[meta] Preferences UI Cleanup

Tweaking the summary to distinguish this from changing the internal workings of prefs, since that isn't what this is about.

We might consider making the accounts pane taller and having a details view below the tableview with the stuff that's currently in the edit sheet. It'd be a bit more to take in visually, but it'd be a more noticeable than the edit button (and non-modal).

Something really needs to be done about the contact list display prefs. It reminds me of Adium 1.x, but crammed into a tiny space. I honestly think we should make the sheet bigger, and consolidate.

An example array of a possible new Apperance preferences pane.

Just some comments about the rest of the Adium Preferences:

Accounts Pane:

- It would be more effective, thinks I, to have the accounts pane as a "master-detail view" allowing the user to select an account and see at-a-glance what it's options were, thus removing the edit button altogether.

(For AIM.mac specifically, but applies in general to all creation and editing panes.)

- Move the "Automatically connect on launch" checkbox into the "Account" tab, and add a period to it (Automatically connect on launch. PERIOD).

- Move the options from the "Privacy" tab into the "Account" tab to help consolidate preferences.

- Change the name of the "Personal" tab to something else (such as "Display" or whatnot, seeing as it's all preferences to control things the user is "displaying" across the internet).

- Add the Proxy controls to the Options tab and remove the Proxy tab.

- Place the "Email" checkbox under the Account tab instead.

- Always make what is currently called the Personal tab the first tab in the list and automatically selected, seeing as it's probably what people will want to change and see most often.

Messages Pane:

- It would be nice to be able to set the default font and size for your input field. You can do this manually anyway, but it's slow to take effect. A universal control would be nicer. (Note: At present setting your display font does not set your input font. This you set per-window by hitting Command+T in each chat window.)

Status Pane:

- The ability to better organise the statuses for viewing would be much appreciated. Even sort by avail and away would be useful.

Events:

- Volume Slider should be moved here.

Regarding spoonman's prefs: I think the best way to solve the ridiculous window size problem is to either ditch the preview entirely, or to add a "Preview" button, which opens a sample window (that live updates) (apparently Dave incorporated this into his mockup while I was writing this comment. heh). This could be extended to the Message View prefs as well. I also have a bunch of tiny little nitpicky complaints about individual prefs in there, but I don't think we're at that stage yet.

Regarding david's prefs: Looks interesting, but I'm worried about how are they accessed? what happens when you push cmd-, ? I'm more curious at this point about the menus for accessing those pref windows than the windows themselves. Other than that, things look OK. Again, a couple of nitpicky things, but i don't think we're quite at that stage yet.

Accounts: Most of what needs to be modified for certain users regularly is what falls under the Personal tab... but most people modify this for all accounts I believe. Whata about Personal as a separate pref pane for global personal settings? Note that automatically connect is no longer a pref.

Messages: I don't like making the configuration workflow a "make a change, check the preview" process. Having a live preview is a powerful plus for the messages preferences, especially given that we can't live-update existing message windows to reflect the changes. fonts: .8x's font handling is dumb, 1.0svn's font handling is incomplete.

Events: Agree with Evil Spoonman that the volume pref should be in Events.

Status organization: Needs status groups.

Colin: Dave's prefs aren't separate windows -- see his comment above.

Regarding spoonman's prefs: I think the best way to solve the ridiculous window size problem is to either ditch the preview entirely, or to add a "Preview" button, which opens a sample window (that live updates) (apparently Dave incorporated this into his mockup while I was writing this comment. heh). This could be extended to the Message View prefs as well. I also have a bunch of tiny little nitpicky complaints about individual prefs in there, but I don't think we're at that stage yet.

Evan: regarding the previewing, I think opening a preview window that does live updating is a good solution.

Regarding david's prefs: Looks interesting, but I'm worried about how are they accessed? what happens when you push cmd-, ? I'm more curious at this point about the menus for accessing those pref windows than the windows themselves. Other than that, things look OK. Again, a couple of nitpicky things, but i don't think we're quite at that stage yet.

errr lets try this again.

Evan: i apparently suck at teh trac tonight, especially at teh reading. Like I said above, Opening a preview window with live updating works well, I think.

Spoonman: I think the main reason things are organized the way they are in the Account edit sheet is more of an implementation issue rather than a UI one, which is never a good thing.

David: I like the configure thing a lot. It paves the way for my XML-based message view prefs. The more customization and what not we can offload to Xtras, the better. Fights feature creep effectively.

Another idea for the lists of Xtras: How about a "Manage..." menu item, which, when selected, opens up (in a sheet, for style points) the Xtras manager with the correct view selected.

(In [13964]) Moved the volume slider to the Events pane. Refs #1882

That updated layout is based on the assumption that we can get live updating everything (list styles, message styles).

Looks nice :D

Spoonman points out that Unsanity's method of previewing changes could work well instead of a "show preview button": They display a temporary preview window when a change is made, which fades out after a set amount of time. One downside I see to this is that you have to make a change to see it, the major upside is that it gets us back to not requiring user interaction for the preview.

I'd like to see ctrl-tab and ctrl-shift-tab as options for "Switch tabs with:" since that's what Firefox (my default browser) uses.

Updated with the new pref from ticket #158

Updated nib

Assigning this to its owner.

If I'm planning on implementing a ticket, I'll assign it to myself, thanks.

If this isn't actively in progress, it is not a priority, as the preferences as a whole are pretty good.

More improvements. The <red> and <blue> can be explained by going and looking at how iChat does it.

updated for nib changes

Brian has been hinting at wanting to do this. I think it would fit starting with 1.1, and then moving forward.

Assigning to bgannin.

I'd be interested in working on this and on tickets related to it. I've made a few comments and mockups on #35 and #3234.

May I suggest adding a "anable advanced preferences" checkbox. This will help to make a friendliert preferences window for new users, and keep the advanced ones for power users.

I also thing that appearance prefs should be cleaned up. I will make an effort to include messages preferences here to... most of those are appearance stuff anyway. This is what i have in mind (If you are interested, I can make a mockup too).

Service Icons, Status Icons, Emoticons and Dock Icons like they are right know. Color theme here too... if one could develop a way to make this is color themes binded into Messages Windows, just like they are with the contact list.

Conctact lists prefs: Color theme (w/ customize; if the "general" color theme is not possible) List Layout (w/ customize) Window Style (w/customize; in here we can place opacity, Auto Resize and Width)

Messages Window Prefs Color theme - Variant (w/ customize; if the "general" color theme is not possible) Message Style (w/customize; in here we can place header enable/disable, fonts and background).

Going back on this, I think something needs to be done with those "customize" buttons on the appareance pane. If you're looking for just the necessary amount of prefs, having both a customize button and a "add new theme" option in the drop-down menu, its just too much. I will stick with the one in the menu (maybe renaming it to "add a new custom theme")... The customize button makes the window too crowded, and also makes really easy to spoil default or downloaded extras.

Replying to djmori:

May I suggest adding a "anable advanced preferences" checkbox. This will help to make a friendliert preferences window for new users, and keep the advanced ones for power users.

No. There is no reason to have distinct modes that users must 'opt in' for and Microsoft is shying away from such behavior in Office, which is the primary exhibitor of such modality.

This ticket requires discussion.

(In [19325]) Reworked how the preferences window is generated and displayed.

• We now use Matt Gemmell's SS_PrefsController (http://mattgemmell.com/ - updates to readme, etc. to follow) to dynamically generate the preferences window. There are some Adium-specific modifications to it, a fix for initial-selection, and the ability to include separators.
  • The preferences window can now allow resizing on a per-view basis if we want to do that. Refs #4380
  • The window will size both horizontally and vertically as necessary to display preferences. This should fix #6248.
  • AIAdvancedPreferencePane is now the superclass for advanced preferences.
  • The accounts pane is now first and separated from the rest by a separator. Fixes #6190.
• Preferences nibs now have full control over their display. Any border between the view and the edge of the window is specified by that nib. This makes further modifications to the prefs much less finicky. Refs #1882.
• The Advanced preferences UI now uses a source list. In the process, a minor drawing bug was corrected. Fixes #4708
• Message history preferences are now in General. The advanced preferences for it have been removed from that pane. The behavior can be customized via the Customize button next to the checkbox. Fixes #6682.
• General now utilizes bindings for most of its preferences.

A cosniderable amount of work has been done on this. Now it might be better to work with a new ticket pinpointing specific improvements.