Adium is great, but....

laxstar · Post by **laxstar** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 11:48 pm

if u want i can send you can send you the setup i have, but i wont be for a few hours cuz i gotta go, im me ur email at laxstar2n (aim)

air__devil · Post by **air__devil** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 3:11 am

laxstar wrote:if u want i can send you can send you the setup i have, but i wont be for a few hours cuz i gotta go, im me ur email at laxstar2n (aim)

I think he's referring to the fact you have a dead-image there, dude.

Adam Iser · Post by **Adam Iser** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 4:21 am

Catfish_Man wrote:He has a point that Adium uses a lot of custom widgets. I do wonder if he has any suggestions for ways of using native ones that wouldn't look terrible.

What custom widgets do we use beside the Tabs? (For which no native solution is provided and we closely match Apple's own custom tab solution, BTW).

wunderwood · Post by **wunderwood** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 10:33 am

Ok basically iChat got it wrong. Sure the devs took some of everyones favorite things from it (the status icons for one). The amount of aqua apps is getting smaller and smaller because apple themselves are making each app look unique; all the iLifes are metal except GarageBand which is made to look like wood and stuff, other apple apps like addressbook, iSync, iCal, all brush metal. Heck the finder is metal! iChat has always been metal. For true aqua we have to look to Mail and some of the Utilities (because 3rd parties don't usually get it right). I'm going to argue that people don't remember what aqua looks like. Adium is very aqua, and I think fits with OS X better than iChat (just my opinion). The only complaints I have are that their is no good aqua like message style (which is being fixed).

One iChat feature I would like see in adium is the drop down menu for Availability. Maybe just a button in the tool bar, even just a connect/disconnect button. It is just nice to have the button right their when you want to get up and leave your computer.

Son of a Preacher Man · Sat Feb 19, 2005 1:07 pm

Surely arguing that Adium is Aqua (or isn't Aqua, whatever) is a bit of a simplification?

The parts that can be Aqua - windows etc - are, but things like the contact list and message views are blatantly not Aqua, and that's rather the point of them anyway, right? They're totally customisable, so they have no innate GUI scheme.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 5:58 pm

wunderwood wrote:One iChat feature I would like see in adium is the drop down menu for Availability. Maybe just a button in the tool bar, even just a connect/disconnect button. It is just nice to have the button right their when you want to get up and leave your computer.

thats going to be in .8

Post by **Catfish_Man** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 7:55 pm

Adam Iser wrote:
Catfish_Man wrote:He has a point that Adium uses a lot of custom widgets. I do wonder if he has any suggestions for ways of using native ones that wouldn't look terrible.
What custom widgets do we use beside the Tabs? (For which no native solution is provided and we closely match Apple's own custom tab solution, BTW).

Message Views. My post was mainly just to try to get the thread back to a concrete discussion instead of the way it was going.

Adam Iser · Post by **Adam Iser** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 10:10 pm

Catfish_Man wrote:Message Views.

And what would be the standard "widget" for "Message display"?

There are no standard widgets for displaying IM content in OS X, and certainly no concrete guidelines established in the HIG that would direct such display.

Adium's only custom widget are its tabs, but even those have been specially designed to be as similar to safari's tabs (which are also a custom widget) as possible.

I'm only confronting you on your statement about custom widgets (which is incorrect, btw) because I've heard it used in other arguments to criticize Adium and am curious what leads to the false claim.

Post by **Catfish_Man** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 4:55 am

Adam Iser wrote:
Catfish_Man wrote:Message Views.
And what would be the standard "widget" for "Message display"?

There are no standard widgets for displaying IM content in OS X, and certainly no concrete guidelines established in the HIG that would direct such display.

Adium's only custom widget are its tabs, but even those have been specially designed to be as similar to safari's tabs (which are also a custom widget) as possible.

I'm only confronting you on your statement about custom widgets (which is incorrect, btw) because I've heard it used in other arguments to criticize Adium and am curious what leads to the false claim.

It's still a custom widget. So are the assorted sidebars (iirc. They could just be table views). I guess the only non-custom message view solution would be NSTextViews... which would be horrible. Consider the contact list as well. It could be implemented as a table view perfectly easily, it would just suck. If you're getting the impression that I agree with you that custom widgets are a good thing here, then you're right. However, I am not incorrect that Adium uses a reasonably large number of custom widgets.

Adam Iser · Post by **Adam Iser** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 8:33 am

Catfish_Man wrote:It's still a custom widget.

The message view is not a custom widget, it is a WebView - which is a standard control in 10.2 w/ safari and 10.3 or later by default

Catfish_Man wrote:So are the assorted sidebars (iirc. They could just be table views).

The NSSplitPanes, or the NSTableViews? Both standard controls.

Catfish_Man wrote:Consider the contact list as well. It could be implemented as a table view perfectly easily, it would just suck.

It's an NSOutlineVIew actually, which is a subclass of NSTableView. Both standard controls.

If you're getting the impression that I agree with you that custom widgets are a good thing here, then you're right. However, I am not incorrect that Adium uses a reasonably large number of custom widgets.

With the exception of Adium's tabs, we are using stock OS X controls and widgets throughout the app. You are incorrect.

Arenzera · Post by **Arenzera** » Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:31 am

Adam: 1
The guy he was debating with: -1

BOOM!

Kiel ;-)

jdang · Post by **jdang** » Wed Feb 23, 2005 7:33 pm

i think i partially agree with the original poster. adium, though amazingly engineered, feels non-apple (rather than non-aqua). i wouldn't dare touch any other client, and i love the UI to adium, but from using proteus i have noticed something so subtle (which i am not prepared to adequately defend) that makes adium feel like a 3rd party application. now, whether this is a good or bad thing is for everyone else to decide (i personally like the uniquness). but again, something makes this app feel as though it was not created by apple where other clients (i.e. proteus), this discrepancy is not so apparent.

Cheesechick · Post by **Cheesechick** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:02 am

I think the only way Adium feels non-Apple (and personally, I don't care if it does or not... it's a great program, and I much prefer it to Apple's own iChat) is that it's so feature-rich. For the most part, Apple makes great, stable, clean applications that are easy to use. However, there are a lot of third-party apps out there that offer a lot more features than they do (Firefox with all its plugins vs. Safari, for example). And since Adium is so customizable and offers so much stuff, it feels more third-party than first.

zaudragon · Post by **zaudragon** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:07 am

Still, Adium > *

So does that mean that Dashboard is un-Apple like?

Cheesechick · Post by **Cheesechick** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:18 am

Adium > * indeed.

I dunno about Dashboard, I'd have to use it first.