Bug 291617

Summary: Please do not make Presence-dropdown editable
Product: [Unmaintained] telepathy Reporter: BartOtten <bartotten>
Component: contactlistAssignee: Telepathy Bugs <kde-telepathy-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL    
Severity: wishlist CC: ddomenichelli, kde, mklapetek
Priority: NOR    
Version: git-latest   
Target Milestone: 0.4.0   
Platform: openSUSE   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description BartOtten 2012-01-15 23:33:35 UTC 
Version:           git-latest (using Devel) 
OS:                Linux

Please do not make Presence-dropdown editable. 99% of the time I just want to click 'Online', 'Hidden' or 'Offline' and I guess many people do. That case, it should be better if the list just drops down (usabilitywise too)

Too be honest, I see no clear usecase in setting your presence in another format every time. So the 'Configure Custom Presences' will do fine for the few time I want to use a custom one.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
* Start Contactlist
* Click on the presences 'bar'


Actual Results:  
Cursor blinking for input

Expected Results:  
Dropdown with options to choose from
Comment 1 Martin Klapetek 2012-01-19 09:23:55 UTC 
You can still open the drop-down by clicking the arrow-button (that has a bit bigger click region btw).

The use case is quick status message setting. Going through the dialog is not always optimal.

As the maintainer of contact list, I reject the idea to remove this behavior. However should there be more complaints (this is the first one ever) and some usability study to support "bad usability" complaints, I can revert it.
Comment 2 Daniele E. Domenichelli 2012-01-19 10:20:00 UTC 
To be honest, I don't like this behaviour as well...
Is it possible to have a normal drop down menu with one of the actions that is a lineedit instead?
Comment 3 David Edmundson 2012-01-19 10:34:37 UTC 
When saying you don't like it explaining why you don't like it.

We're not going to change behaviour because you "don't like something" or "think it should be done like XYZ". We'll change it for some reason like

"I find it too easy to enable edit mode" or "it's annoying to type when that spinny thing is in the way" or "I went into edit mode and it killed a kitten"

I've now trained myself to only click on the right hand side on the drop down, and don't notice anything. I'll try and usability test some people at work.
Comment 4 Daniele E. Domenichelli 2012-01-19 18:32:24 UTC 
Ok, I don't like it because I think this is incoherent from the behaviour of any other dropdown menu, and it's different at the view to any other lineedit, so it makes the user learning curve unnecessarily steeper and I cannot train myself not to click on that.

In my opinion if you want to keep the current behaviour you should at least make it look different.