I'm a big fan of the drawer in proteus, and in Colloquy - as other people have covered, in a chat windows, they tend to be thin and tall, you have loads of horizontal space, so I would use a drawer. Having a '3paned' layout would be overkill, as I very rarely have more than 2 conversations going on at once. In my case, a retractable drawer is the perfect solution. The tabs in adium are nice, very slick but I'm just a proteus guy at heart
In web browsers, they have to be wide horizontally, so tabs work best. I can't stand omniweb, and it's tab implementation, it's just... wrong
iChat being fully multi-protocol would be great, but they would have to offer a choice with drawer and tabs before I'd even consider it
Originally posted by kim kap sol chat windows tend to be small horizontally and larger vertically (this allows people to see a history of short text messages). I don't think Adium is very usable beyond 3 or 4 tabbed conversations with the small horizontal size footprint I want.
I don't believe that it's possible to use less space than with Adium and the "Tül" message style. It makes window proportions largely irrelevant to functionality. You can see it here: http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=473
I don't believe that it's possible to use less space than with Adium and the "Tül" message style. It makes window proportions largely irrelevant to functionality. You can see it here: http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=473
It's also the worst message style ever. How anyone can follow a conversation easily with that mess of a message style is beyond me.
It's also the worst message style ever. How anyone can follow a conversation easily with that mess of a message style is beyond me.
Sounds like a personal problem to me.
Myself, I have more of a problem following conversations that include all sorts of on irrelevant timestamps, icons, and buddy names. If I need more info, it's in a tooltip. My text is grey and my buddy's is blue. It's easy to see at a glance who said what, and in what order. What other cues do you need in order to follow a conversation?
You certainly don't have to like it, but I know that it's used every day by myself and others who find it extraordinarily functional. I don't know, maybe you're just vertically oriented.
I'm a big fan of the drawer in proteus, and in Colloquy - as other people have covered, in a chat windows, they tend to be thin and tall, you have loads of horizontal space, so I would use a drawer. Having a '3paned' layout would be overkill, as I very rarely have more than 2 conversations going on at once.
Actually a 3-paned interface would be more in-tune with what Apple has been doing lately.
I remember when Adium 1.x had the 3-pane interface and I thought it was brilliant. With some modifications iChat could bring Adium's 1 window 3-pane interface and improve on it.
The contacts would all be on the left side of the window, the chat area would be the top right area and the chat input area would be bottom right. Much like Mail 2.0, it would bring the ease-of-use of iApps and Mail and the clutter free environment some people are clamoring for.
Instead of tabs, the people that are in an active conversation would be moved to the top of the contact list pane and act as tabs. In fact, the contact list pane would pretty much be tabs to all the contacts. One click and chat.
Tabs for browsing and tabs for chatting are not the same thing, for me.
It sounds like you've just never experienced a good tabbed design
Quote:
Originally posted by johnq
I need the spatial separation of (random examples) work chat on left, friends chat on the right, wife chat in the middle of the screen.
A good tabbed IM client will let you automatically separate your message tabs by group. A window with tabs for work on the left, a window with tabs for friends on the right, a window for family members in the center of your screen. Allow the user to drag and reorder or re-group these tabs however they like, toss in a few pretty animations, and you've got something very flexible and easy to use.
Quote:
Originally posted by johnq
It's dangerous to get the recipients confused, something that is inevitable in a tabbed interface.
A good tabbed IM client will minimize this as much as possible by placing the tabs near where you enter text (so they're right in your field of view!) and using user icons to help distinguish the appearance of different conversations.
It's amusing to hear you guys discuss these issues and ideas, it really is Someone's already solved these issues and implemented your ideas, you just need to know where to look.
chat windows tend to be small horizontally and larger vertically (this allows people to see a history of short text messages).
But this is exactly why we prefer tabs! If my window is tall & skinny, I'd like to keep it tall & skinny. A drawer is a short & wide control and does not fit well with a message window.
Opinion, of course, and I understand (after looking at many different screenshots) why certain people prefer a drawer over tabs.
Actually a 3-paned interface would be more in-tune with what Apple has been doing lately.
Instead of tabs, the people that are in an active conversation would be moved to the top of the contact list pane and act as tabs. In fact, the contact list pane would pretty much be tabs to all the contacts. One click and chat.
Yeah, it would be more in tune, I agree - it's just that i don't need to see that I'm only chatting to one person all of the time - with a drawer, you can retract it when you are only chatting to one person.
The three paned idea of your is interesting... I would have to try it out in real-life to see how it would 'feel' - but it's an interesting idea /me plots and schemes...
Adium had something similar to this and it was brilliant.
Top left would be the recent and active conversations. Below that is the normal contact list. And the right side is the familiar chat window.
Adam...bring this back. You don't understand what I mean by chat are being horizontally skinny. You're thinking the whole window has to be skinny...not so. Just the text area.
Still...I don't think Apple should touch tabs. I was surprised they did with Safari and I'd be even more surprised if they did with iChat. The casual browser or chatter doesn't need tabs.
To this day, I know no one personally that uses the tabs in Safari. The only time I hear of people using it is on web forums.
No, human perception tend to be horizontal due to the spatial orientation of eyes and ears. A few perfect example would be widescreen monitors and stereo speakers.
Without gravity, humans have a terrible time interpreting vertical orientation. A few examples of this include people getting sick the first time they experience weightlessness in zero-G or divers getting disoriented underwater and not sure which way is up.
Quote:
Originally posted by kim kap sol
To this day, I know no one personally that uses the tabs in Safari. The only time I hear of people using it is on web forums.
I am afriad you are incorrect here as well. Both Safari and Gecko-based browsers (Mozilla, Firefox, Camino) all use tab and anectodal evidence support tab's popularity.
Still...I don't think Apple should touch tabs. I was surprised they did with Safari and I'd be even more surprised if they did with iChat. The casual browser or chatter doesn't need tabs.
To this day, I know no one personally that uses the tabs in Safari. The only time I hear of people using it is on web forums. [/B]
I don't know a single person who isn't my mother who doesn't use tabs. That's asinine.
No, human perception tend to be horizontal due to the spatial orientation of eyes and ears. A few perfect example would be widescreen monitors and stereo speakers.
Without gravity, humans have a terrible time interpreting vertical orientation. A few examples of this include people getting sick the first time they experience weightlessness in zero-G or divers getting disoriented underwater and not sure which way is up.
I am afriad you are incorrect here as well. Both Safari and Gecko-based browsers (Mozilla, Firefox, Camino) all use tab and anectodal evidence support tab's popularity.
I'm afraid *you're* wrong...we're talking in a context where people have to read text. People do much better reading text paragraphs that are narrow than a line of text that spans the whole width of, say, a monitor. In fact, diagonal reading wouldn't be effective at all without narrow paragraphs or lines of text. In general, diagonal reading becomes easier when paragraph widths are narrower (but like everything, there's a limit to how narrow the lines can get before they become a nuisance to diagonal reading.)
Picture yourself reading books in 'landscape' mode. That would seriously suck.
Also...people might not know where up is underwater or in zero-G but they probably would know where right or left is either. So that has absolutely nothing to do with anything but inner ear fluid.
Also IE is the most popular browser by far and people are doing fine with it. Most don't feel the need to move to a Gecko-based browser to use tabs.
kim kap sol is right. Reading is *MUCH* easier in narrow columns than wide bands for most people. There is no question on this. I can explain why, but when I have a bit more time to type.
klinux, the reason people get sick in zero-G is *NOT* because of any visual orientation problem, it is because the hairs in their inner ear, the ones that register direction from norm, start signaling every direction at once from the lack of gravity. Once that is recalibrated for by the body, the nausea goes away. It has nothing to do with visual orientation.
Tabs are (oh god, do we *have* to go through this again?) a kludge to compensate for the PISS POOR window management on most systems. They are, at *best* a nice extra under MacOS X. Personally, I find Expose to be more efficient in general. It works across all applications, it lets each window be optimized for its own space and contents, it uses no extra screen space, and it allows for fast visual selection of windows. Perfect.
I use tabs in Safari for *one* reason - because I can't get Safari to open up new windows *behind* the current one *AND* in the same location. If Safari opened up windows in the same spot, but a layer down, I'd never bother with tabs again.
Newspapers and magazines are laid out in narrow columns and most commercial websites also have narrow content columns for a reason. I keep my IM client (proteus) to a standard width with each message starting on a new line and keep it very clean.
I also keep the window reasonably short because otherwise the drawer (which I like in this context) takes up way to much empty space for just a few conversations. Making the drawer automatically hide with only one conversation is just the way it should be so that it doesn't take up space not being used.
My biggest problem with tabs in safari (and other webbrowsers) is that either the bar is there all the time, or the window moves up and down when you open a new tab. But I do use Safari tabs most of the time. If it were to act as kickaha suggests, I really don't know whether I'd use them or not. Hopefully I'll have the chance to find out!
If we don't factor in human foibles/habits/realities into human interface design, then we aren't doing our job.
Any number of perfectly valid, non-silly situations could occur by mixing up which chat you are in. The UI should bend over backwards to reduce this potentiality.
Now, again, mistakes can be made even in separate windows, so it's not a total anti-tab thing with me. I like tabs. But we need to think about using them just *anywhere*.
I don't doubt there are better ways to do this (manage multiple chats safely), I hope Apple can find them.
Another potential nightmare is the drag and drop in iChat. You can accidentally drop a file to someone and then it is a race to cancel before the other person accepts. The "drop" should not be equivalent to a "send" command. You should have a chance to mull it over one last time and click a Send button. (I can't test right now perhaps I'm misremembering that feature).
Anyway, yeah the user has to be ultimately responsible, no argument. I just think that chatting is inherently more risky or problematic. This is not merely a problem of showing multiple windows in tabbed interface. Chats are profoundly different than spreadsheets or webpages.
Let's not clamor for tabs for chats until it is really well thought out - we might miss out on a better way to do it.
for reference: I think it counts as a send command when you drag the file onto the contact's name in the contact list -- a potentially dangerous thing with the contacts so close together. dragging it into the conversation's chat box, however, is much safer
Reading is *MUCH* easier in narrow columns than wide bands for most people. There is no question on this. I can explain why, but when I have a bit more time to type.
How does this translate to cultures whose language flows vertically, rather than horizontally? How is this not a culturally ingrained, and therefore learned, preference?
Comments
In web browsers, they have to be wide horizontally, so tabs work best. I can't stand omniweb, and it's tab implementation, it's just... wrong
iChat being fully multi-protocol would be great, but they would have to offer a choice with drawer and tabs before I'd even consider it
Originally posted by kim kap sol chat windows tend to be small horizontally and larger vertically (this allows people to see a history of short text messages). I don't think Adium is very usable beyond 3 or 4 tabbed conversations with the small horizontal size footprint I want.
I don't believe that it's possible to use less space than with Adium and the "Tül" message style. It makes window proportions largely irrelevant to functionality. You can see it here: http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=473
Originally posted by mathuaerknedam
I don't believe that it's possible to use less space than with Adium and the "Tül" message style. It makes window proportions largely irrelevant to functionality. You can see it here: http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=473
It's also the worst message style ever. How anyone can follow a conversation easily with that mess of a message style is beyond me.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
It's also the worst message style ever. How anyone can follow a conversation easily with that mess of a message style is beyond me.
Sounds like a personal problem to me.
Myself, I have more of a problem following conversations that include all sorts of on irrelevant timestamps, icons, and buddy names. If I need more info, it's in a tooltip. My text is grey and my buddy's is blue. It's easy to see at a glance who said what, and in what order. What other cues do you need in order to follow a conversation?
You certainly don't have to like it, but I know that it's used every day by myself and others who find it extraordinarily functional. I don't know, maybe you're just vertically oriented.
Originally posted by mathuaerknedam
...maybe you're just vertically oriented.
Most humans are.
Originally posted by LoonyPandora
I'm a big fan of the drawer in proteus, and in Colloquy - as other people have covered, in a chat windows, they tend to be thin and tall, you have loads of horizontal space, so I would use a drawer. Having a '3paned' layout would be overkill, as I very rarely have more than 2 conversations going on at once.
Actually a 3-paned interface would be more in-tune with what Apple has been doing lately.
I remember when Adium 1.x had the 3-pane interface and I thought it was brilliant. With some modifications iChat could bring Adium's 1 window 3-pane interface and improve on it.
The contacts would all be on the left side of the window, the chat area would be the top right area and the chat input area would be bottom right. Much like Mail 2.0, it would bring the ease-of-use of iApps and Mail and the clutter free environment some people are clamoring for.
Instead of tabs, the people that are in an active conversation would be moved to the top of the contact list pane and act as tabs. In fact, the contact list pane would pretty much be tabs to all the contacts. One click and chat.
Originally posted by johnq
Tabs for browsing and tabs for chatting are not the same thing, for me.
It sounds like you've just never experienced a good tabbed design
Originally posted by johnq
I need the spatial separation of (random examples) work chat on left, friends chat on the right, wife chat in the middle of the screen.
A good tabbed IM client will let you automatically separate your message tabs by group. A window with tabs for work on the left, a window with tabs for friends on the right, a window for family members in the center of your screen. Allow the user to drag and reorder or re-group these tabs however they like, toss in a few pretty animations, and you've got something very flexible and easy to use.
Originally posted by johnq
It's dangerous to get the recipients confused, something that is inevitable in a tabbed interface.
A good tabbed IM client will minimize this as much as possible by placing the tabs near where you enter text (so they're right in your field of view!) and using user icons to help distinguish the appearance of different conversations.
It's amusing to hear you guys discuss these issues and ideas, it really is
Originally posted by kim kap sol
chat windows tend to be small horizontally and larger vertically (this allows people to see a history of short text messages).
But this is exactly why we prefer tabs! If my window is tall & skinny, I'd like to keep it tall & skinny. A drawer is a short & wide control and does not fit well with a message window.
Opinion, of course, and I understand (after looking at many different screenshots) why certain people prefer a drawer over tabs.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
Actually a 3-paned interface would be more in-tune with what Apple has been doing lately.
Instead of tabs, the people that are in an active conversation would be moved to the top of the contact list pane and act as tabs. In fact, the contact list pane would pretty much be tabs to all the contacts. One click and chat.
Yeah, it would be more in tune, I agree - it's just that i don't need to see that I'm only chatting to one person all of the time - with a drawer, you can retract it when you are only chatting to one person.
The three paned idea of your is interesting... I would have to try it out in real-life to see how it would 'feel' - but it's an interesting idea /me plots and schemes...
Adium had something similar to this and it was brilliant.
Top left would be the recent and active conversations. Below that is the normal contact list. And the right side is the familiar chat window.
Adam...bring this back. You don't understand what I mean by chat are being horizontally skinny. You're thinking the whole window has to be skinny...not so. Just the text area.
Still...I don't think Apple should touch tabs. I was surprised they did with Safari and I'd be even more surprised if they did with iChat. The casual browser or chatter doesn't need tabs.
To this day, I know no one personally that uses the tabs in Safari. The only time I hear of people using it is on web forums.
:P sorry, i couldn't resist. I actually love adium the way it is now (.7b), and have to voice my opposition to... that.
Originally posted by ShallowThroat
^^ *bleghaaaahhhhhhh*
:P sorry, i couldn't resist. I actually love adium the way it is now (.7b), and have to voice my opposition to... that.
It looks like shit because it's a mockup, but it could look very elegant and would be more useful than tabs.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
Most humans are.
No, human perception tend to be horizontal due to the spatial orientation of eyes and ears. A few perfect example would be widescreen monitors and stereo speakers.
Without gravity, humans have a terrible time interpreting vertical orientation. A few examples of this include people getting sick the first time they experience weightlessness in zero-G or divers getting disoriented underwater and not sure which way is up.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
To this day, I know no one personally that uses the tabs in Safari. The only time I hear of people using it is on web forums.
I am afriad you are incorrect here as well. Both Safari and Gecko-based browsers (Mozilla, Firefox, Camino) all use tab and anectodal evidence support tab's popularity.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
Still...I don't think Apple should touch tabs. I was surprised they did with Safari and I'd be even more surprised if they did with iChat. The casual browser or chatter doesn't need tabs.
To this day, I know no one personally that uses the tabs in Safari. The only time I hear of people using it is on web forums. [/B]
I don't know a single person who isn't my mother who doesn't use tabs. That's asinine.
Originally posted by klinux
No, human perception tend to be horizontal due to the spatial orientation of eyes and ears. A few perfect example would be widescreen monitors and stereo speakers.
Without gravity, humans have a terrible time interpreting vertical orientation. A few examples of this include people getting sick the first time they experience weightlessness in zero-G or divers getting disoriented underwater and not sure which way is up.
I am afriad you are incorrect here as well. Both Safari and Gecko-based browsers (Mozilla, Firefox, Camino) all use tab and anectodal evidence support tab's popularity.
I'm afraid *you're* wrong...we're talking in a context where people have to read text. People do much better reading text paragraphs that are narrow than a line of text that spans the whole width of, say, a monitor. In fact, diagonal reading wouldn't be effective at all without narrow paragraphs or lines of text. In general, diagonal reading becomes easier when paragraph widths are narrower (but like everything, there's a limit to how narrow the lines can get before they become a nuisance to diagonal reading.)
Picture yourself reading books in 'landscape' mode. That would seriously suck.
Also...people might not know where up is underwater or in zero-G but they probably would know where right or left is either. So that has absolutely nothing to do with anything but inner ear fluid.
Also IE is the most popular browser by far and people are doing fine with it. Most don't feel the need to move to a Gecko-based browser to use tabs.
Originally posted by evands
I don't know a single person who isn't my mother who doesn't use tabs. That's asinine.
You must hang around the Linux and Mac crowd...lucky you. I mostly know average users that use Windows.
klinux, the reason people get sick in zero-G is *NOT* because of any visual orientation problem, it is because the hairs in their inner ear, the ones that register direction from norm, start signaling every direction at once from the lack of gravity. Once that is recalibrated for by the body, the nausea goes away. It has nothing to do with visual orientation.
Tabs are (oh god, do we *have* to go through this again?) a kludge to compensate for the PISS POOR window management on most systems. They are, at *best* a nice extra under MacOS X. Personally, I find Expose to be more efficient in general. It works across all applications, it lets each window be optimized for its own space and contents, it uses no extra screen space, and it allows for fast visual selection of windows. Perfect.
I use tabs in Safari for *one* reason - because I can't get Safari to open up new windows *behind* the current one *AND* in the same location. If Safari opened up windows in the same spot, but a layer down, I'd never bother with tabs again.
I also keep the window reasonably short because otherwise the drawer (which I like in this context) takes up way to much empty space for just a few conversations. Making the drawer automatically hide with only one conversation is just the way it should be so that it doesn't take up space not being used.
My biggest problem with tabs in safari (and other webbrowsers) is that either the bar is there all the time, or the window moves up and down when you open a new tab. But I do use Safari tabs most of the time. If it were to act as kickaha suggests, I really don't know whether I'd use them or not. Hopefully I'll have the chance to find out!
-Code Master
Originally posted by johnq
If we don't factor in human foibles/habits/realities into human interface design, then we aren't doing our job.
Any number of perfectly valid, non-silly situations could occur by mixing up which chat you are in. The UI should bend over backwards to reduce this potentiality.
Now, again, mistakes can be made even in separate windows, so it's not a total anti-tab thing with me. I like tabs. But we need to think about using them just *anywhere*.
I don't doubt there are better ways to do this (manage multiple chats safely), I hope Apple can find them.
Another potential nightmare is the drag and drop in iChat. You can accidentally drop a file to someone and then it is a race to cancel before the other person accepts. The "drop" should not be equivalent to a "send" command. You should have a chance to mull it over one last time and click a Send button. (I can't test right now perhaps I'm misremembering that feature).
Anyway, yeah the user has to be ultimately responsible, no argument. I just think that chatting is inherently more risky or problematic. This is not merely a problem of showing multiple windows in tabbed interface. Chats are profoundly different than spreadsheets or webpages.
Let's not clamor for tabs for chats until it is really well thought out - we might miss out on a better way to do it.
for reference: I think it counts as a send command when you drag the file onto the contact's name in the contact list -- a potentially dangerous thing with the contacts so close together. dragging it into the conversation's chat box, however, is much safer
Originally posted by Kickaha
Reading is *MUCH* easier in narrow columns than wide bands for most people. There is no question on this. I can explain why, but when I have a bit more time to type.
How does this translate to cultures whose language flows vertically, rather than horizontally? How is this not a culturally ingrained, and therefore learned, preference?