Re: Account Editor

Weird, I got Jason's response to Alan's email before Alan's email.  Oh 
well, silly SF.

I have created a new set of mockups to look at based on previous emails:
http://fire.sourceforge.net/Prerelease/Account%20Editor%20Mockup%201.pdf
and
http://fire.sourceforge.net/Prerelease/Account%20Editor%20Mockup%202.pdf

The problem with Timothy's suggestion about making the fields editable 
is that Colloquy does this, and it annoys the hell out of me.  It does 
make double clicking useless, and if you do a single select and start 
typing, you end up modifying random fields on the left rather than 
where you would expect (on the right).

I am thinking server name should NOT be included in the ID.  We have 
had requests on jabber before to allow server selection separate from 
the ID (ID is me-/[email protected] server is myjabberserver.here.com).

As far as the advanced settings, they can be another tab.  It is very 
simple to do (I did code like this all the time for the tabbed chat 
windows), but the reason I didn't do that is because I was thinking of 
flexibility later.  I didn't want to constrain advanced settings to a 
NSView of a specific size.  We may have certain libraries with a 
cornucopia of advanced options at some point.

Saving is done automatically, but there is the revert option (as seen 
in the new mockup).  I should also mention, all the controls on the 
right side enable/disable depending on the service's capabilities.

On Mar 3, 2005, at 11:29 AM, Jason Townsend wrote:

> This is exactly what we used to have for the Away message editor, and 
> I think the new editor was a big improvement over it. It's not very 
> clear at all in this style when changes get saved. Also, note that 
> with Alan's proposal we would not be able to use double click for 
> anything since that is what you use to start editing something. In 
> Graham's proposal a double click could mean connect/disconnect.
>
> Graham's basic idea is very similar to what Mail.app has for example, 
> which I think will make it instantly familiar to users.
>
> While it might be more difficult to do, from a user experience 
> standpoint I think having any service specific configuration on a 
> separate tab would be better than bringing up an additional dialog.
>
> -Jason
>
> On Mar 3, 2005, at 7:27 AM, Alan Humpherys wrote:
>> I really like Timothy's Suggestion.  Editing all of the standard 
>> settings for accounts within the list itself.
>>
>> With the caveat that there should be a way to get into the "Advanced" 
>> settings which would be service specific, but would include
>>
>> - Which Library to use - for a given service
>> - Port and ServerName*
>> - Any login commands and scripts (important for irc)
>> - Preferences, like invisible login, buddy list synchronization, ssl
>>
>> 	*NOTE: Since Jabber and IRC have so many servers out there, the 
>> server name for these systems should be included in the ID field 
>> (e.g. [email protected])
>>
>> Those advanced settings should show up in a drop down panel attached 
>> to the main window.
>>
>> I will create a Mock Up, but here is what I am thinking:
>>
>> Single Table in the main window with the following columns:
>>
>> Service, ID, Display Name, password, email alerts?, auto-login, 
>> connection status, advanced edit
>>
>> Where:
>> Service - Displays icon, dropdown selector for editing which shows 
>> icon and name of service
>> ID - sometimes called the SN, would be the id on that service -  
>> Editable text field
>> Display Name - nick/alias/displayname - An editable text field
>> Password - if filled in, it is saved, if left blank, it is prompted 
>> for at login. - Secure text field
>> email alerts - (maybe an advanced setting) - A checkbox
>> auto-login - A Checkbox
>> Connection Status - The green/red button showing if connected - press 
>> it to logon/logoff
>> Advanced Edit - A button which brings up the advanced settings panel 
>> described above.
>>
>> The only "interesting" part here is that we have to handle service 
>> specific constraints on the email alerts and Display Name fields.  
>> For example, only Yahoo and MSN offer mail alerts as an option, the 
>> others should not be able to set it.   Also, the Display Name has 
>> interesting properties:
>>
>> 	AIM - Only allows you to add spaces and capitalization to ID.
>> 	Yahoo, Rendezvous - Have no concept of a Display Name
>> 	MSN, ICQ, irc, Jabber - Actively Use an arbitrary Display Name and 
>> give it to others
>>
>> The window would have the '+' '-' buttons at the bottom to add or 
>> delete accounts from the list.
>>
>> Here is why I like this concept:
>> Editing is straightforward, to make changes to Display Name and Auto 
>> Login simple for the user (which are the fields that will change most 
>> often - apart from when it is first entered.)
>>
>> In the original mockup, the pane on the right half of the screen 
>> would change depending upon which account is selected, because the 
>> various services have differing options available.
>>
>> In general, I don't like the prospect of having a panel change 
>> configuration as they go down the list. (But I could be persuaded)
>>
>> If the consensus is that we stick with the original suggestion, I 
>> would weigh in on moving more of those items to the Advanced setting 
>> panel, specifically: server, port, and implementation.
>>
>> My 2 cents....
>>
>> Alan
>>
>>
>> On Mar 2, 2005, at 1:41 PM, Timothy B Lee wrote:
>>
>>> I'm not a Fire developer so I normally just lurk on this list, but 
>>> since
>>> you're looking for feedback, my two cents:
>>>
>>> Could the fields in the account list be made editable? That is,
>>> double-clicking on a cell in the "Accounts" column would allow you 
>>> to edit
>>> that field directly in the list view. iTunes and other apps do this, 
>>> and
>>> I'm pretty sure that it's a standard widget in the IB toolkit.
>>>
>>> If so, I think it would be better to have "Display Name" and 
>>> "Password" as
>>> additional columns in that list view--also editable.
>>>
>>> The other fields in that right hand pane seem to be either advanced
>>> options ("Implementation", "Server", and "Port") or unnecessary.
>>> Unless I'm missing something, the "Save password"  checkbox doesn't 
>>> seem
>>> necessary at all-- if you don't want the password saved, you can just
>>> delete it from the "Password" field. I don't understand what the 
>>> checkbox
>>> does beyond that.
>>>
>>> I'm not sure what "Show Mail Alerts" does, but it could presumably be
>>> either an advanced option or treated like Auto-login, with its own 
>>> column
>>> as well as a checkbox in the "advanced" panel.
>>>
>>> With those changes, the account list could be made the full width of 
>>> the
>>> control panel, with the button for "Advanced Options"  below the 
>>> list, and
>>> the stuff on the right-hand pane removed entirely. I think that 
>>> would be
>>> much cleaner looking and less confusing for non-technical users-- 
>>> they
>>> could do all of their account management within that main list, with 
>>> fewer
>>> extraneous options to worry about. Power users could still click the
>>> "advanced" button to see the full menu of options.
>>>
>>> Anyway, I'm very greatful for the work y'all do in developing the 
>>> chat
>>> client I use every day, and I'll be quite happy whatever you decide.
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> -Tim
>>>
>>> On Wed, 2 Mar 2005, Jeremiah Blatz wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mar 1, 2005, at 10:43 AM, Graham Booker wrote:
>>>>> Comments?
>>>>
>>>> Overall, a great improvement!
>>>>
>>>> Some quibbles:
>>>> * What is "Implementation"? That's a very developer-centric term.
>>>> Something else
>>>>    would probably be clearer to end users.
>>>> * I'm guessing that the "Advanced Options" button should have an
>>>> ellipses ("...")
>>>>    after it. It pop up a dialog, right?
>>>> * The "Reset" button looks like it only resets the port. I would
>>>> consider moving it so
>>>>    that it's clear what it applies to
>>>> * The checkbox column for autologin is convenient for expert users, 
>>>> but
>>>> the heading
>>>>    "Aut" is not very clear for new users. I would suggest either 
>>>> messing
>>>> with the
>>>>    headers so that the entire word is visible (is this possible) or
>>>> moving it into the
>>>>    group of checkboxes on the right.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Jeremiah
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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------------------------------------------------------------------
Graham Booker                   Texas A&M University
[email protected]    Graduate Student in ELEN
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