Just wanted to add another voice to the general "we want service icons back".
I have many friends who use more than one protocol, but who prefer to receive IMs only on one of them. They're only on the others so that other friends who do not use every IM network can still reach them.
I also have some where they are online on a mobile device (cellphone/PDA) as well as on their main computer, the mobile one being on MSN, the other on AIM/Yahoo/etc. I need to be able to know where i'm sending the message, since how fast and if my message will be noticed depends on where the user receives it.
Some others also do share the same account with family members on MSN, but use their own AIM while in school or at work or similar. This means i need to know which one i'm sending the message to, or the wrong person might get it.
There's also the case where people have different setting on each client, making it harder to get their attention with a particular one than another.
I think it would be much more simple to keep the service icons than try to make everyone else change their habits.
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I have a related bit of input. In Gaim, as far as I can remember, there was a mobile icon for each individual screen name of a contact, so you would be able to tell which of their names would forward to their mobile device and which ones would go to the computer they're away from (Because people with multiple screen names will invariably leave at least one of them online at each location... no matter how often you remind them not to). This would also appear in the "Send to" name choosing part of the IM window. As far as I can tell, in the newest Pidgin releases this feature has changed. Now the contact will have a mobile icon, but the individual screen names don't have anything, leaving you to randomly choose and hope you picked their mobile one. I don't have any problem with the main status icon changing... I can easily get used to mousing over for more information. But my problem is the fact that I lost that important mobile/non-mobile bit of information in the IM window, and the buddy list, and the rollover window. I can't be the only one seeing this... am I just stupid and missing an option to change this in preferences? It always worked before. If someone can set me straight, I'd be grateful.
(As a side note, since the site redesign, there's no easy to find place to get plugins or anything...)
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I'll toss in my vote in favor of the protocol-specific icons. I can understand the argument for having a single icon making the interface cleaner and simpler, but I personally think the new icons are fairly ugly and would prefer the older icons. I would completely support making every protocol use the same icon by default, but it seems like removing the capability to have protocol-specific icons when it was already there does nothing except take away an option that many users want.
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After giving the new pidgin interface a long trial (since I originally made this thread) I still have the same problems and issues. It's just not as usable as before. Arranging users by client type is not a good solution. Etan told me to give it a go and see if it grows on me. I took his advice because it's true that sometimes changes scare people away without any reason. While I *did* have reason I still gave it a try and have had the mentioned problems till this day.
Regardless, I think you're right. Despite our protest nothing will be done about it. I appreciate the work the devs put into this, just don't like the direction it has moved into.
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> If you want to separate people by protocol, just make a group for each protocol, that's what I do.
Which defeats the purpose of having groups, since it would be much more preferable to have groups that are meaningful to *you*, instead of shoehorning the app to work around something it *USED* to do correctly. I don't mind a default behavior I don't like, just as long as I can change it. But changing something and then telling me I can't have it the way I used to smacks of Microsoft.
> Don't bother the devs about stuff, though, they'll just get defensive. It's just not worth it.
Yeah, they'd get the same way with the old v1.x version, when a plugin DLL (tcl.dll) would conflict with Cygwin's tcl.dll. The Gaim developers' solution was to *lobotomize* Cygwin's usefulness, rather than the better solution of deleting the unused Gaim dll. That's right, it was a DLL that NOTHING in Gaim was using.
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I would like to voice my concern here as well. I know the developers want to create an easy to use experience that just works, but this change has made it more difficult to manage my contacts. I've used Pidgin for a while now, and am unfortunately going back to Gaim. It's not like I didn't try the new way of doing things... I gave it a month, but I just don't enjoy the experience. I definitely prefer the protocol icons, especially with the mobile and hiptop displays. I enjoy the freedom to choose which protocol to use to send to each user and the instant visual notifications without expanding or mouse hovering.
I wish this was an option in the preferences, because I too would love to uncheck the "Allow Pidgin to simply the contact list" option.
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I very much appreciate the developers' efforts in Pidgin/Gaim. It is interesting to see how intently the developers don't listen to the users. But here is a very simple argument in favor of protocol icons that has not yet been mentioned:
Protocol icons show what Pidgin is all about. Go to the Pidgin home page and read:
"Pidgin is a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client"
At its core Pidgin is about multiple protocols. And now the developers are trying to convince us that protocols don't matter!
Wanted to convince a friend or coworker to move to Gaim? It was easy: I showed him my Gaim Window and he would see the Yahoo symbols, the MSN symbols and the symbols of the other messengers. The Gaim window spoke for itself, proudly displayed the key capability of this great tool.
Not so Pidgin. Here you have some explaining to do. You have to draw to the coworker into a discussion, grab the mouse, move it over one of your buddies. Wait for the protocol hint to pop up to show what messenger this buddy is connected to. Then move to a second buddy, wait for the pop-up. Hopefully this buddy is connected to a different messenger so that you can make your point. If not, scroll down until you find a buddy on a different messenger. Sure, your coworker will also get the message if you manage to keep his attention. But why make it so hard? Why does Pidgin hide evidence about its most important capability?
And it is an error to assume that users don't care about protocols or shouldn't even know about them. If you only use a single protocol you probably don't need Pidgin. If you use several, you need to be aware that different protocols exist (if only to create your accounts), when you speak to one of your buddies you may want to talk about the specific messenger they are using (see you on Jabber, lets communicate via Yahoo etc.), what protocol someone is using often also tells you something about the person/their computing environment etc., you may also need to be able to explain the differences between protocols to someone else. Yes, you still can do some of that if this information is not displayed prominently. But that just makes things harder that should be easy. (Remembering in an offline personal conversation who of your friends uses which messenger protocol is very hard, though, if protocol icons are not shown always).
And: There are differences between the protocols. They are not the same. Several users have provided examples of why they are specifically interested in such information. Don't disregard those information needs.
But more simply said: It is an error to hide what Pidgin should be most proud of!
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I don't really care about the protocol Icons my self, however I have noticed with stacked contacts there seem to be missing states.
For example most of my contacts have both MSN and GTalk. However when stacked status is a little muddled. In MSN they show as Idle which fades the contact, but they are set to away in GTalk, why is Idle not represented as an ICON?
If contacts are separate, I could see use for the protocol icons. When I was grouping mine, it was hard to tell which entry was for a particular protocol, and when the entries are separate this makes more sense to display.
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Just wanted to add another voice to the general "we want service icons back".
I have many friends who use more than one protocol, but who prefer to receive IMs only on one of them. They're only on the others so that other friends who do not use every IM network can still reach them.
I also have some where they are online on a mobile device (cellphone/PDA) as well as on their main computer, the mobile one being on MSN, the other on AIM/Yahoo/etc. I need to be able to know where i'm sending the message, since how fast and if my message will be noticed depends on where the user receives it.
Some others also do share the same account with family members on MSN, but use their own AIM while in school or at work or similar. This means i need to know which one i'm sending the message to, or the wrong person might get it.
There's also the case where people have different setting on each client, making it harder to get their attention with a particular one than another.
I think it would be much more simple to keep the service icons than try to make everyone else change their habits.
I have a related bit of input. In Gaim, as far as I can remember, there was a mobile icon for each individual screen name of a contact, so you would be able to tell which of their names would forward to their mobile device and which ones would go to the computer they're away from (Because people with multiple screen names will invariably leave at least one of them online at each location... no matter how often you remind them not to). This would also appear in the "Send to" name choosing part of the IM window. As far as I can tell, in the newest Pidgin releases this feature has changed. Now the contact will have a mobile icon, but the individual screen names don't have anything, leaving you to randomly choose and hope you picked their mobile one. I don't have any problem with the main status icon changing... I can easily get used to mousing over for more information. But my problem is the fact that I lost that important mobile/non-mobile bit of information in the IM window, and the buddy list, and the rollover window. I can't be the only one seeing this... am I just stupid and missing an option to change this in preferences? It always worked before. If someone can set me straight, I'd be grateful.
(As a side note, since the site redesign, there's no easy to find place to get plugins or anything...)
If anyone (devs?) want to see what I'm talking about, I took a screenshot...
http://lh5.google.com/image/ikoul4/Rj0B2TuKzZI/AAAAAAAAAC4/Xu43tUjq9rw/Pidgin-hates-mobiles.jpg
It shows the problem on the buddy list and the rollover, but not in the IM window.
I'll toss in my vote in favor of the protocol-specific icons. I can understand the argument for having a single icon making the interface cleaner and simpler, but I personally think the new icons are fairly ugly and would prefer the older icons. I would completely support making every protocol use the same icon by default, but it seems like removing the capability to have protocol-specific icons when it was already there does nothing except take away an option that many users want.
I just read this entire thread and I still don't understand why this feature isn't optional.
If you want to separate people by protocol, just make a group for each protocol, that's what I do.
Don't bother the devs about stuff, though, they'll just get defensive. It's just not worth it.
After giving the new pidgin interface a long trial (since I originally made this thread) I still have the same problems and issues. It's just not as usable as before. Arranging users by client type is not a good solution. Etan told me to give it a go and see if it grows on me. I took his advice because it's true that sometimes changes scare people away without any reason. While I *did* have reason I still gave it a try and have had the mentioned problems till this day.
Regardless, I think you're right. Despite our protest nothing will be done about it. I appreciate the work the devs put into this, just don't like the direction it has moved into.
> If you want to separate people by protocol, just make a group for each protocol, that's what I do.
Which defeats the purpose of having groups, since it would be much more preferable to have groups that are meaningful to *you*, instead of shoehorning the app to work around something it *USED* to do correctly. I don't mind a default behavior I don't like, just as long as I can change it. But changing something and then telling me I can't have it the way I used to smacks of Microsoft.
> Don't bother the devs about stuff, though, they'll just get defensive. It's just not worth it.
Yeah, they'd get the same way with the old v1.x version, when a plugin DLL (tcl.dll) would conflict with Cygwin's tcl.dll. The Gaim developers' solution was to *lobotomize* Cygwin's usefulness, rather than the better solution of deleting the unused Gaim dll. That's right, it was a DLL that NOTHING in Gaim was using.
I would like to voice my concern here as well. I know the developers want to create an easy to use experience that just works, but this change has made it more difficult to manage my contacts. I've used Pidgin for a while now, and am unfortunately going back to Gaim. It's not like I didn't try the new way of doing things... I gave it a month, but I just don't enjoy the experience. I definitely prefer the protocol icons, especially with the mobile and hiptop displays. I enjoy the freedom to choose which protocol to use to send to each user and the instant visual notifications without expanding or mouse hovering.
I wish this was an option in the preferences, because I too would love to uncheck the "Allow Pidgin to simply the contact list" option.
I very much appreciate the developers' efforts in Pidgin/Gaim. It is interesting to see how intently the developers don't listen to the users. But here is a very simple argument in favor of protocol icons that has not yet been mentioned:
Protocol icons show what Pidgin is all about. Go to the Pidgin home page and read:
"Pidgin is a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client"
At its core Pidgin is about multiple protocols. And now the developers are trying to convince us that protocols don't matter!
Wanted to convince a friend or coworker to move to Gaim? It was easy: I showed him my Gaim Window and he would see the Yahoo symbols, the MSN symbols and the symbols of the other messengers. The Gaim window spoke for itself, proudly displayed the key capability of this great tool.
Not so Pidgin. Here you have some explaining to do. You have to draw to the coworker into a discussion, grab the mouse, move it over one of your buddies. Wait for the protocol hint to pop up to show what messenger this buddy is connected to. Then move to a second buddy, wait for the pop-up. Hopefully this buddy is connected to a different messenger so that you can make your point. If not, scroll down until you find a buddy on a different messenger. Sure, your coworker will also get the message if you manage to keep his attention. But why make it so hard? Why does Pidgin hide evidence about its most important capability?
And it is an error to assume that users don't care about protocols or shouldn't even know about them. If you only use a single protocol you probably don't need Pidgin. If you use several, you need to be aware that different protocols exist (if only to create your accounts), when you speak to one of your buddies you may want to talk about the specific messenger they are using (see you on Jabber, lets communicate via Yahoo etc.), what protocol someone is using often also tells you something about the person/their computing environment etc., you may also need to be able to explain the differences between protocols to someone else. Yes, you still can do some of that if this information is not displayed prominently. But that just makes things harder that should be easy. (Remembering in an offline personal conversation who of your friends uses which messenger protocol is very hard, though, if protocol icons are not shown always).
And: There are differences between the protocols. They are not the same. Several users have provided examples of why they are specifically interested in such information. Don't disregard those information needs.
But more simply said: It is an error to hide what Pidgin should be most proud of!
I don't really care about the protocol Icons my self, however I have noticed with stacked contacts there seem to be missing states.
For example most of my contacts have both MSN and GTalk. However when stacked status is a little muddled. In MSN they show as Idle which fades the contact, but they are set to away in GTalk, why is Idle not represented as an ICON?
If contacts are separate, I could see use for the protocol icons. When I was grouping mine, it was hard to tell which entry was for a particular protocol, and when the entries are separate this makes more sense to display.