So IMO in these cases it would be nice if there was some 'Client UI design best practices'-guide :DThe fact that you are sending over Jabber shouldn't enforce anything on your UI. I think however that it's very important to have rules on how to behave with other clients (these are called specifications).
True, from a technical point of view :D
Indeed, users won't switch to another client all that often but for me it's kind of hard to help a friend that's using Exodus while I'm on Psi. I have no clue how Exodus handles this resource priority stuff. IMO the user should be able to predict what will happen to their message when they use a Jabber client, regardless of the specific client that they use. This is _really_ important from a usability point of view. The resource problem is only a minor aspect of that. IMO the installation/JID problem is a bigger problem. It's just impossible to help someone with getting Jabber working without either looking for documentation about the specific client (which doesn't exist for 9 out of 10 clients ;)) or installing the client yourself.
IMO it isn't that hard to just create a small convention about the JID/Password form? If a particular client developer really feels that they way he/she invented the wheel then he/she can do what they want but if there is some kind of basic UI guideline then there will be at least _some_ conformity in basic area's like filling in the initial connect form. This will make it a LOT easier to get people to use Jabber. If users are already confused at the first screen then we're going to lose a LOT of users before they've even tried Jabber.
Again: I'm talking about a guideline. At the moment clients devs are (luckily!) looking at each other to see how (some) others do it. All that would be needed is a small document that actually documents how most client devs do these things. All this to create some conformity in the basic UI elements. If devs want to expand on the basic elements then more power to them ;)
-- Bart
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