12Jul/08Off
Contacts Plasmoid mockup
One of the things I want to do for KDE 4.2 is a "Contacts" plasmoid: A Kopete-centered plasmoid that displays your contacts status and allows for a quick chat initiation. So far I have two mockups which I'd like feedback on -- please comment!
Before pasting those two mockups now, let me outline my plans for it:
I want it to
- facilitate starting a chat / sending that one-line message quickly
- let me quickly see the status [changes] of interesting contacts
- be useful both on the desktop and in a panel, with the usual plasma eye-candy
I do not want it to
- integrate other communication mechanisms than IM/Kopete
- display messages. This is what Kopete / KNotify / the Notify plasmoid do.
Now for the mockups, I did one showing it in the panel:
Another one shows it on the desktop:
Feedback from users, artists, usability people is greatly appreciated 
Disclaimer: This is only a mockup, no (not much) code written yet.
July 12th, 2008 - 14:22
I think its a nice idea, and the mockups look good too. Im a bit worried about the contact selection though. Perhaps there should be a way to first search for the contact in question and afterwards allow a message from the same inputbox. Otherwise it might be quicker just to maximize kopete and initiate the chat instead of using the oneliner.
July 12th, 2008 - 14:27
Love it! Looks fantastic. It’s clear you’ve thought this through quite clearly. Can’t think of any changes to suggest.
July 12th, 2008 - 14:40
I’m very impatient to have something like this on my desktop
(and even better for me, integrated in the panel)
Maybe a simple “Contacts” buttons showing a menu with the contacts would be a good idea for those who don’t want to clutter their desktop ?
July 12th, 2008 - 14:42
I get that one of your points is that you don’t want to integrate other forms of communication…. But….
Without it, you’re creating a plasmoid that simply views your Kopete contact list. It’s a nice convenient plasmoid, but not revolutionary.
Why not pull the contact list from Kontact (isn’t there a DBUS interface for this?) and perhaps build a small Skype/ wrapper? (Skype has a CLI ‘call-this-number’ type parameter)
Then you’ve created a great plasmoid that can sit on the desktop and be a central place where the user can just click to talk to their contact via mail, IM and voice. It would be absolutely awesome!
Also, with a good DBUS interface to your plasmoid, you ought to be able to create some really interesting task-based interfaces… Imagine using FolderView and attaching contact icons to it in the FolderView code, that call your plasmoid and enables you to contact the people who you associate with your files in that folder – your folder can then describe a project that you are working on, the objects that you are working with and the people. It would be a nice low-entry collaboration tool.
I’m sorry to dump a load of ideas on you, especially when you have a Kopete focus… But you have potential to create a real killer app here!
July 12th, 2008 - 15:06
Well it looks quite nice apart from the white line edit which doesn’t integrate very well. Maybe a small gradient in the background or sth. similar would very much improve it.
However, I also think that your approach of choosing a contact doesn’t work out very well.
I like scroogie’s idea of typing the contact in first. I’d suggest that there is a popup (just like on modern webbrowsers) that lists possible contacts based on the ones you typed in. In the desktop plasmoid, you could also handle that the way krunner now does.
Thus, it would be very important to keep the contact you’re writing to visible to the user as long as you’re writing the text.
July 12th, 2008 - 15:10
Great idea!!
I really like it, because it looks real nice.
Since I don’t use the panel I’m only interested in the desktop plasma. I find the two lists a bit confusing. Maybe it would be more obvious if you had only one list and a dropdown list (or even a small checkbox) to choose whether you want to see the favorites/most active/… or all contacts.
And for me it would be important to automatically have the focus inside the textbox once a contact is clicked.
Also it might be useful to not only active kopete with a left-button click on the status icon, but to change the status with a right-button click.
July 12th, 2008 - 15:27
What about something more “Contact-centric” like this mockup?
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/Kde4+Mockup?content=28476
It would be rather nice if you write your plasmoid with not only Kopete in your mind. Would it be possible to write something that permits to “communicate with everyone in two steps”?
I imagine something like this:
a) search for the contact you’re looking for (e.g. Paul, John, Emma);
b) select the way you want to communicate with him (e.g. MSN chat, Jabber chat, Skype call, email…)
Or at least if it’s not possible to implement at this time you could keep “the door open” to this approach.
Just my 2 cents. Bye
Diego
July 12th, 2008 - 15:28
Hi, I made a mockup for this a while ago. You can find it in this screenshot http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/4492/plasmoidspart2re2.jpg
July 12th, 2008 - 15:34
And BTW… your second image looks very similar to KRunner. Why don’t you run a KRunner plugin or take some ideas/code from it (e.g. the visual effects, the style, the behavior).
July 12th, 2008 - 15:35
*create a KRunner plugin
July 12th, 2008 - 15:41
I though about your concept and developed an own one.
Check it out: http://img369.imageshack.us/my.php?image=kdekopeteja5.jpg
July 12th, 2008 - 15:42
Hovering to scroll is IMHO a bad idea, but acceptable as long as you can scroll with your mouse wheel.
Another problem is, that a lot of my contacts don’t have a custom photos. Most of them will be hard to distinguish only by photo, not by name.
July 12th, 2008 - 15:49
If one developer (dont remember name) sended the patch, it is possible that final version of 4.1 will include support for two (or more?) rows on panel. So current one row work is gone. I suggest you remember that when you are doing it. Then you can have text box on bottom row and user icons on top box if used on panel.
July 12th, 2008 - 15:55
Looks great! But a couple of suggestions…
1. Auto-scrolling lists are often annoying — you either wait too long or it goes too fast — and don’t make an efficient use of screen space at a given moment. I’m not sure if it’s possible within Plasma, but a temporary pop-out expansion window would be much, much better.
2. I love a GUI as much as the next eye-candy addict, but there’s no reason that you should have to use it. Typing a certain character into the box should signify that you want to switch to the username that immediately follows. For example, if the identifying character is a “>” and I have friends named Bob, Billy, and Bobcat, typing “>b” should bring Bob, Billy, and Bobcat’s buddy icons up into the plasmid display. Typing “>bo” should cause Billy’s to disappear, and typing “>bob Hey what’s up” should send Bob the message “Hey what’s up”.
3. I rather like the contrast of the white box on black. The panel box is too tall, however — at a glance it breaks the panel in half, as opposed to cutting a hole in it.
July 12th, 2008 - 15:57
I second the DBus idea, with it the plasmoid can use different clients, even non-KDE ones.
July 12th, 2008 - 16:02
I’d also like to see standard interface for other IM clients. The KDE-IM bridge offers something like this for some parts already.
If every IM client needs it’s own plasmoid, we’ll end up with many different variations of the same thing. (imagine needing a different weather plasmoid for every weather station..
)
July 12th, 2008 - 16:03
* so I meant this plasmoid shouldn’t be hard-linked to Kopete IMHO. That would limit it’s abilities.
(disclaimer: I contribute to a different IM client. However, using standard interfaces is something I’ve always seen as a strong design point of Linux. In the Windows world isn’t too common to hard-link stuff together).
July 12th, 2008 - 16:35
nice, but, why not add also a kio for kontacts ?? with just click to start a chat ??, or some visual notify on them when you recive a new message, or contacts gray when they are offline.
i dont know if this is possible, are just ideas.
July 12th, 2008 - 18:02
I think its bad to have that edit dialogue, it was tried before, e.g. for web search bars but gets hardly accepted. I would rather suggest to drop a contact in the bar and see their status (green ring, red ring), if you want to drop a message, you pop up the app.
July 12th, 2008 - 18:07
The input field, especially in the panel, looks… inelegant. And sort of not in the spirit of KDE4 as a whole, which is supposed to be finding new ways of doing things.
How about mouse hover over the contact’s icon brings up a little tooltip that contains an input field? Or something like that.
July 12th, 2008 - 19:43
“select the way you want to communicate with him (e.g. MSN chat, Jabber chat, Skype call, email…)”
# Above suggestion is absolutely correct. My communication is biased to a small group of people in my contact list. Having various ways to contact them will be fantastic. Lots of integration work for sure, but it’ll be irresistible.
# Why not display an icon next to contact’s avatar if I’ve received a mail from the contact. I’m biased to giving more priority to mail from specific people and it’ll be great to know a mail from them is waiting in my mail box.
Plasmoid looks exciting anyway, cant wait to try it out
July 12th, 2008 - 19:57
If the plasmoid is *not* able to display messages, (and you need to fire up kopete for that), who needs it? Wouldn’t it be better to make a “Kopete Plasmoid”, that brings the functionality of Kopete in a easy manner?
July 12th, 2008 - 20:52
I agree with previous posters: it seems a shame to limit this to just kopete. It would show their status, so if online you could IM them (or Skype?) and if online you could email them instead. Also, while I understand why you don’t want to display whole kopete conversations it would be nice to have the option for it to pop up temporary notifications when new IMs come in (they would fade out after a few seconds but if you wanted you could open kopete and read them at your leisure and see where they fit in the conversation etc.)
But it looks very cool and has a huge amount of potential for becoming one of the breakthroughs in functionality in kde4 – so long as you don’t limit it too much!
July 12th, 2008 - 23:48
I like the first one. Say again, the first one is good…. =)))
Cheers and keep up the good work.
LJ
PS: I think the “Settings” => “Configure Notifications” and/or modify their behavior through “Settings” => “Configure” => “Behavior” => “Events” => “Treat all chats on the current desktop like active chats” Should be enabled by default, I can’t see the sense on having bubbles pop up if you have a chat window open… Unless I’m missing something.
July 13th, 2008 - 03:17
What did you do that mockup with? It’s very nice.
July 13th, 2008 - 15:05
Nice idea!
I for one would appreciate the ability of configurating the interface. For example being able to remove the contact list and message sending part and just make it a quick button for my favourite contacts.
July 13th, 2008 - 19:01
The quick message in the panel (first mockup) is simply a touch of genius, it’s really GREAT!
Can’t wait to have it on my desktop, it’s really really useful if you’re talking to the same person (or restricted group of persons) a lot.
Great idea!!
July 13th, 2008 - 23:32
Hi! I like the idea of this mockup generally, but I agree with others that it shouldn’t be limited to Kopete.
I think the edit box is a waste of space. Instead I think it would be more convenient to bring a Kopete chat window when the user clicks on the contact icon.
July 14th, 2008 - 15:19
Isn’t Decibel supposed to do thing like this? Why is it using Kopete and not Decibel? What is current status of Decibel?
August 6th, 2008 - 23:33
Checkout ‘desklist’, simple, elegant, no extra cruft like edit boxes. It’s the one plugin I always make sure to get running whenever I upgrade.
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=32089&forumpage=8