then. In this I know I'm not alone.

But for what you are suggesting, we could have it on the message window since that toolbar is always there.

The_Tick wrote:

wootest wrote:

The_Tick wrote:
Fixed

I knew that was a joke, but still - Lots of times, I'm just online and not talking to anyone at the moment, but staying available, and I don't have the message window open then. In this I know I'm not alone.

But for what you are suggesting, we could have it on the message window since that toolbar is always there.

What I'm suggesting is not having it on a window at all but in an icon. You have seen the enemy, and he is "reading comprehension".

wootest wrote:

The_Tick wrote:

wootest wrote: I knew that was a joke, but still - Lots of times, I'm just online and not talking to anyone at the moment, but staying available, and I don't have the message window open then. In this I know I'm not alone.

But for what you are suggesting, we could have it on the message window since that toolbar is always there.

What I'm suggesting is not having it on a window at all but in an icon. You have seen the enemy, and he is "reading comprehension".

Yes, but last time we had a changed dock icon at all we had tons of emails asking about it. I do know how to read, and I did read your suggestion. I didn't address it at all, I was only addressing your assumption that the contact list window is the one that we should be using to compare to how the omnigroup team is doing things with omniweb.

It may be way easy to change the icon, but it's just one more thing we should not do. It confuses users. We've had the default icon changed before, and that proved to be very bad for some folks.

I'm not pushing for the adoption of either honestly, but if you're trying to say that we should use an idea that's already there in another app, at least compare it to something feasible (the message window) instead of something which is not feasible for the use (the contact list). This is all I was trying to point out.

Note: That said, I don't think we should do this at all

First of all, apologies for zinging The_Tick earlier - that was uncalled for. He says that he did *not* misunderstand my argument (which I thought because he was insinuating that I was in favor of an idea I had shot down in the first post) but I'll respond to it later in this reply.

Simba Cub wrote:

wootest wrote:Lots of times, I'm just online and not talking to anyone at the moment, but staying available, and I don't have the message window open then. In this I know I'm not alone.

Yeah, I do that too. For me the primary window is the contact list, which is open at all times and must conform with my current GUI style as I regard it as fundamental to the desktop.

The message window is, for me, secondary. It is only used in dialogue and only remains open during the periods in which dialogue takes place. As it cannot conform to a GUI style as much as the contact list can, I prefer to keep it closed when continuing dialogue closes for even a little while. Selectable message styles help, but it is an aqua window when all's said and done.

Actually, that's an interesting point - it could be beneficial from a purely cosmetic point of view to allow the user to select whether the message centre is a window, borderless or even a HUD.

Now before anyone slams me on suggesting a purely cosmetic improvement, remember that Adium sports a lot of eye candy as it is, with custom emoticon sets, status icons, message styles, sound files and so on. In other words, just because a suggestion is cosmetic does not mean it cannot add to the application as a whole.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

The HUD is a conceptional no-go. Not because of 'eye candy' reasons! No. Because of a HUD being on the same level as a sheet or utility window. A HUD is an accessory to another window, and the contact list certainly isn't - it's the core window of normal usage in all of Adium.

I've seen lots of mockups of alternative buddy lists. Many of them look feasible and usable, but what I'm missing in them is them being simple. The contact lists we can have today can be extremely simple, and while I don't deny that the alternatives can work very good for a large chunk of people, I doubt they're going to do it for everyone, but I would still like to see it emerge as an alternative.

Now, as for The_Tick:

The_Tick wrote:Yes, but last time we had a changed dock icon at all we had tons of emails asking about it. I do know how to read, and I did read your suggestion. I didn't address it at all, I was only addressing your assumption that the contact list window is the one that we should be using to compare to how the omnigroup team is doing things with omniweb.

It may be way easy to change the icon, but it's just one more thing we should not do. It confuses users. We've had the default icon changed before, and that proved to be very bad for some folks.

I'm not pushing for the adoption of either honestly, but if you're trying to say that we should use an idea that's already there in another app, at least compare it to something feasible (the message window) instead of something which is not feasible for the use (the contact list). This is all I was trying to point out.

Note: That said, I don't think we should do this at all

Here's what this topic is, at least in my eyes: a very modest proposal, mostly for fun. Literally something I was chatting with Colin about, really "wouldn't-it-be-neat-if" material.

No one would be happier than me if someone actually made this duck, so I could use it. That'd be great. But I'm not proposing it as a default - at no point in my first post did I ever said this.

The only reason I brought up OmniWeb and stripes in title bars was to introduce a general idea, that of the usage of stripes to describe OMG BUGGY!!!!. At no point did I suggest we bring the title bar over as it was - I was citing reasons why it would be fundamentally out of the way, not minor roadblocks that I hoped could be cleared. I don't want it in Adium, even if I personally like it in OmniWeb. Can we stop talking about this now?

wootest wrote:So, here's the rub. An icon specifically for SVN builds.

While you didn't say the bars should come in, thus making that tangent just crazy, you did state an icon should be used to differentiate SVN builds, which we've done and has caused problems as The_Tick stated.

That all said, g'day subject

I honestly don't remember when we used a different icon for SVN builds.

The only times I remember Adium having a different icon were 1) for a halloween release, which is when the confusion happened, and 2) some betas when Evan's Nightmare Duck accidentally made it into the build.

The Halloween release was 2004, a year and a half ago, and it was a beta release, IIRC.

Now, back to wootest's point. I kind of would like to see some kind of "beta" indicator in Adium, perhaps on the message window (or all window title bars?) like OW5.5. Perhaps not on SVN, but on the various beta releases that we put out, to remind people it is indeed not finished.

That said, I think the discussion here got a little out of hand. Tick, please remember that this isn't Genmay/SA, and things are little more formal generally. Also, as part of the Adium team, you represent us, so try and act maturely. Your post was humorous, but it really wasn't anything more than flame bait, and didn't provide any serious critique of Wootest's idea.

Wootest, thank you for remaining civil and being willing to discuss your idea. You are a model forum member, and I applaud your contributions to the Adium project.

cbarrett wrote: You are a model forum member, and I applaud your contributions to the Adium project.

Agreed.


This is going to sound lame, but a splash screen might do the trick. Or if we renamed the Adium up by the apple to become "Adium Beta" or something along that line.

The_Tick wrote:Or if we renamed the Adium up by the apple to become "Adium Beta" or something along that line.

This application name is typically 1 word and as short as possible while still conveying the brand/app name. (Delicious Library is an example, where their menu title is actually Library there)

bgannin wrote:

The_Tick wrote:Or if we renamed the Adium up by the apple to become "Adium Beta" or something along that line.

This application name is typically 1 word and as short as possible while still conveying the brand/app name. (Delicious Library is an example, where their menu title is actually Library there)

The other thing is, is this really a problem we need to address? Do people forget they are using an svn build for instance?

The_Tick wrote:This is going to sound lame, but a splash screen might do the trick. Or if we renamed the Adium up by the apple to become "Adium Beta" or something along that line.

Quicksilver does that, a splash screen with Beta and a localized CFBundleName which includes the build number. We could probably use post-processing to actually put the svn rev number into the name...

but it's probably not worth investing any effort into

evands wrote:

The_Tick wrote:This is going to sound lame, but a splash screen might do the trick. Or if we renamed the Adium up by the apple to become "Adium Beta" or something along that line.

Quicksilver does that, a splash screen with Beta and a localized CFBundleName which includes the build number. We could probably use post-processing to actually put the svn rev number into the name...

but it's probably not worth investing any effort into

hmm, we do display the rev name in the about box, if anyone was interested that might be a good place to start