Re: [Gaim-cabal] more smileys

[Sean E. <sea...@gm...>]

On 9/22/06, Mark Doliner <ma...@ki...> wrote:
> * I very much prefer the MS butterfly for MSN (although I'm not
>   a big fan of the one in
>   http://gaim.sourceforge.net/sean/some-more-protocols.png--it's
>   too difficult to tell what it is).

That's not an MSN butterfly, it's a Sametime logo:
http://www-142.ibm.com/software/sw-lotus/products/product3.nsf/wdocs/st75home

The MSN dude is the logo for MSN Messenger, and the smiley face is the
logo for Yahoo messenger. If we use the butterfly and the Y!, we
should just as well use the AOL triangle thing. I don't really care
much about this, though. I can ask him to make a butterfly logo and we
can decide later which we want to use.

> * It's probably just not his style... but I think I would prefer
>   icons that have a slightly more 3d and shiney look about them

I don't like the whole Apple/KDE "Everything is always really shiney
all they time" look. He's following the Tango style which says only
things that are actually shiney should look shiney. I'm definitely
happy with his style.

> * I don't like the clock for awayness.  It's counterintuitive
>   to me.  A clock should mean idle.  I think it's much more
>   commonplace to use some sort of yellow or gray note type thing
>   to signify awayness.

I think you (and everyone else who's shared this opinion) are just
saying this because you're primarily AIM users. Yahoo uses a clock to
represent idle. MSN uses it to represent away. Google Talk uses it to
represent "away," but it's client uses away as idle. It seems like AIM
uses the post-it note because going away is the only way to set a
status message on AIM; it's more of a "I have a status message," than
away, originally.

I'm not sure which way we'll go on this; the only reason I have any
sort of opinion is mainly that I just really like his clock icon and
would like to see it used. He's an MSN user, mainly, so it makes sense
that his icons will be inspired by MSN.

> * The blue blobby guy... I don't quite understand it.  Is that
>   intended to replace the Gaim guy?  It seems like it should be
>   more purple.  And perhaps resemble a human a bit more.
>   Especially the smallest version, which tends to look like two
>   meaningless blobs to me.

The blobby guy is purely temporary until we figure out a good Available icon.

> * In http://gaim.sourceforge.net/sean/gaim2.png you don't show
>   the protocol next to the screen name anymore.  I'm not sure
>   I like that.  Well, mostly I don't understand the speech
>   bubble icon next to jdev.  Is that supposed to mean away?
>   It seems like it means available for chat or something.
>   And actually it seems like that icon would be better suited
>   for use as a button rather than to display someone's state.

jdev is jd...@co..., a chat room. I'm convinced that we
should strongly consider removing protocol icons from the buddy list
and leave them just in the tooltip. Because chats don't have status,
they get a special "this is a chat room" icon.

-s.