From: Nathan W. <fac...@fa...> - 2004-04-26 18:37:35
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I'm supposed to be working on my project, but I'll answer these, before sean gets trigger-happy. On Mon, 2004-04-26 at 13:52, Sean Egan wrote: > I'm finally looking to get rid of our useless prefs, and as this is a > touchy subject, I'll sollicit some opinions first. >=20 > Please don't respond complaining that my opinion of sensible defaults > and fewer preferences and stupid, you'll just be ignored. Or worse. > Only respond with specific insight on specific ideas listed herein: >=20 > HEREIN: > Fonts: > Replace 7 checkboxes, three dialog-spawning buttons, one spin button and > two colored boxes with, like, a GtkFontSelector and a GtkIMHtml. Or > something. Putting a GtkIMHtml there is definitely useful, but a > fontselector can't pick colors or underlining, and I'd like there to be > some way to specify the size without a face and stuff. Ideas? Good. I definitely like the idea of having a gtkimhtml window that will demo what they've selected. =20 > Message Text: > Kill "Show graphical smileys" and put a "No Smileys" option in the > Smiley Themes selector. >=20 > Kill "Show URLs as links" default to "Yes, of course. Why wouldn't I?" >=20 > Replace "Ignore colors" "Ignore font faces" and "Ignore font sizes" with > just "ignore incoming formatting". Maybe? All of the above look good. > Buddy List: > Kill "Show buttons as" make default "none." I never use them and > wouldn't miss them much. The away message button is kinda useful > though. Thoughts? I wouldn't cry if that bar went away, but I'm sure we have people who would. > Kill "Show numbers in groups." Default to "yes". Are there people who > will get violent if we force them to know how many buddies are online in > their groups? The preference isn't even worded well. "Show numbers in > groups" What does that even mean? Thats fine, although we really need to look into the corner cases that cause those numbers to go awry. -1/3 online is just a tad weird. > Kill "Show warning levels" and "Show idle times" Default both to "yes". > How many people would these annoy? I turn warning levels off. I really don't care, but that's just me. > Conversations: > Kill "Send URLs as links" default to "Yeah, I rarely send people links I > don't want them to click on" Agreed. > Kill "Show aliases in tabs/titles" I used to be a staunch supporter of > no aliases in tabs, but I'll give in here and default this to "Yes, > please." I'd keep this option. It can be useful to keep the screennames in the tabs/titles, especially when someone has several screennames, and you want to know from which they're IMing you. > I've been saying for a while (as have the people who ask why they can't > get their conversations out of tabbed windows) that the tab preferences > are braindead. "Show IMs and chats in tabbed windows" doesn't do what > it says at all. I want to kill it and force people to look at the tabs > against their will, but some people on this list care about people who > aren't me, for some reason ;). I think Nathan had an idea I was ok > with... something about graying the option out when no tabs is chosen. >=20 > Can we just force everyone to use tabs anyway? Probably not. People > suck. Yeah, I'd say either grey out the placement option when the other thing is checked, or grey out the other thing when placement option is anything but "New Window". And rename the other thing to just "Show Tabs" > Kill "Show status icons on tabs" and default to "OK." It's useful and > pretty, and everyone should use it. Agreed. People have been getting pissy lately about accidentally clicking the close button, so we can't get rid of that option > IMs/Chats, these are mostly the same page, so I'll address them > together: > Kill "Show buttons as" default to "none." I have to admit I really like > the new "none" look. I'd consider leaving a send button in, though, for > people like my mom who actually click the Send button with the mouse > after every message, but then again, my mom just isn't very smart. > Opinons? I'd keep the option, but I do like the new buttonless mode. I think the people who want the send button want the whole shebang, and the people who are cool enough for the buttonless mode know how to work w/o a send button. > "New window width" "New window height" and "Entry field height" need to > die. Detect changes in size like we do with the blist and use that size > to create new windows. Amen. > Kill "Hide window on send" default to "No, that's so stupid". ICQ does > not have an interface we wish to emulate. Hallelujah. > Kill "Show logins in window," default to "yes" Yup. > Kill "Notify buddies that you are typing to them" default to "yes"? I > could go either way on that one. No. This is a privacy feature. Most people don't care that the other side knows they're typing, some people are weirdly secretive about it. > Kill "Old-style completion" and bury it, while defaulting to "no". > Actually, kill "Tab-complete nicks" too and default to "yes". Agreed. Old-style is still slightly broken anyways. > Kill "Show people joining in window" "Show people leaving in window" and > "colorize screen names" defaulting all to "yes". I can't really picture > anyone saying "Man, Gaim's really cool, but I don't use it because it > tells me when someone joins a chatroom" Yes to the first two, but if you force colorized screennames on me, I may drive to binghamton and beat you up. Especially with those girly pastel colors. > Sounds: > Kill "sounds when you log in" default to "no". Nobody wants that. Agreed. > Away/Idle: > Kill "sending messages removes away status" and default to "no" AIM > users are used to "yes," but love that they can "no." If I want to come > back from away, I'll just come back from away, I say. Yup. > Kill "Queue new messages when away" and default to "yes"? I don't know. > Everyone hates the "I'm away" window anyway. No. At least not until queueing doesn't suck. Even then, no. I don't like queueing. > Kill "Seconds before resending" and replace with a reasonable figure. I > doubt I've changed it, so 120 is probably the default. Yeah, this is preference bloat. Make it 5 minutes or something. > Kill "Send auto-response in active conversations" and default to "no" > That's just obnoxious. Yup. > So, the goal here is to get rid of a bunch of preferences, and then > re-organize them such that the dialog is a little less weildly. By > killing a lot of these, we can move things around and trim the tree down > a bit, I hope. Let me know what you think. Admiral goals. I also think that some prefs may be candidates for a "Advanced Preferences" plugin such as SimGuy (i think?) has started on.=20 That way sane users don't feel overwhelmed, and insane users can be insane. -Nathan |