For this or that reason, I’m chatting (ICQ\/Google Talk) to a lot of people recently.\u00c2\u00a0 Often I do a few chats simultaneously.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s easy to get used to after some time.\u00c2\u00a0 But one thing I noticed that annoys me, is that chat windows take a lot of screen space and a lot of time on switching between them.\u00c2\u00a0 I tried a few ICQ clients before, but all of them seem to offer similar interface.\u00c2\u00a0 One chat window per conversation.\u00c2\u00a0 Some group those windows into tabs of the same window, but it’s still the same concept.<\/p>\n
This concept works pretty well for one, two, three, or maybe even four simultaneous discussions.\u00c2\u00a0 The more it gets, the harder it becomes to manage.\u00c2\u00a0 Taskbar window captions get smaller, it is not clear anymore who sent you the message.\u00c2\u00a0 You just know that you have an unread message to which you need to switch to…<\/p>\n
Instead, I think an IRC-like interface could do better.\u00c2\u00a0 In most IRC clients you have this one huge area for messages (think channel discussions now), a simple input area, and a lit of people on the channel. \u00c2\u00a0 When talking in the room with a lot of people, one is usually required to precede the message with the name of the person to who he speaks.\u00c2\u00a0 Also, there is a notion of operators, who kind of look after the order in the room.\u00c2\u00a0 They can kick someone out, silence him, warn, change topic of the discussion, and so on.<\/p>\n
I think the same concepts could work very well for an ICQ or Google Talk interface.\u00c2\u00a0 The user can be an admin of his own channel.\u00c2\u00a0 People in his contact list could be shown as a list of people in the channel (fonts, colors and icons can indicate the status of each, with some sorting options).\u00c2\u00a0 All messages from all contacts would end up in the same message area.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s only a presentation thing, the actual discussion will still be between two people.\u00c2\u00a0 When sending messages, the user would type the name of the person to who he wants to send it.\u00c2\u00a0 This should of course support Tab completions, like in most IRC clients…<\/p>\n
I do understand that such interface won’t work very well for all sorts of users (especially beginners), but I can see that there would a large number of people who could be interested in it.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe even it was implemented somewhere and I just don’t know or don’t remember seeing it.\u00c2\u00a0 Any reminders?<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n
For this or that reason, I’m chatting (ICQ\/Google Talk) to a lot of people recently.\u00c2\u00a0 Often I do a few chats simultaneously.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s easy to get used to after some time.\u00c2\u00a0 But one thing I noticed that annoys me, is that chat windows take a lot of screen space and a lot of time on … Continue reading IM interface idea<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[284,2295,1212,2416,1158],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-10949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-icq","tag-instant-messaging","tag-irc","tag-thoughts","tag-user-interfaces"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t