[Gaim-devel] Idea for Window Icons

[Steven G. <ste...@si...>]

I don't know how to implement the following suggestions, and I'm not 
sure which (if any) of the options is best. So, consider this some 
thinking-out-loud.

When using Alt-Tab in Gnome (I presume the issues are similar in KDE and 
on Windows, it the icons for the various Gaim windows are informative, 
but can be a bit much to distinguish. Currently, any message window is 
the icon for the corresponding protocol, or in the case of AIM, the 
buddy icon.

So, if you have a Jabber chat, and MSN chat, and ICQ chat, the main 
Buddy List, and a bunch of other windows open, you end up with a lot of 
different icons.

I think there may be some promise in associating all of the Gaim-related 
icons. Now, if all windows just used the Gaim icon, we'd be losing out 
on some valuable extra info. So, I wonder if we could super-impose a 
smaller version of the specific-window icon over the bottom corner Gaim 
icon. This way, you could still see which window was which 
protocol/buddy, but you could also easily see all Gaim-related windows 
when you Alt-Tab.

I'm not really sure how this would apply to the 16px icons in the task-bar.

I've attached a mockup to illustrate the idea. Feedback and comments are 
welcome.

Thanks,
Steven Garrity