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On 4/13/02 16:08, "Martin H�cker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> Indent groups in the Buddy list preferences seems to really hide the
>>> service icons. :))
>>
>> Yeah. Once I figure out how to insert an arbitrary (ie, residing in memory,
>> not on disk) image into an attributed string, they'll show up again, only
>> more to the right.
>>
>> Do people even really want this option? I was trying to make the window
>> more compact, and having them in the left column like that saves same white
>> space.
>
> I do really like them, because they are a nice and inobtrusive way to
> see the status and service of the budy in question.
I was talking about the Away color being applied to buddies who sign on
while Away (think about it -- it can happen). The buddy still shows the
green power badge, and doesn't go red until the "just logged on" status
evaporates.
> I don�t really have a perfect solution, but I was thinking of
> something along the line of having as less colors as possible.
I'm proposing five. Six if you include the background color. Seven if you
count transparent as a color.
> First I think that the three Availability classes should share colors
> Online, Available, Idle, Free for Chat shold be one, Busy, Occupied,
> AFK the next and Away, N/A and Offline probably the last one.
Two things. First, think common denominators. I'm basing colors off of the
basic states -- what shows up in a badge. There's no DnD badge -- it's Busy
-- so there's no DnD color.
> ( I dont know about Invissible though)
Invisible kind of looks like Offline.
> (Would Idle be placed right there?
> I have a somewhat limited understanding of this "state").
Idle is when the computer hasn't been touched for a period of time. You're
signed in, but you've walked away from the computer without changing your
status to Away or something. Why this isn't the same as Away, I don't know.
If I ever design an IM system, it will be.
> - The first would be to have no color at all (maybe this could be a
> preference just where the color is, something like "dont use colors
> at all"), so only the icons transport the message.
Great. Set all the colors to the same color.
> - The second is that default would be some sort of Aqua shades, that
> become darker to tell me how bad it would be to message that person.
> White would be the default color for available then. This decission
> would be based on the fact that the human eye is much more cabable of
> seeing shades of light than seeing colors. (Problem with my own
> attempts to find such colors was, that the small letters didn�t
> provide enough contrast to the white background.)
Really? Out of the corner of my eye, I seem to be able to detect red vs.
green better than #FF8080 vs. #FF9090.
> - A variation of this could be making the away stats brighter, so
> it is harder to see them. But that I also don�t really like.
Nor I.
> - Right now I use a color variant that hase the online group in
> black, the occcupied group in light red, and the away/na group in
> even lighter red, so that light that the red doesn�t distract.
That's why I made them a preference, because they're just that: a matter of
preference. No matter how much time I spent (actually about 30 secs, if
that) scintifically choosing the colors based off of focus groups and user
interface studies, users aren't going to like the colors I came up with.
Only one person is likely to like the colors I picked: me.
> - A third approach would be to mostly stay with the colors but make
> them lighter, so the alert color function of red (for example)
> doesn�t come into effect.
That's why I darkened them.
> (But I don't like that because green for occupied doesn�t have any meaning in
> Germany)
Nor does it here. Red. Green. Blue. The primary colors of additive
light. That's all it means.
> - Another aproach would be to only use colors to code when someone
> changes status. So for examle green for signing on (would be
> meaningfull here) and red for signing off.
Like the power badges, only the entire row that color? Possible, but
requires two additional colors to be chosen.
Colter
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