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Pidgin Controversy Triggers Fork
paleshadows writes "Pidgin, the premier multi-protocol
instant messaging client, has been forked. This is the result of a heated, emotional, and
very interesting debate over a controversial new feature: As of
version 2.4, the ability to manually resize the text input area has
been removed; instead, it automatically resizes depending on how much
is typed. It turns out that this feature, along with the uncompromising
unwillingness of the developers to provide an option to turn it off,
annoys the bejesus of very many users.
One
comment made by a Professor that teaches "Collaboration in an Open
Source World" argued that 'It's easy to see why open source developers could develop dogmas. [...]
The most dangerous dogma is the one exhibited
here: the God feature. "One technological solution can meet
every possible user-desired variation of a feature." [...]
You [the developers] are ignoring the fan base with a dedication to your convictions
that is alarmingly evident to even the most unobservant of followers,
and as such, you are demonstrating that you no longer deserve to be in
the position of servicing the needs of your user base.'" Does anyone besides me find this utterly ridiculous?
Just can't get our act together. It's why we've never been able to get past our image as disorganized and in general lower than the other birds.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
never adopted pidgin, i still use GAIM 1.5, it does everything i need, and the default emoticons are much less... gay? (and i bet you thought this was going to be about overlords)
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
Can you imagine the flamewars that take place between M$ staff? This issue with Pidgin is tiny in comparison to development issues faced in larger projects.
Insert metaphor regarding painting a barn here.
Am I the only person who judges programs by their available options, not just feature set?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Similar event: The Miranda devs took out multi-send.
This whole situation reeks of some crusty developer stuck in his ways.
If there's no technical reason not to allow both options with a simple option in a menu somewhere, then yes it is ridiculous. If there is some downside to allowing users to resize the text input area then a fork is exactly what is needed. Open source is awesome.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
More options are always better, right?
I mean, sure, forking a project means that we now have fewer developers concentrating on a product than before, but it's for the best because now we'll have two IM clients that are nearly identical except for some minor things. All because some programmers are egotistical assholes!
The Open Source world needs to grow the fuck up. More options aren't always better - more good options are better, more options for the sake of having more options or because you can't learn to play nicely with the other kids are stupid.
I know some will probably tag this as a troll or a flamebait, however IMHO this is exactly why Linux will never be able to really replace either Windows or Mac OS X for desktop usage.
Too many people who think they know better than the end-users, and too much work being done by lots of people on different, competing projects. You need to unite your efforts, not work against each others. This fork is just another proof (and WTH is with that "premier multi-protocol instant messaging client" remark? Nobody uses that on Windows and Mac OS X).
The whole KDE vs Gnome debate is one of the things that keeps Windows on PCs.
Posted as AC because of Linux and OSS zealots.
All too often on software projects, I see someone spend several days figuring out a neat thing to implement that they personally think is a great addition.
...
And when it comes time to remove it they defend it. They may even realize that they were wrong thinking everyone would love it. But they just don't want to give up that code that cost them so much time to figure out and write.
Coding for several days only to realize that you need to throw everything you wrote away is one of the hardest skills for a developer to learn
My work here is dung.
The pidgin site has been slashdotted.
Hmm or perhaps is pretending in order not to air its dirty laundry.
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
Many times we have to put up with stupid and poorly thought out "features" in OSS software and our only recourse is to "submit a patch".
Well, these guys have taken that one step further and I say more power to them. It's about time someone took asshole OSS developers to task and answer these ridiculous calls to submit patches when we are voicing real concerns.
I don't find this ridiculous at all. Sure it was heated and emotional. SURE it was over a minor feature.
Big deal. The nature of open source, especially under the GPL is that if you don't like something, you can change it and make your own fork. I, for one, look forward to seeing just how different this fork from Pidgin will be.
the fuck up.
Seriously.
All of you.
Add the following in Preferences window:
[X] Allow resizing of chat input area
-William Brendel
It might help to, I dunno, specify which part you find "ridiculous":
that the dev's would remove a feature that users liked, or
that the users are complaining about such a 'small' feature.
If the project is threatening to fork, then I lean with the users. Isn't OSS great?!?
Ridiculous that developers will not listen to their users, yes. The Open Source world is just as much a free market as the commercial world. With more options - can't fork your code in the commercial world, but I can certainly change brands / vendors / providers easily enough. Beautiful, isn't it?
I'm serious, I'm not trolling. Why on earth didn't they just, like, make it a feature people can toggle in the options? A fork over this is insane.
"Does anyone besides me find this utterly ridiculous?"
Depends on what you mean. Do I find it ridiculous that developers are ignoring a sizable portion of their userbase and implementing a feature that many people would like to disable? Yes, I find it ridiculous. Not terribly surprising, but ridiculous nonetheless.
Do I find it ridiculous that it's causing a project to fork? Not particularly. This is supposed to be the one of the greatest advantages of open source; if you don't like the way people play, you can pick up the pieces and start your own game. Silly me, I had secretly hoped that the threat of something like this happening would keep software like pidgin from ignoring its user base. Guess I was wrong.
This DOES seem pretty ridiculous, but more open-source IM clients can only be a good thing. Maybe eventually there will be an open, unofficial MSN client that supports voice and video messaging, the sending and receiving of custom emotions and handwritten messages, and has a decent interface.
...because their Trac is slashdotted. Problem solved.
here
After upgrading to Ubuntu 8.04 the other day I realized this change.... but I got over it!
I personally think that an option to turn it off would be nice, but come on, it's not a big deal.
Post number 20
What am I winning?????
Actually, I'm not surprised at all. Pidgin's developers are some of the most hard headed folks I've ever run into. Its their way or the highway. Why would anyone be surprised that someone chose the highway?
Deleting functionality to force ridiculous changes on users is one of those cases that certainly merits a fork (or patchset). I would be one of the folks using the fork if it weren't for the fact I have Adium.
I had heard a little bit ago that there had been some heated debate over this, but...a fork? Over resizing a freaking text input area manually or automatically? Holy crap people can be petty some times.
Unpleasantries.
Seems like something that would be done to a Gnome app. Hope that's just a coincidence. Back to Kopete I guess.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Patch it to disable the feature if you dont want it. Open source?!??!
In my development, not having an option governing this behavior is ridiculous after more than one person requests it operate differently.
Similarly ridiculous (to me) is the Professor's ad hominem rant.
Based on what little I can actually read at this time, forking seems reasonable -- experience tells me it won't be reasonable a few months or releases from now.
... welcome our new pidgeon overlords.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
I got annoyed for a bit that it was taken out, but now I don't even notice it. I have seen it instantly resize itself when I start typing into a blank message, now that get annoying. I vote for being able to manually resize it.
"Don't blink. Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead."
This wouldn't be the first time the pidgeon folk have decided to change the interface and refused to let people keep things the way they liked. Forks have been threatened before over their decision to hide protocol icons as well. I'm glad they separated the gui from the rest of the program - both this and the protocol icon decision really bug me.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Some visually impaired users enlarge the font so that they can read the text, and thereby use the application. Preventing them from doing this means they can't use the application. Visually impaired people have a hard enough time with the internet. There's no excuse for making it harder.
"Indeed, it is wise never to consider any form of electronic data as final." --Arnold Robbins
Someone has been taking user interface lessons from the Gnome team. Why do people need to be reminded that sometimes the user really is right? Or that some users prefer doing things the "wrong" way. And why shouldn't they be allowed to?
I agree. Their are any number of other UI enhancements they refused to make as well. I'm excited to see they forked it.
We're seriously lacking an open voice+video messaging system such as msn/skype and those folks waste their time fighting whether a text input box should be resizeable or not?!
Please! I'm sick of telling people who get viruses from Messenger or don't trust Skype that there's no alternative under Linux. And this fight over a such stupid argument doesn't help to promote OSS at all.
I'm not a Pidgin developer, so can someone illuminate me to the positions of the two sides? Why is one group wanting resizable windows while the other does not? What are the pros and cons of each side? Is there some technical reason to require one vs. the other or are the reasons related to opinions, ergonomics, eye-candy?
What say ye?
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
I remember when Pidgin came out with green balls to represent online status rather than the AIM/MSN/Yahoo/etc icons like in Gaim. Hundred of users complained, however reports kept getting closed saying it wasn't gonna be revered and just to deal with it.
Seems like a similar case here. Pidgin devs are very anti-options and generally make it the way they decide it and refuse to allow it to work any other way.
It's a shame because the core is so robust.
Same thing happened with XFree86/X.org, Sodipodi/Inkscape, pf, etc. Sometimes the current developers are just dumb asses beyond comprehension.
I have no idea what causes this, it's the whole Theo da Raadt, Hans Reiser, arrogance or something.
Was it really necessary to create a whole new fork?
Just make a patch called Deannoyify_pidgin that makes adds the option to use the feature or not.
On the other hand, if this is just one of many cases where developers are ignoring the users I do understand the need for a fork.
A writing professor once called this "murdering your darlings," in the context of writing fiction.
You develop a scene with blood, sweat and tears, and then realize it's baggage and there's a better way, and shorter/more compact is always better.
It hurts but it beats the alternative, which is reduced quality of writing.
technical writing / development
The devs have taken out useful feature after useful feature. I even voiced my concern on the mailing list some time ago, and was met with "such options are too confusing to the average person," and then silence. I still use Pidgin, but it's certainly not the cool Gaim of old.
For anyone interested, the fork is called "Funpidgin" and can be found here.
The summary makes light of it, but the Funpidgin page explains that their intention is to respond more directly to the requests of the user community. In addition to the feature mentioned in the summary, Funpidgin has implemented some others, and will presumably continue adding user-requested features (while still integrating upgrades from the pidgin codebase, presumably).
Forks are both good and bad; this one is no exception. On the one hand it "wastes effort" and can duplicate work. On the other hand, it can give the user community (which isn't homogeneous) the product(s) they want. It can encourage useful competition. Often the end result will be better than if no fork had occurred. Another example is the Compiz/Beryl fork, which created some duplication for awhile, but ultimately turned out for the best since the merged Compiz Fusion includes the best features from both (a stable core and all the whiz-bang features users wanted, in the form of plugins).
If both the Pidgin and Funpidgin developers work to provide something that their respective users find worthwhile, then what's the problem?
Considering my general hatred of the Pidgin UI, no, I don't find this ridiculous.
Let's start with Pidgin's UI Sucks, which details some of the weird UI decisions made back around version 2.1. Fortunately they've fixed almost all the issues listed in that post.
More Pidgin Bashing is just a bug, so let's skip ahead to Pidgin's Crappy Formatting Icons which they have not fixed.
If I ever had the time to, I'd like to write a new UI for libpurple, Pidgin's backend. I have some ideas - but not enough time to actually learn how to use libpurple.
Maybe I can help with this fork, called... uh. Hm. The summary doesn't appear to mention it.
Ah, here we go: funpidgin.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Maybe the developers don't know how to do scroll bars
which is totally what she said
Pidgin's trac system is /.'d; does anyone know where the fork is? Can you actually download, compile and run it? Are they going to split codebases, or simply re-package pidgin with each release?
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
The pidgin devs have always been like this.
They change something that no one wanted changed, the users ask for an option to switch it back or choose between them, and the users are told to go write a plugin if it means that much to them.
Same thing with video support. Adium is built on pidgin/gaim (not sure which, don't have a mac) and it supports video. The video APIs are all well documented and the pidgin devs respond with "Well, we don't want video and besides it's too hard. That means you don't really want video either so stop asking."
It would seem to me that they are exercising their right to drive off their users. If this does turn out to really fork, I'll be happy to stop bothering the pidgin guys by using their app.
First thing I thought was "Gnome."
Fork goin do plenny good kine stuff fo Pidgin.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Ya know, I can't blame the community for this fork. The gaim/pidgin developers have had a bad history of 'God complex'. Hell, just recently they refused to make any changes to the way Pidgin handles SASL authentication to XMPP servers due to a change in the 2.4 codebase that completely breaks SSL encryption to the OpenFire XMPP server, whereas the 2.3 codebase AND every other XMPP client seems to not have any issues. Their response was something along the lines of "yeah, well we're doing it right..every other client is doing it wrong". I find that hard to believe. This ultimately leaves me with 2 options: either don't upgrade past version 2.3 of Pidgin, or use another client. And yes, not being able to resize the input text box drives me absolutely crazy. I look forward to a forked version addressing this and the XMPP SASL authentication issues.
Yes its ridiculous, but not all together atypical.
If there was money involved, it would never have happened. (Paying customers have a way of getting what they want, but people who develop for the karma occasionally take a "my way or no way" approach.) [/me, expecting flames].
But the beauty of Open Source is the self correcting nature of the development community. People can take it and do what they want with it. This would never happen in a closed source product.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
...and mistook it for a new card combo from Magic: The Gathering.
I think I need to get outside more.
[End Of Line]
I thought the new version of Pigin I installed had a bug in it because the text input box was so small and I couldn't resize it. I never noticed I don't write more than a line of text in any IM message. Wow, I thought the software was broken, guess it's my IM conversations. It took a fork of the program for me to realize it was a feature.
One Token Ring to Rule them All, One Search Engine to Find Them, One WAN to bring them in, and TCP/IP Bind them...
here
So people will pick one UI over the other.
Then the code bases will drift.
Then there will be a new protocol to implement.
Then one will die out.
I think the main reason to not make it an option is because it is such a tiny obscure detail that you wouldn't even think to look for an option in the first place. And thus adding the option to the GUI would be useless clutter. Good usability is often about removing options and make things behave the right way at default.
uncompromising unwillingness of the developers to provide an option
Good. Providing too many options, especially UI options, is a stupid mistake made by many open-source projects. You end up with software which is impossible to test and which often looks terrible.
fork
Crazy. But, hey, it's their time. Let the users decide; I'm sticking with Pidgin.
They also messed around with the "typing" notification, moving it from the tab/window pane to inside the IM text.
It gets really annoying when you're trying to read a message that was just sent to you, and suddenly the text is shifted up a line because the person on the other end just started typing.
I joined in on a bug report regarding the notification, asking for a configuration option to be created so that the previous style could be used.
No response from the authors yet.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Just the usual "colour of the bikeshed" problem which hits every collaborative project ever built.
1) It is open source.
2) If you don't like it, hack the code and release the version you like.
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
...I use Adium.
...I was saying to myself "Pidgin is forked!" when, after attempting to log off of Ubuntu, it went into a perpetual loop consuming 100% of my CPU, inciting my cooling fans to a screaming level of agony and blithely ignoring repeated requests to 'kill -TERM pidgin'.
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
I tried a newer version of Pidgin a few weeks ago, but ended up going back to the older version that I'm currently using (2.2). I'm glad I'm not the only one that doesn't like the non-resizable text-box. I don't know why, but it just annoys the hell out of me. Their stubbornness on this sounds sounds kind of similar to their staunch position that Pidgin should never support voice or video chat (I probably wouldn't use it often, but it would still be nice if it was there). Hopefully this fork will gain some traction.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
I did not follow Pidgin development from that close. But I know of one thing that annoys me. No audio support. I used it back in the time of gaim. Already then, they said that they would not do it. Now they say that they broke UI and protocol handling so they can't do it easily. But we are in 2008. Peoples are demanding it since at least 2002.
I lack details here. But those guys sure don't seem to be listening to users.
Probably a good time to suggest Funpidgin a forked Pidgin that aims to keep the removed features as options.
When geeks get this worked up over something like whether or not you can resize a text field and take the mentality of "fine, I'm gonna take my ball and go home". Let's find some bigger issues to get passionate about, like making program installation a more uniform and less painful experience. Or maybe maybe add some GUI wizards to stop new users from having to come face to face with the command line.
Tcha. Then make it a compile time option and let the people who feel that strongly about the issue enable or disable it at build time. The can stick the instructions in the FAQ.
I really can't see the point of refusing to budge over such a trivial issue.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I, for one, look forward to the forked version. The ability to not resize the text area annoys the crap out of me. It's my window... let me control it the way I want to.
I stopped using Pidgin because of this crap feature. It's like disabling the mouse within the program's windows: "It's text. it's chat. You don't need a mouse".
"Always leave them wanting less." -Andy Warhol
What's next -- a ribbons based UI?
-l
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They must be Vista developers in their day job...
In case one is unwilling or unable to use Funpidgin, and as soon as the site is unSlashdotted, here is a plugin that disables this "feature"...
I'm with you on keeping the GUI simple, however if something become a great 'annoyance' to a significant portion of your users so much so that your product gets forked over it, then a simple check-box buried in an obscure (perhaps install) menu that only a power user is likely to find might just be the ticket! If you really care enough to find it then knock yourself out. It's like Mr. Burns keeping his employees happy by giving them tar-tar sauce!
If someone had submitted a patch which added the requested functionality and it had been rejected they might have a point, but this is just stupid. I predict the fork goes absolutely nowhere and all the drama will have caused some of the original developers to dig their heels.
The drama far more than anything else is making it unlikely people will get up to date versions of pidgin with manual resizing.
Nuff Said!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Parent is hardly trolling.
The Bikeshed/Barn issue is at the heart of this problem. No single interface makes everyone happy; a good UI will allow users to take a degree of ownership by allowing basic cosmetic changes.
And an application that is flexible with a lot of configuration options is usually a lot more fun to use than something that is static, or can only be changed through registry/config file changes.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
While I completely agree with your premise - that usability is often the opposite of allowing configurable options for everything - I think that the way they made the dialog behave is not the right way. I have never seen another application do what pidgin now does. In general, that doesn't necessarily make it the wrong thing to do but in this case I think it does.
Heh... not only is Pidgin being punished with a fork... they're also being punished with a Slashdotting!
This kinda shit was part of the reason I stopped using Pidgin. That and it was horrifically unstable for me (still haven't worked out what was causing it), so I've switched to Digsby. Check it out, seriously.
I have the same issue with the Firefox AwesomeBar. It's a great idea, with huge practical potential. But until I can control it for privacy purposes, I willingly sacrifice my firefox experience by turning off the entire bar.
If the devs would add the simple functionality such that I could tag a bookmark as "ignore this", I would be appeased. It is the fact that they have not done this yet that is turning me to considering another solution like Opera or Webkit. The solution is easy to solve, yet seemingly impossible to grasp...
- DaftShadow
I agree. Unless the feature is very important to half of the users and detested by the other half. I cannot get to TFA, but in the case of this text field, I'm willing to bet that one way is probably better than the other overall. I don't know if the feature was someone's big idea that users never asked for, or if it was a child of feedback given by those users. It seems like a dumb reason to fork a project. Another strategy might be to re-architect the application so that the interface is divorced from the back-end. Then skins or plug-ins, etc could handle this. Heck, maybe Pidgin already supports this.
The current version, 2.3.1 (at least, that's what I'm using, on Windows) allows resizing. There's a vertical scroll bar, but no horizonal one, but who wants to have to scroll left/right? That's retarded. Removing the ability to change the size vertically is also retarded. I won't be upgrading, or if I do/have to, it'll be to the new version, or some other client.
STOP using Overrated from 1 (or less in this case!) to mod people down! How many times do I need to take a karma hit to get this through!?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=534346&cid=23202032
Oh and some people call me a Linux zealot (and I probably am a bit of an OSS zealot), and I partially agree with you, AC. Sometimes projects are forked unnecessarily, and this is the greatest example yet.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Pidgin, the premier multi-protocol instant messaging clientâ¦
Premier? Seriously?
I LOL'd
Hopefully the developers read this and take note. Stop being pig headed children!
I mean, pidgin supports plugins. Is there a reason this can't be implemented as a 'let me resize the input box' plugin?
One of the Pidgin developers, Ethan Blanton, was my TA for an undergrad compilers class at Purdue. His arrogance in that role explains a lot about Pidgin. The whole attitude of the team is very much on the screw-you-users side.
In a way it's understandable, they are giving their program away for free and supporting so many users isn't easy. It's hard to stay nice in that situation when you're not getting anything tangible in return.
But there are so many times when the arrogance is just amazing. Stupid things that makes people lives easier is either removed or not implemented because someone puts their foot down.
- In this case they actually had to put effort into removing a useful feature.
- They removed the protocol icons
- During the initial switch to 2.0, they removed all but the basic settings and said they'll put something back if people scream loudly for it. Yeah, that's quality customer service.
I agree that simplicity is almost always better, but I would say that good usability is always about listening to user feedback. Basically this change flunked the usability test for a lot of folks and the developers should find a way to elegantly implement that option. There's undoubtedly a way to add this ability without adding "useless clutter." And I would say this clutter wouldn't be useless since people are asking for it.
This space intentionally left blank.
Why couldn't they just make a plugin for that?
:)
And, additionally, why did they leave the thick divider bar in place if they were going to neuter it? In typical GUIs, the divider bar is draggable to achieve the resizing - they should have gone with a different kind of divider if they were going to do something like that. The visual cues are wonky in the current implementation.
That said, such a little feature won't convince me to switch to the forked version.
Forking.. ok... but does anyone know the further objectives? Would they implement some very wanted features like video/audio conversation, MSN direct file transfer, or give priority to keep protocol compatibility up to date (like MSNP14/MSNP15)? I'm not sure a lot of people (except for the forking developers) would switch from Pidgin to another project just because a difference on a textbox behavior (which maybe could be changed by a plugin), or something like that.
While I don't care so much about the text input resizing, considering how often pidgin crashes if I resize my chat window, I'd be worried about this triggering this behavior that much more often.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
Options suck.
Every option means doubling the number of possible configurations - which makes proper testing of the application twice as hard. It also provides twice as many weird ways that the developers can have their apps configured that will prevent them from noticing issues as they personally develop.
There are some applications and configuration options where this isn't true - for example, a text editor for programmers would be less useful if you couldn't configure how many spaces are in a tab - but for simple end-user facing applications like Pidgin and the mechanism for resizing the text input box making a choice arbitrarily (or optimizing for UI simplicity) among the usable possibilities is probably the correct design decision.
There is always going to be a vocal minority who really wants to be able to configure every last little thing about their software. For free software, they can simply be pointed to the source code and told to have fun. As a usability compromise, features like Mozilla's "about:config" are good - as long as the user is told that weird configurations won't be supported. But in this particular case the best solution really seems to be for the Pidgin guys to just tell the forkers to "have fun" and then proceed to ignore them because the feature they're offering is silly and pointless.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
world peace set back at LEAST 10 years because of this. good going, guys.
dreemkill.
I really don't get the Pidgin devs. For heaven's sake, noone was going to kill your "change font size as you type"-feature. People just wanted to make it an option they can turn off.
Me being visually impaired, I can completely understand why this progressively-diminishing font would be bothersome. And I am really not certain that it would be very useful to anyone, even if you could read the smallest fonts, what's the point? But nonetheless, I'm not saying "don't have it work like that", I'm saying allow people to chose. The smart default would be to have it off, I think.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Strange, I did a "hitler" and "nazi" search, both returned nothing.
For people who are wondering if the "checkbox" option was discussed, message #17 out of 185 says that:
> I could find I am sorry, but saying something like "I don't use it like that, so I don't care if
> you're having problems" is exactly the kind of attitude which makes users of your software take
> to their heels.
>
> It is such a small change to add the ability to resize this box; it doesn't hurt anyone, and
> obviously many people would like to have it.
>
> I understand if you're feeling pissed off if you just implemented a new feature and nobody seems to
> like it, but such is life.
I suppose forks are justified now and then, but I don't see it here. Having automatically-resized text boxes may be a kewl feature, but the product went for years without it. I can't see any reason for forcing users to use it. It's an ego trip, pure and simple.
How dare that professor use the word "God" to describe a developer. To an atheist (I'd bet dollars to donuts) like the developer(s) this is one of the worst possible slanders you could use.
When you want good usability you have to throw stuff away, completly. Moving the option around doesn't help, because you end up with more code to maintain, side-effects that might break other stuff and a lot of problem. With one option that might not be to hard to solve, but if you have dozens of options interacting with each other it gets trouble some.
All that said, I havn't read the discussion (trac is down) so I don't know if there really is a good use case for having a manually resizable inputbox or if it is just users wanting back the behavior they got used to.
That's why Linus advised not to use gnome altogether. Because of the 'it would confuse users' excuse for not implementing things / forcing one way to do it instead of option.
I've avoided Pidgin even before the name change because when there were issues with it the developers would rant at the users blaming them for complaining about the problems. They would rarely take criticism well so this story is nothing new. Nothing to see here, move along.
If I had mod points, I would give this post +1 Informative. Seriously, Pidgin's UI has gotten worse with every recent iteration.
Dog is my co-pilot.
I suspect that occasionally the user knows more than the developer about to meet his or her own needs.
I started using Miranda when Pidgin started crashing randomly out of the blue. No upgrade or anything. I've never looked back cause Miranda rocks.
:D
The point is, this is no longer an issue to me.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Recently upgraded to Hardy Heron and pidgin's little text area doesn't have an adjustment handle...futzed with it off and on and was annoyed but didn't look at preferences or Google to see the why and wherefore of how to get it back.
/., I know.
Now, thanks to
Pidgin developers have their reasons, I'm sure, but it is very annoying to me, someone used to using that handle to make the text area to a comfortable size. Unwillingness to budge and at least make it an option to enable the resizing... ridiculous.
Instead of removing features, how about a little time to provide a way to sort groups automatically. My company uses a XAMMP server for internal communication -- we're about 2,500 strong -- and each department is grouped. With Spark and other clients I can sort alphanumerically. Not with Pidgin.
Just whining...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
How astonishingly stubborn and stupid can developers be and still expect people to use their product?
Oh, wait... GNOME.
Fine. I'll go build my own multi-protocol IM project with resizable input areas and hookers. In fact, forget the multi-protocol IM project and the resizable input areas. Eh, screw the whole thing.
This has been well overdue in my honest opinion! From every minor release to release we have been seeing subtle UI changes that offer absolutely no choice. The preferences dialog hardly ever changes while other things are changing on me and I'm stuck with the changes.
How about the release where they changed the formatting button bar into two drop-down menus? I'm glad that you can actually revert it back to a useful formatting bar by right-clicking it and selecting the alternative. But the icon changes, the dropping of the emoticons from Gaim 1.5.x, and more things I just don't care to remember right now, I'm tired of it. This is precisely why I left GNOME for XFCE; I still wanted a GTK+ interface but I didn't want to see any more features stripped away from me and stupid UI/dialog box changes because "the last version is too hard for users." (Granted that excuse is not coming from the Pidgin devs.)
I believe my superior grievance lies with Pidgin devs' claim to investigate what gaim-vv attempted: adding support for webcams and/or microphones for the protocols that support it. They posted that this development would be considered after a stable 2.0 release. Well they've had Pidgin 2.0 release a long while back now, and do I see even a hint about what they said? Nope.
Seriously what are they thinking? I can only imagine that, if in their position, obviously Pidgin is (apparently) the most popular GTK+ based IM client. If it were up to me, I would work on expanding the client to support the other functionalities of the supported protocols that are still not implemented, such as the aforementioned audiovisual support and file-transfer support that actually works on protocols other than AIM's.
Not posting as AC because if this is worthy of bad karma than I deserve it. This had to be said. I welcome a fork that works on making progress instead of focusing on satisfying egotistical interface desires of the developers.
Gentoo Linux - Wouldn't have it any other way. And fuck beta.
Can't you make the area resizable by grabbign a corner and dragging ? Then simply have the auto-resize turn off if the user resizes the area. Perhaps there could be a small button below the area which turns the auto-size feature on and off and turns automatically off when you drag the are - thus drawing attention and automatically associating itself with resizing in the user's mind ?
No. Good usability is about making configuration and use intuitive and efficient. Removing an option "because it might confuse people" is never an improvement. It's a lazy mans way of avoiding doing the configuration right.
Just because something is the "right way" for you, doesn't mean that it is the right way for me. We aren't identical, after all.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
You aren't alone. I loathe awesomebar. It boggles my mind why there isn't an option to turn it off/revert to traditional behavior. From reading on the forums, the devs have pretty dismissed any anti-AB sentiments.
It is significant enough to me to explore other alternatives, and I'd jump to a fork without awesomebar in a heartbeat. I'm hoping the devs will reconsider a toggle, or some kind soul will write a plugin to revert... but that POS is a forkable offense to me!
The other day I typed in a full domain in the awesomebar, and despite having visited this domain moments before (I accidently closed a window opened from a link, but remembered the domain) it was suggesting tons of crap from my bookmarks.
The fight over the text box reminds me of the ludicrous (in my opinion) "mice should only have one button" that Jobs/Apple has taken for so long.
To me, it really feels like Pidgin is guilty of the same "our design ideals are more important that the wishes of users" arrogance.
The Digital Sorceress
Don't be too proud of this avian terror you've constructed. The ability to forcibly auto-resize a text box is insignificant next to the potential bitching, whining, and moaning of the open source fanboys.
While it is an annoying "feature" that the text box resizes, a better fight for devs to get into would be tackling larger aspects of the program... like making file transfers work, work reliably, in all protocols. Or perhaps adding webcam support or a plug-in for same.
Maybe this isn't really about the text box itself but the attitudes which arose from the suggestion of changing its behaviour.
I suggest everyone read this developers take on the issue. I think you will find it quite a bit more understanding than the original post makes it out to be.
The bickering is an age-old story. It's the reason bands break up and countries go to war and people get divorced. People disagree and they need to feel that what they are working toward is worthwhile. Too-many-cooks syndrome has *got* to be a common problem on open source projects.
The auto-resizing window to me does sound a bit ridiculous. Or at least insisting it is the only option is ridiculous. Of course, not being a developer, I don't have any idea why they would do such a silly thing. There's probably some good reason rooted in lethargy that prevents them from providing options.
Could someone explain the concept of what it does to people when you implement a god feature to these:
-Adobe: Not providing a Stop/shutoff/ and other controls to their flash, (especially notable when we have an ad invading the text of an article we're trying to read)
-DVD consortium / Sony (Blue Ray): for everytime they use that "no skip bit" for forcing the display of annoying anti-piracy ads
It would be nice if they get the message one day.
Trying to avoid Azureus-style menus is definitely a good thing.
Then again, the fact that something this small prompted a fork tells me that it was a pissing contest to begin with. Oh well. Not like there aren't plenty of chat clients out there.
They can argue and fork all they want, but while that's happening, the world is quickly switching to Digsby or numerous other multi-protocol clients.
"As of version 2.4, the ability to manually resize the text input area has been removed; instead, it automatically resizes depending on how much is typed. "
Why? what logical reason can there be to do that? Why wouldn't you make it a feature? Does the developer really think His Style is why people use the product?
There is a difference between stubborn and stupid.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
this is totally retarded. give us the option, we can handle it. the people who can't handle it will never try to change the defaults in the first place.
Contributors can simply choose whichever fork they themselves prefer. Both forks have the same license on the code, thus they can co-opt any contributions made to the competing fork. The developers who started the new fork have already basically signed up to do this, else the fork would be private. The developers of the original sound like idiots who don't care anyway.
Similarly, users who hate the original may find the new fork and like it. Those who don't won't be missing anything.
And I think you have it backwards. The fork is to remove the feature everyone hates, not put it back.
True. But who should decide the right way? The developers or the people using the product?
The Long Now Foundation
I think you're so completely wrong, I'm going to fork this thread and start a new discussion.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
It seems that most people agree with you, but I don't, and it's the reason I don't use Gnome. You could say I'm strange and eccentric because no one else is like me, but on the other hand, I don't have a problem configuring KDE apps to behave the way I want them to. It's not like KDE is some strange niche product that only appeals to geeks, so I don't think that's the issue here. Good usability is about making a program usable. If devs make a program annoying to use for a significant chunk of their users, then the program is less usable, end of story. I find it extremely difficult to believe that having an extra checkbox in the settings menu is more troublesome to people that like the default, than leaving it out is to people that don't like the default.
I use Pidgin on my Fedora computer and Gaim on my Debian computer, mainly for IRC (although I have AIM, but I rarely use it). This is just downright outrageous! OSS should ALWAYS be open, so if you don't like something, JUST TAKE IT OUT YOURSELF! But problems arise when people try being like greedy m$ and locking down the source code...
So what does this mean for users of the software?
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: taxonomy_vocabulary_load() in /home/groups/f/fu/funpidgin/htdocs/modules/forum/forum.module on line 175
It does pay to read Slashdot. I noticed this last night after upgrading to Ubuntu 8.04. I was thinking about sending a question about it to someone, but now I know it isn't a bug after all.
Let me preface my comments by saying I develop open source software and I write and manage software for a living.
One of the problems with "open source" software is that there is no consensus about the direction of a project. The developer of a feature has more or less 100% control over how that feature gets developed and exposed to the users. When you make suggestions or offer up patches, even ones which do not break old behavior and only augment with additional behavior, the developer can reject or accept based only on their personal opinions.
90% of the time this is probably best, but there are times when developers don't like additional features, for what ever reasons, and refuse to even consider or discuss it. Saying it isn't necessary or "what" you want to accomplish can be done another way even though it may be more difficult or not exactly what you are asking for. I had some similar issues with many projects, including PHP and PostgreSQL.
In the proprietary world, projects and features are typically managed by people somewhat removed from the implementation. Not always of course, but usually. This leads to a disconnection of the "product" from the "source." Therefor, the make up of the product and features is not based on how the code operates or is developed. That's OK because the developers get paid.
In the "open source" world, there is no such separation. There is no arbitration of suggested features. The developers tend to see suggestions or disagreements as somehow impugning their work.
Maybe I'm dense here, but why is it critical that it be a *default* plugin? Why is forking the entire project a better choice than a non-default plugin?
Ever since I upgraded, every now and then I think "Why is the text input so small?" and I try to resize it, only to once again be reminded that I cannot.
Taking them away means you cut the volume of your support requests by at least half.
The people observing a user using the product, i.e. neither the user nor the developer.
If you let the user decide you end up with the something as awful as the "Homer Car". What a user needs is quite often simply not the same as what the user wants.
The OP makes it seem like all of the developers are acting arrogant and unreceptive to users wishes. This is not the case.
It's not that they think they are right and everyone is wrong. They just don't want to spend hours hacking with GTK+ to get it working correctly. Sean Egan posted this on the Trac ticket:
Sean Egan is the the project leader of the pidgin project. The guy that ran off and made a fork could have sent a working patch, one that lets users enable or disable, and it would have been integrated.
Etan Reisner makes an ass of himself when he says
Fortunately for the users he is not the project leader.
My guess for the future is that Etan will get respect-minus-minus from the other developers on the team and a patch will be integrated to add the option.
and it is a cop out.
Of course option have a cost, big deal. I ahve my doubts that the cost for this feature is as high as they try to play it off as.
I am a developer, and I have worked on some of the largest pieces of software on the planet, as well as many start-ups.
I also get the impression that they don't know how to do testing or QA with any real methodology.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think the fact that was an emotional debate about this issue explains why many people don't take FOSS and FOSS people seriously. Getting emotional about a minor software feature? Not being enough of a grown up to realize that everybody wants the same things as the programmer so put in some options?
Cranial rectal inversion at its best.
This type of dev stubbornness is why I switched from GNOME to KDE.
I have never seen another application do what pidgin now does.
I have. Google Talk.
And I hate it. It drives me nuts, actually. I hate it so much I stopped using the "official" Google Talk client and switched to Pidgin.
Joke's on me.
"You're reading this because our trac can't keep up with all the people clicking through slashdot. The ticket really isn't very interesting, it's mostly name-calling. You can read it later, when the flood of people fetching it is something trac can handle.
... yes, there are people who are unhappy with our IM client, which is a work in progress. Yes, a lot of the comments on the ticket were completely unreasonable. No, there are not a large number of unhappy users on the ticket, but there are a large number of comments. We call this a "vocal minority". Yes, we have already implemented most of the "features" in the fork -- some of them before it ever forked. No, we aren't running back to the old method of resizing the input box, but yes, options are still on the table.
In the mean time, here's a simplified summary of the situation (not the ticket).
Yes, there is a fork
This statement is not intended to be a position, it is simply a summary of the situation as we understand it.
Happy browsing. "
How about someone starts a Fork of Pidgin that doesn't look like crap?!
Seriously take a look at Adium on the Mac, and then at Pidgin -- its equivalent based on the same libraries. Adium is gorgeous, full-feature, customizable and user-friendly. Pidgin looks like something from 1998...
Always whining! "I want my software to do this!", "I want this feature!", "I don't like that design!".
If it wasn't for them, programming would be much easier.
In addition, I hope the forked project will include a master password option which the devs have refused to add since forever. I don't buy their excuses for not doing it. Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird pull it off quite well.
I was more thinking along the lines that if there is a fork over this; one with the feature and one without the feature; then the user is able to chose. In which case I see two possible outcomes. One where one of the products fail, because of lack of support, and one where both gain enough users to keep the products going.
The Long Now Foundation
Not to troll or flame, but honestly since when is a feature argument on an open source chat program news worthy?
I can understand the greater implications, but seriously... who cares?
This fork only needs two small changes to hook me.
Fix the input box.
Rename the project back to "gaim"
And sometimes things have to be options. Look, clearly there's a class of users that finds the resizing feature to be useful -- which is why it was requested and added. At a guess, it's really nice on platforms with really small screens -- displaying a single line of input field lets you see as much conversation as possible, most of the time. So that's nifty.
However there's also a class of users that finds the whole thing stupid and annoying and inconsistent. For one, UI elements aren't expected to change their shape without an explicit request, and for the whole screen to jump while you're typing is pretty jarring. For another, thanks to the "options are evil" thing, there's no way to configure the minimum or maximum size of the input area, which leads to a UI that's just generally ugly when the app is used in a different way from how the developers are expecting. That's not friendly either.
So this is a case where configurability really would be simple, and worthwhile, and make everybody happy. But the pidgin developers have instead chosen to say "fuck you". And not for the first time either. They aren't the least bit interested in communicating with their users, and they haven't really been for years. In a sense, that's their right -- but it doesn't mean the users are required to put up with it. They say that they work on pidgin as a hobby activity, for their own satisfaction -- well let's see how much satisfaction they get from "owning" a project with no users.
I agree with you generally. Good user interface design requires the designer to make choices and in some way limit the user from some choices that are trivial if you want to have any hope of ending up with a decent result. Otherwise you end up with one of those configuration UIs with 57 little checkboxes for controlling every little bit of the app because no one could bother to make a choice during design time.
However, given the user reaction it appears, that at least for a vocal portion of the user base, that this was the wrong decision to make. I think the problem rather than developer arrogance is lack of proper usability testing and user feedback or an unwillingness to listen to test results and feedback. How hard can it be to put this in front of a couple of typical users and get their reactions? I think any effort put into usability testing this feature up-front would have identified the problem. After that, all the team needs to do is listen and respond to the feedback.
i HATE an automatically resizing text area. I can not stand it no end. I'm glad to see someone's doing a fork, between this change, and the protocol icons going away... ugh.
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
Why would you post a story like this and not even provide a link to the fork?
This is not just about the text window resizing; there have been several heavy-handed UI changes since GAIM that were opposed by the user base, such as the change in layout of the IM input window which wastes a lot of empty space on nothing but grey background because of the new placement of tabs and icons.
The send button and other buttons provided by plugins also seem to be placed arbitrarily with each new version. The user icon has been reduced in size to the point of being unrecognizable and there is no option to move it or change the size. The GAIM input window was a lot more compact and the space it took up was used a lot more efficiently.
After long and quite frankly frustrating debates about the continued degradation of UI features and user options with every new version of Pidgin, the suggestions to KEEP the useful UI features and make them optional at the very least have repeatedly been met with "won't fix" or just been plain ignored by the developers.
Being presented with a modified UI with every new version of an application and no way of reversing the changes is extremely frustrating for a user.
To be clear, there is no technical reason for changing things around. As can plainly be seen in the fork, Funpidgin provides the old functionality with option boxes on an extra settings tab, and an external plugin is included that lets you resize the input window as before.
As the Funpidgin website states "FunPidgin is a Pidgin fork readding some functionality that was removed from Pidgin's main branch, with the stated goal of being user-driven."
From an outsider perspective, it seems like it would be trivial for the pidgin developers to make all their bad UI changes since GAIM simply an option instead of a forced 'feature'. Or maybe they could provide the options as a plugin if they don't want to clutter the settings tabs with more options.
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity. -Isaac Asimov
I thought the same. Why did they remove the option? Why don't they just leave both, and let THE USER choose ?
Yeah, you don't want to give users too many options. Look at what happened a few years ago when Netscape tried to spin-off an open-source version, that was fully configurable, with the main preferences in a standard options window, more hidden in an advanced menu that could only be accessed by typing "about:config" in the address bar, and still more available by installing plug-ins.
Gosh, that takes me back. Anybody remember what it was called? Waterhorse or Sunmonkey or something weird like that.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
This is certainly a pressing issue. Anyone hear about that war in Iraq?
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
He talks about standard responses to UI complaints as if they are grudgingly listened to by developers and the "patches welcome" reply is generally used as an OSS way to tell users to go-climb-a-tree. Read the whole article.
I think if people are going to revolt over the resize of the input window (that was annoying yes) I sincerely wonder why nobody took the liberty of forking the entire codebase to kill the most annoying new feature in that release: the group tooltip! This tooltip hides (overlaps) all contacts in a group, if the developer of that feature ever steps forward, I'll publicly make a shame of him. So I can fully understand people wanting to fork "Pidgin" this was the entire idea of "Pidgin", since libpurple would implement lowlevel stuff, and "Pidgin" highlevel GUI stuff. They just made it all to easy ;) Now I hope we can all get Adium on Linux ;)
Support Eachother, Copy Dutch Property!
I've read some time ago that bug report (a month or more), if I'm not wrong someone provided a plugin to recreate the resizable input box, but there was a compiling step involved so the installation wasn't straightforward.
Good grief! Show a little imagination. I would have hoped at least for "Grouse".
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
user: please allow us to resize text input window as in previous version
developer: no, the app now resizes for you on-the-fly, it's better, trust us!
user: no, really, please let us resize -- the constant resizing is visually jarrying and annoying
developer: no, this way is better, trust us. You'll get used to it.
user: no, really, please make it an option? even just as a plugin or compile-time option
developer: no, this way is better, trust us. You'll get used to it.
user who can code: fork you
developer: no, wait, please come back!
And, of course, it turns out the developers put up this stubborn and ridiculous facade of "this is better" to cover up their inability to get both ways to work together, even optionally (!):
"Impossible?" That's a strong word to describe something that they have working code for in each case. I mean, don't they know how to use an "IF" block? I reckon the Pidgin guys should stick to the backend and let some other folks work on the GUI, which is what's happening pretty much with this fork.
everything in moderation
Which is another ridiculousness in an already stupid argument, since the default plugins include several which have no obvious functionality nor any obvious way to configure or learn of the functionality. For instance the "DBus Example" plugin which aside from apparently providing some example of dbus integration doesn't mention what exactly it is supposed to be using dbus for...
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
Hopefully they'll use git so they can merge when they make up.
One fork because of a resize think seems ridiculous... In the other hand, this is not the first time the user base complains about features. I remember the famous request for webcam and audio support that never was attended, and they claim it will never be...
I hope this is only to mark a position and enhance discussion, and that both projects can merge again, like compiz and beryl did. I think projects are stronger when united.
Math is beautiful... e^(pi*i)+1=0
I've not went to the Pidgin forum to complain, but this is the one thing that I hate about 2.4. Glad they are going to be forced to change their ways, or I'll just use the fork. Pidgin is good, but not great. The developers need to listen to folks.
Azureus is the only client I'll use. I hate software that thinks it knows better than me how to use it.
Right now I'm using a hammer to prop open a window. Does the fact that the hammer can be used for something other than driving nails mean that it has poor usability?
Linux is bloated. It has become art. The worst part is, that in order to "trim it down" for some purpose, you must first compile and understand everything, which makes it nearly impossible. Luckily, experts occasionally do this, EG busybox and Das-Boot. Thanks Erik Anderson!
The Pidgin fork from Gaim removed a bunch of features I was dependent on, so I'm still using Gaim. Works fine, ain't broke as far as I can see, and the developers are obviously clueless. It doesn't surprise me at all that it's now come to a head, the only surprise is that it took so long...
"The user should have the final say" I can hear this ending with a monkey killing 15 with a shotgun.
I just re-installed this on my laptop and noticed it. I hate not being able to resize the window I type my text in. Was it worth a fork? I dunno sounds like someone was being a total douche.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
But if there is a demand for this plugin, the people making that demand can install that special plugin? Right? So this isn't about some upset users not knowing about the plugin, it's about some upset users that know about the plugin -- but that are upset that *other* users may not find out about it.
And since this plugin has already been written, and the need has already been filled, I wouldn't call this a fork really as much as it is a repackaged distribution. Right? Or am I missing a piece of the story?
I've just upgraded to Ubuntu Hardy and the only down side of the whole experience is running Pidgin 2.4.1 with the rather annoying auto resize text box!
Please give users the option to change this.
My first thought when I saw this article was 'Good! Maybe they'll make it look like Gaim did. Pidgin is fugly as shit' followed by 'Or...ohhh! maybe they're gonna work on webcam support, which the Pidgin team seems to have been avoiding for a long time.'
But this? This is just stupid. Oh well, maybe one of my other hopes will come true.
Since I came this close to forking it myself over a similar disagreement, I'm not at all surprised this happened. They're control freaks.
Because it should be an option shipped with the software, it shouldn't be a plugin you have to hunt down and download off some random site. A non-trivial number of people want to use it, and more would use it than many of the other plugins.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I hear that, I really wish I could force Firefox to NEVER create tabs, PERIOD. I've wondered if I can recompile it myself with an #undef TABBING_FEATURE or something so that it simply doesn't have the capability in the binary. Tabs are completely superfluous in Windows, as there are ALREADY tabs for pages on the Windows taskbar, and that's right where I want them. I turn it off the best I can, but once in awhile something still figures out how to create one.
http://funpidgin.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/funpidgin A fork of pidgin which aims to provide minor features that have not been addressed by the pidgin development team (including manual textbox resizing). See funpidgin.sf.net for details.
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
Haven't you heard that Microsoft has contributed some code fixes to Pidgin's MSN protocol? So it must be their fault, they put something in the protocol handler that requires fixed width windows.
Yes, I know that Live! Messenger has variable width windows, but those are through undocumented APIs. It's Microsoft's fault, they want to own the IM market and will do anything to win it.
Disclaimer: The text above is satirical and does not match the views of the poster.
As for your other comments: you've never worked on a big software project, have you? Integrating individual contributions into the source tree is a non-trivial process. Doubling that effort is not something you do if you can avoid it.
Also, this kind of spat harms the acceptance of the product. My company has an internal Jabber network, and I'm not satisfied with the client we currently use. I've been looking at Pidgin to see if it suits our needs better. Suppose that I decide it does? How do I persuade my bosses to switch? No way do they're going to rely on a product that doesn't have good ongoing maintenance. Which kind of precludes any open-source product which is going through a spiteful schism over whether a GUI feature should be optional!
I don't suppose it matters in the long run. I imagine most users will abandon the old fork. The ones who don't like making the new-style windows mandatory will abandon it so they can turn the feature off. The ones who like it will switch because they can enable the feature if they want to, and there's no reason to stick with a version that has a dwindling user base. So only the we-know-what's-good-for-you zealots will be left in the cold.
Happy ending? I guess, except a lot of effort was wasted on what should have been a non-issue.
This isn't the first time pidgin has done something like this. When it went by it's previous name, it lost developers due to cutting features users wanted.
Along the lines of god-complex, they suffer from this greatly. Pidgin was incompatible with google talk for awhile. Pidigin insisted they were right and every other messenger using google talk (including google's app) was wrong.
It's not ridiculous. This is how open source works. If you want something, you go 'code it yourself'.
No, but you could really hurt someone if you're a few stories up and manage to knock it out.
;)
Just saying
This story illustrates why QA exists, and why it should be taken seriously. And why QA should take itself seriously, and understand that quality includes both enforcing the spec as well as finding deficiencies in the spec. As time goes on, development's perspective of the software diverges increasingly from the end-user's perspective of the software. It's QA's job to avoid letting that trend negatively affect the final product.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Pidgin has always been absolutely hideous, like much (most?) non-professional Open Source Software.
That they don't care if they look like crap (despite users who wish for at least presentable and functional aesthetics) has always been obvious.
They need a brainstorm. Everyone needs one. ...and once they see that, put it up, and the ideas start coming in, I've got some things ready for it.
...the /particular/ thing they don't like, however, is something that I very much /do/. Ah well, if they make it an option, I'm good with it.
Voice. and. Video.
Put the text entry at the top and have the conversation scroll down. (or give me the option)
Put the online, protocol, and avatar pics to the side of the text entry box instead of wasting 30 rows of pixels on my screen.
Mee thinka you UI sucky sucky!
No YOU sucky sucky!
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
And when I upgraded I noticed this "feature" and it annoys the shit out of me. They should have left well enough alone.
Reminds me of this post about "Killing's one Children" from Rob Fulop.
http://robfulop.com/blog/2008/04/14/killing-ones-children-lessons-from-fathom/
Rob Fulop was the programmer of Demon Attack for the Atari 2600 in 1982 and many other notable games over the years.
I'm not sure if I'm understanding this properly, but it seems that the people that "don't want it to resize automatically" really want "to be able to resize it manually".
If that's the case, why not allow it to be manually resized and use whatever is set as a 'minimum' size for the box. When you type more than fits, start to automatically enlarge the box from there.
Am I missing something?
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Or have they stopped removing features and options that are actually necessary yet?
FUCKS SAKE - people need to get over this shit. When i first discovered I could resize the text area, was I perturbed? YUP, DAMN RIGHT I WAS. I usually employ a large area by default - as I tnd to make length comments on a semi-regular basis in my IMs. I was afraid of a small scrollbar and not seeing the context of what I wrote. When I discovered the box actually GREW as my comment got longer, then all of a sudden I was "cool, ok, I didn't know it would do that" Would prior knowledge helped here? Sure it would, but the feature isn't THAT bad - even if it was to some people, making a fork off of that issue is THE MOST RETARDED THING I HAVE SEEN IN RECENT MONTHS. *facepalm*
I believe setting browser.urlbar.maxRichResults in about:config to 0 will turn off the awesome bar. But really the solution is to get used to it, it's much more useful to be able to search page titles, tags and bookmarks instead of just domains in the history.
That's an issue with maintainability though, not usability. The program can be just as usable with a compile time option in there. More so, since it doesn't annoy all those people who find the feature doesn't suit their work patterns.
And really, there's no reason it has to even be a maintenance issue with proper software design. The IM code is already isolated in libpurple, They could (if they wished) have a separate interface with no more side-effect issues than there are already between finch and pidgin. It would require that someone to commit to maintain the option, but then, given that there seem to be enough devs to support a fork, that probably wouldn't have been a problem.
Me neither, I must admit, and for the same reason. Still, I have to say that over the past five years I've gone from being an argent fan of Gaim to using Kopete and Amsn almost exclusively. So I'm not entirely surprised that their userbase is up in arms.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
> usability is often the opposite of allowing configurable options for everything
This is widely held as truth; I always get frustrated with a lot of config options, but too few also yield the same feeling.
(I view Pidgin/Gaim as a Gnome app, so here we go again; sorry if you think I'm wrong or seem to be trolling...)
KDE was always more satisfactory to me than the desert-empty Gnome interface. This is of course a matter of personal bias. It probably would be better to have a slider with some four levels of complexity (like e.g.: clean, easy, rich and full) allowing a better (and dynamic) GUI fitting to one's preference.
Again, to stress my point: I find Gnome very beautiful (for I love simple), but rather unusable.
Einstein once talked about being too simple... the problem is, of course, deciding when to stop (in this case, when to stop simplifying).
As soon as I realized I couldn't resize the text entry box, I downgraded my Pidgin client (since I've saved off every download) to a release that does. Strange as it may sound, this one feature was just about my most compelling reason to use Pidgin. I don't want it to resize for me; I want control.
-- John
I'm glad this is coming to light. Pidgin (err, gaim) has always acted like this, and it's completely ridiculous.
ROFLMAO.
How about giving the user the option to change their font, and also give user(s) the ability to keep font static? If font sizes get annoying, just check a menu option labeled "Static Font." Is that so hard? I really hope that I'm the first to think of this compromise. (shaking my head at humanity as a nerd war seems to be imminent)
Look, I hated the AB at first myself. Practically the first thing I did when I upgraded to FF3b5 was to hit Google and start searching for a way to switch it off and get the old behaviour back. Now, a few weeks on, it doesn't strike me as so bad at all. Searching on page titles has actually been useful a few times. It's learnt which pages I like, so it generally comes up with sensible suggestions now. I may even end up liking it.
The same thing has happened time and time again. It's hard to believe now, but once I even hated the search-bar at the bottom of the screen, and desperately hoped they'd bring back the old search dialog! Seriously, this is just normal human behaviour. Give it a bit more time, and eventually you'll get used to the AB and stop hating it.
(Whether you'll ever love the name is another question. "Awesomebar" is not quite as stunningly disastrous as the GIMP's use of a pejorative term for someone with physical disabilities, but it's certainly embarrassingly lame.)
If there's no technical reason not to allow both options with a simple option in a menu somewhere, then yes it is ridiculous.
There is always a technical reason to avoid giving the user an option. For each option, the number of test cases doubles. You have to test the entire program with the option set, and with it not set. "It's obvious that this option can't have an affect on anything else" is not a valid excuse to not test.
So, if you're willing to run potentially buggy, untested code all the time, by all means give the users as many options as possible.
(I'm not against giving users flexibility, but testing is not an afterthought, and it pays to invest some time into trying to find ways to avoid the need for an option in the first place)
I had some bug report that I put in a year or two back regarding some other stupid user interface changes. I think it was something regarding the ability to require ctrl+enter to send messages as a configuration check-box item, rather than just enter.
The response was bla-bla-bla not my fault technical reasons bla-bla-bla would make code look pretty. The primary concern was that re-introducing that portion of code would require the code to not look pretty, due to some GTK for Windows bug.
Pidgin has been on a down-hill roll for a few years now. This is not surprising. I stopped using it (and stopped using IM-chat services all together) a few years ago.
No way, good usability is about making the interface intuitive with sane defaults but also making it enough customizable so people that don't like those defaults can change the way it behaves. This applies to the options too, if you think people might not think about the possibility of changing something, make it more obvious. In this case put a small checkbox in the most used menus or around the textbox. It's not that hard, they probably have some technical problems: a previous poster said something like they don't know how to handle this or that so they're forcing something easier to maintain. If they're just stubborn then it will probably get forked and in time, replaced by the new less restrictive client (of course, if it's properly maintained and all).
ics
theefer
i back-revved to 2.31 for that very reason. What retards.
For each option, the number of test cases doubles. You have to test the entire program with the option set, and with it not set.
That's a ridiculous statement. If that were true then even the simplest software would have literally millions of test cases. Obviously there are better ways to design test cases than "just have N^M tests" where N is the number of tests and M the number of "options". Duh.
Both Trillian and Meebo.com have the same general functionality (all IM clients, etc). Actually both of those have better full support of clients such as sending files and webcam support. Pidgin has the advantage of being lightweight and expandable through plugins.
Eh, oops, that was supposed to be "*", not "^". Still, the point is the same :)
I also see a third, where both products split the support of the original user base, and both products failing as a result of inability to compete with a 3rd competitor who had kept a unified network of users to drive development of new features/plugins until the resulting experience is more compelling than the tailored, but limited pidgin forks.
The network effect is real, and it may be the most important feature that Microsoft brings to the table. Their product is often far from "the best", but by keeping everyone under one umbrella, support goes to their umbrella which keeps more people under their umbrella, etc. etc. I like my Linux laptop, but Ventrilo still runs like @#$^ on it under Wine, so I still need my Windows PC. Too bad the niche my Linux OS falls under is too small for Ventrilo to support. I can't force other people to swap their clients and the server to Mumble for my benefit. So the Windows PC gained Ventrilo support as a "feature" simply by being the single most popular market block.
(Is there some reason that a fork is necessary? Can't they just maintain a plugin instead?)
The Long Now Foundation
If they were going to implement resizing, why even have an option? Why not just put a splitter there, make the text box resize automatically as you type (which is what it currently does), but also allow you to change it yourself (hence the splitter) if you feel the need?
That being said, I was slightly jarred by this feature at first because I'm used to bigger text areas; then I realized I really didn't need that, and it gets bigger if you type more, anyway. Not a big deal for me. But I feel a splitter would both allow them to keep this feature as well as make people who want to resize it happy--all without having to add another option.
R.Mo
With commercial software, you don't run into these kind of problems. Is it because the programmers aren't running the company? I don't know.
But what I do know is that if a version shipped with features nobody wanted, people would stop buying it. Instant negative feedback, especially the prospect of programmers losing their jobs.
The problem with FOSS is... these guys don't get paid. If you don't like it, that's too bad you ungrateful bastard (whether that attitude is right or wrong, you essentially ARE at the mercy of their good will). So yeah, good will is nice, but personally I'd rather get my software and support from people who can be relied upon simply because they get paid. You aren't going to hear MS say they can't support MS Office anymore because they got really busy at work, just got married, had a kid, had a rough semester at school, etc... and your company can't wait on people like that either.
Enterprise computing needs reliability- that's why so much time is spent on disaster recovery, creating redundancies, etc. FOSS doesn't bring any reliability to the table, whether the Stallmanistas want to hear that or not.
And... temper tantrums thrown by the Pidgin people do nothing to help fool more people into thinking FOSS can be reliable. And at the end of the day, FOSS is all about tricking people into ignoring the inherent unreliability.
This is simply the case of the developers arguing themselves into a hole, and deciding to dig deeper.
I really hope the forkers (and I write that lovingly) go through with it, and are as successful as others have been... Anyone remember XFree86?
I would find it ridiculous, if it were not for the fact that I installed Hardy Heron the other day, got a new version of Pidgin (among a lot of other things) and the only thing I did not like about the release was the stupid non-resizable input field. Strange, but true. A bad UI really stands out.
The fixed-size input box is a god-awful pain in the ass and needs to be smitten. Why on earth would you make it this way?
New users will just accept it but forcing such a feature on so many existent users, expecting them to accept it, is pretty arrogant.
That's a ridiculous statement. If that were true then even the simplest software would have literally millions of test cases.
Just because the test cases aren't there doesn't mean they shouldn't be. The fact is, most software is insufficiently tested, and for exactly this reason.
You can do some hand-waving and say that certain parts of the program are logically independent of other parts and can't possibly influence them, but that's simply untrue in languages without memory protection, where memory errors can have inexplicable and unpredictable affects on unrelated parts of the program.
This is why more and more houses are integrating some type of fuzz testing into their standard QA. No matter how carefully designed the test cases are, there is usually some random input you would never have imagined which will trigger a bug. Now, if such bugs were actually RARE in such a large configuration space, you would expect that simply throwing random data at the program would be unlikely to trigger bugs. But in reality, fuzz testing is amazingly effective (although there is a point of diminishing returns). What this means is that your bug density is greater than you think it is.
It is foolish to pointlessly multiply the complexity of your program by adding an unnecessary option. Instead, spend the effort to figure out the one right way to do it. Only if you cannot possibly find a single right way, should you consider adding an option.
Honestly, the best way to deal with it would be to auto-resize unless the user explicitly changes the size. From that point on, give them control of the window.
But if you look at the images in the linked page, there definitely appear to be some usability concerns here.
fook yew, jew!
Mostly, I think that it's a case of "the computer doesn't know better than I do when it comes to what I need." Looking at the link in the article, I can see why there are complaints.
I don't think that we're talking about a case where there would be separate, significant code paths to maintain. Scroll bars and resizeable windows are easy-easy-easy--GUI 101, really. I don't think that a design which allowed for either (primarily through the use of message passing to indicate resizing, and if there's a box checked somewhere, that message just drops on the floor) would be complex at all.
I think the mentality is what is causing the up in arms-ness.
A somewhat flawed analogy:
"Windows: I can install special 'plugins' (AV, Firewall, and Malware detections) to make it more secure. But ultimately, if I could fork Windows and actually make it secure, I would given many of the attitudes involved."
I realize this isn't a perfect analogy, as Windows has never really been secured, and then had that feature taken away, but it should point out how developer attitudes can really poison the process.
http://blog.slaingod.com
From the images, it looks like they were referring largely to the percentage area taken up by the input box compared to the percentage area taken up by the conversation display.
really? I use google talk and I don't see what you are talking about. elaborate?
I use pidgin a lot. I'm typically connected on the four major protocols -- Yahoo, AIM, MSN, and Google. I "talk" with coworkers using all four, often at the same time.
So a change in the UI can be seriously jarring.
Furthermore, I never read any justification for the change that made the case for me.
I just hope this doesn't ruin a perfectly good tool.
Isn't this the whole Gnome desktop philosophy? They strip out features after 1.4 and there were no more options -- there was no ability to tune the environment to the users way of operating. The users were forced to operate the way the developers wanted. They've slowly been adding back some of that, but every time I try Gnome again, it's still very limiting. Seems like pidgin's going the same way....
Need to type accents and special characters in Windows? Use FrKeys
Let's imagine the reasonable outcomes for a second.
- shamefaced, the original pigdin adds a button to turn this feature on/off. the fork dies naturally and is eaten by the original. The ui bloats a bit. Everyone suffers a little for this. Everyone still calls it pigdin.
- the original pigdin digs in it's heels. nobody cares about a fork for one option. the for dies naturally and is eaten by the original. Everyone still calls it pigdin.
- the original pigdin digs in it's heels. everybody loves the "old-school" fork. the original dies naturally, and is eaten by the fork. Everyone still calls it pigdin.
- the two forks survive. each one now develops at half the previous speed because the developers are split between them. Nobody knows what to call it. Pigdin, the fork, and all associated suffer.
I thought engineers were supposed to be level headed, reasonable people who designed things to be in the best interest of the users. You've either wasted your time, or made the world worse, or both. Shame on you.
It's always interesting to see this sort of software evolution in action. It reminds me of the XFree86/X.org split. I'm pretty interested to see if one or the other IM project takes dominance. Most likely, it will be the one that Ubuntu chooses to go with in its next release.
Quite simply, it doesn't matter if we have one user or six billion users outside the developer community. We have long understood that we can never please all our users with our single user interface--it's simply not possible. Because of that, we do not aim to please all our users, but instead to please ourselves and hope that we have pleased like-minded users. We encourage users whose needs are not met by our software to find other software that does meet their needs. The author is one John Bailey (rekkanoryo). Remind me never to allow him to be hired for any project I'm involved in. I've seen attitudes like his too often, always on projects that crashed and burned.
They should fork to get REAL AUDIO AND VIDEO options. Millions of people use msn and yahoo yet the voice chat features and video dont work. And you cant use the audio channel in the yahoo chat rooms which millions of people use. (gyachi can do it so they can grab the code from there its gpl)
I personally have noticed a certain lack of willingness to listen to user input on the part of Pidgin developers; I knew it was a matter of time before something like this happened.
In my case, I've had a gripe about the new version of Pidgin quietly removing message delivery failure notifications from AIM (this comes up in a few use cases relating to the invisibility feature in the protocol). After searching around, I saw another user report this same exact issue on the Pidgin trac. After very long and tedious explanations from the user of this small issue (and not-quite-coherent rebuttals from the developer), the responding developer basically ignored whatever else the user had to say.
For a change (I usually don't take active participation in bug tracking), I decided to second this feature request/bug on the pidgin trac.
However, after seconding the original user, another developer came out and quite vindictively said that he would "personally" oppose any change to "their" code relating to this, without giving a reasoned reply. He based this on "how he understands" the system should work; for him, this was a way of standing up against invisibility features in various protocols (though clearly, there is a desire for invisibility among users).
In addition to such opposition to seemingly trivial additions to the code, the Pidgin developers staunchly oppose removal of things like this from the trac. Irrelevant political views should be kept out of a high-visibility open source project, I think, or at least should be kept from being totally condescending to everyone else.
Hopefully this fork teaches them a lesson about listening to their user base. In reality, though, it will likely be ignored for the most part and the Pidgin developers will continue on paying zero attention to user requests.
I am running Pidgin 2.4.1, and didn't even notice; apparently this bug/feature is very low-impact on my usage habits. But it seems to me that the big problem is the attitude of certain central developers. "This is the way we're doing it, and if you don't like it, fuck off and die!" Open source is all about community. No community and the projects wither.
I mean, look at the Xfree86 project. They decided they knew what was best, and the dumb community could just go to hell if they didn't like it. Cue the X.org fork... do you even have any machines around which still run Xfree? I don't.
Working in a DevOps shop is like playing in a band made up entirely of keytarists.
The first nice day of spring around here and I have to get nailed with pidgin poop.
I can't possibly be the first one to notice how this smacks of the same bull plop that is happening with the FF3 betas, and addressbar that *used to* work exactly the way you'd expect, and look just like you'd expect... *BUT NOW* it has been given a MAJOR overhaul, behaves in a way that purely annoys many, many seasoned users, and actually had the option to revert part of this travesty REMOVED from the about:config options.
i tried to write a complain in trac but its closed. so joined in irc and got an instandban for complaining about this feature!
WOW i am deeply impressed!
Quite simply, it doesn't matter if we have one user or six billion users outside the developer community. We have long understood that we can never please all our users with our single user interface--it's simply not possible. Because of that, we do not aim to please all our users, but instead to please ourselves and hope that we have pleased like-minded users. We encourage users whose needs are not met by our software to find other software that does meet their needs.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Compare Gaim 1.5 with the current Pidgin.
It's what happened when Gnome 1 went to Gnome 2 -- A TON of useful functionality got REMOVED and the rest is concreted into place. I've filed many of a bug with Pidgin and got WONTFIX every stinkin time.
So I said "Screw it. I'm running Kopete."
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Good usability is often about removing options and make things behave the right way at default.
You must work at Apple.
The phrase "Both inspired and retarded at the same time" comes to mind.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
With the fact that pidgin no longer has the submit/enter button for the IM window. WTF. It use to be in GAIM.
There is an IM client for Mac OS X called Adium that does it "the right way", IMO. You can manually resize the input box vertically, and it grows vertically if you type in enough to overfill it. Once you send or delete the message, it snaps back to the size you manually set it to.
This is typical behaviour of any GTK based application.
Basically, ooh, Gnome. Let's remove all configuration options. We know best!
Wankers.
Somehow this really is some ego problem.
Man it's so simply handled in Adium, why can't it be the same with pidgin ?
I'm still using pidgin at my workplace (with ubuntu, not osx) but i'd love to see another bird in town.
I'm not sure which is more pathetic, the fact that this issue caused a "heated, emotional" controversy, OR the fact that we are all sitting here talking about it! Can someone explain to me why the program has to do one or the other !!!??? Why can't it auto resize until you manually resize it?? "Oh but I don't want to manually resize the chat window every time". Fair enough. So tie the resized dimensions to the program session and be done with it. Now why wouldn't that work???
So I opened up pidgin and hit 'about' in the help menu, intending to check the version I am running (2.2.1 as it turns out)
;P
and the first thing I see is an image with slogan: "Pidgin - Just get along!"
If only the devs would follow the example they set with their IM protocols
I know there's no check box but on a Mac it's as simple as:
defaults write im.pidgin.pidgin noExpandingTextBox true
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Theres the one kind that does it for the users. (Or perhaps for the love of cool code and software, but this is the guy the end users love because he actually listens.) This developer makes a good software, people try it, like it, say how it can be better. The developer takes a look at how users say it can be made better, and then goes about taking on requests that are reasonable and possible to solve. Good software in time becomes great software.
Then there is the kind that does it for their own ego. This is the developer that says "Isn't this great?" and sometimes the software is actually good. But as soon as any users say how it could be better or what is wrong, the developer says "Suck up or shut up!". Because the attitude is that the user had no involvement in the development or creation process. However this completely misses the point of what actually drives interest in the software (users getting word out that it's good) and the fact that with any software not stagnant in evolution - user feedback actually is a good part of the development process.
Note that you can find both of these developer types in both OSS and commercial software. As for the bad kind of developers (from the user perspective at least) the OSS one will give either the "You're not paying anything" or the "Source is there, fix it yourself" (Essentially to a non-programmimg/coding userbase this is the same as saying "suck up or shuddap"). In the commercial software realm, the bad developers usually say "Where else can you find software that does what mine does (at this price)?"
At least the good thing about software on the open source side is that if enough of the users actually do have programmers (or folks with the resolve needed to learn programming) among them, it's possible to fork it instead of being stuck suffering from some misguided ego thing. Which is what is happening here.
He who has no
It will be interesting to see what the popular desktop distros do... RHEL, SLE, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSuse, etc.
If they use Funpidgin or Pidgin... (I predict FP in Fedora, openSuse, but P in RHEL, SLE, and Ubuntu)
If they use Pidgin, will they add the resize plugin by default to please their user-base? (I predict P2.3+sec patches in RHEL, so non-issue, maybe same in SLE, and P2.4+plugin in Ubuntu)
But at least I know if I am ever homeless, I can gag down those little poop machines...
sig sig sig siggy sig
An Ubuntu package wouldn't be "some random site." I see no reason to include every single plugin in a default install just because someone, somewhere is really bothered when they don't have certain functionality.
... so what do I do? I dutifully install the package myself on every computer where I need it. Maybe I should pursue a doctorate in ballistic missile theory?
I think Off-the-Record messaging is absolutely essential for IM
Breakfast served all day!
So, where is the option in MS Office 2007 to set the interface to work like Office 2003. Because as it is now I don't use MS Office 2007; and I am converting to AbiWord because I also don't like Open Office. Tim S
I agree with the developers on this one. Saying you have a design principle that you intend to stick by and, y'know, actually sticking by it, is not a bad idea.
I think Pidgin will be better for it - that kind of feature should be a plugin, and my *suspicion* is that in the long term, a bunch of people forking pidgin to implement one difference in the GUI that they disagree with will be a bunch of people that will never be able to turn down the next feature and the next feature - and you'll end up with a "SuperPidgin" kludgy messenger that does a thousand things half arsedly, none of them well.
After all - if the GUI preference between an expanding GUI and a manually set one is important enough to fork, it's going to require a really arrogant developer to say *my* preference shouldn't have an option too.
I think the smart money is to stay with Pidgin. I would even go so far as to say I think this decision *establishes* that the smart money is to stay with Pidgin.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
I have never seen another application do what pidgin now does.
I have. Psi. The other premier multi-protocol instant messaging client.
And I hate it.
The text input box resizes as you type, and there's no way to change its size manually.
To do list for Windows
This is exactly why GNU/Linux/FLOSS WILL replace proprietary MS, OS/X etc.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
"Maybe I should pursue a doctorate in ballistic missile theory?"
Please be my guest, just explain first why they for instance ship that lame "dbus examples plugin" as a default plugin, while refusing this one which a lot of people explicitly are asking for. Also explain how that isn't "clutter" while the plugin for resetting the inputbox to sanity is.
I bet you can't, after all, it's just more of the asshat attitude we've seen again and again from the pidgin people. They can get stuffed afaic.
"Just Get Along"
It's their slogan highlighted in the "about" page.
Guess they should take their own advice.
In theory, theory always works in practice. In practice, theory rarely works. <><
Just don't type long IMs. Then the box won't have to resize.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Personally, I prefer it the way it is, but wish it didn't scroll up 12 lines or so into my chat area.
Okay, I'm amused. I went to FunPidgin's website to submit a new feature request. The page talks about how Funpidgin is controlled by the USERS! Yeah, and they want to hear from me!!!
Click on "Contact Us".... page not found
ROFL
Adium does both. You can resize the text input to as many lines as you want. If you type more than that, it auto-resizes. It seems logical to me!?
Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try. -- Homer J. Simpson
Purple is used by Pidgin (the graphical GTK client), Finch (text mode client by the same staff), Adium (#1 favorite on Mac OS X), Meebo (a Web 2.0 on-line application) and very probably will be used by this new fork too.
As long as the core is still correctly developed, it doesn't matter much if there's forking in the user-interface realm.
And by the way, the authors have gone in lenght trying to explain why they didn't add the option : there have been so many changes in the UI, that keeping everything as an option would produce a huge behemoth in term of code complexity. Trying to keep both codepaths together has lead to situation where once in a while a bug arises and causes the input area to be 1px high.
Because the developer are fed up tracking this kind of complex bugs ; and because they haven't receive much actual constructive criticism beside "This must be an option, Whaaaa!" baby-cries. They decided not to lose time trying to implement it.
Besides the project is open source and the author are open to patches.
Also, what's the problem if there's a fork ? As I've said, there are a lot of different interfaces already existing. As long as the efforts on the back-end go uninterrupted, that won't pose much problems.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
By the way, the actual resizing part in funpidgin is done by a plugin that works in vanilla pidgin. At first I supported the idea of this fork, but then I realized it's really arbitrary and stupid, especially when it's basically just readding portions of old pidgin code and including a plugin that adds back resizing.
Here's the plugin, for those that are interested. I installed it but then realized that I don't really care about resizing my input box.
http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/5296
All your base are belong to Wii.
Which can be responded to automatically with a simple "That feature is no longer available in this version. Thank you for being a valued user of shitty software version turd.tagnut!"
I did like the program but I've ran into this issue multiple times. They defeatured the program a while back. I notice they've brought back a few features still not brought back the send button.
Oh well, this will just drive people to other projects.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Don't ask the pidgin devs about documentation, they'll tell you to write it yourself. Of course the problem is that we the users don't have enough information on how this stuff actually works and what some of it does to actually write documentation.
And if you did write it, then they keep changing the UI, remember when that stupid Disable/Enable protocol actually made sense and was named Login/Logoff.
The pidgin devs are actively user-hostile
The thing is, though, that's not what's being done here. This isn't taking away options in Pigdin, whether necessary or not. It's changing the UI behavior to no obvious benefit. This isn't really good UI design, either: they're not changing behavior in the pursuit of radical new shifts they think will lead to productivity in the long run (c.f. Microsoft Office's new "ribbon" interface), they're just changing it because enough of the core developers think this is better. It isn't better or worse, it's just different. If the input box had always resized automatically with no manual change ability, and it was replaced with a new text box that was manually resizable but no longer had automatic resizing, we'd still be seeing people pulling their hair out and threatening to fork over it.
Ironically, as much as Apple tends to be the poster child for "our way is the right way" interfaces, they have one of the better mechanisms for this sort of "power user preference" I've seen -- a way to change hidden preferences with a command line tool. The sort of user who wants that kind of change (which I occasionally am) will find it, but the 95% of users who really don't give a damn won't see it.
Is it too soon to make a verb of "Vista"? —As in, "the developers vista'd Pidgin in version 2.4."
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
This whole debacle has been specifically addressed already. Shut up and go read it before you start spouting: http://pidgin.im/~elb/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/giving_back.html
From http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/4986
"04/14/2008 06:57:17 AM changed by ConnorBehan Â
This is unbelievable. I tried adding my support to this sensible ticket, hoping all of us would cumulatively hold some sway over the developers (there are now three times as many posts below my first post as there are above).
I tried discussing this in IRC but the biggest promise I could get was elb saying that we might get manual resizing back if people are still complaining about this in three years (I was later blocked from #pidgin). This "wontfix" position has me even more worried now.
I tried letting it rest. Clearly many people replying to this ticket are much better at articulating their opinions than me. I had made my position known and there was no point belaboring it.
So we're only making it worse by complaining? Then what should we do... NOT complain? We are in a no win situation here.
If we had kept our mouths shut, respected your so called wisdom and refrained from getting involved... would you have really said "We will bring back auto-resizing because it looks like the users are considerate enough to deserve our attention." Absolutely not, you would not even know that people hated the auto-resizing if this were the case.
Now lets say most people kept their mouth shut but maybe 10 people or so posted well thought out constructive criticism on these forums. Then you would say we are a "vocal minority." I heard those exact words used on IRC. According to Ethan Blanton, some people did request an intelligent text box that you didn't have to resize. I'm not sure how many people requested this but something tells me it wasn't a majority either. If you really require a majority vote to revert a feature you are looking at over a million users.
Ok so getting the majority of Pidgin users to voice their opinions is not realistic, so we did the next best thing. We got a good one hundred people to respond to this ticket. It may not be a million but we did our best. Now what are you telling us? That our attitudes are so ungrateful that you are losing interest in reverting the feature?
What if by some miracle, hundreds of people HAD replied to this forum but had kept their cool and discussed the matter logically for these two months without getting impatient? Then you would say what seanegan already said... that users were just repeating "the same tired old points."
So if we complain, we lose, if we don't complain, we lose. Is there any way we can bow down to you and earn enough of your respect for you to consider this tiny code change? Of course not, there is no way to convince the developers that manual resizing is better. Their vision of what Pidgin should be is non-negotiable and every response to this ticket (the kind ones and the not-so-kind ones) has only reinforced that they are the ones in charge and that there is absolutely nothing we can do.
Gaim has always been very special to me. It was only the second open source application I ever used (after Firefox) and played a huge role introducing me to the world of GNU/Linux and other free software. Perhaps I am just afraid of change, and could eventually get used to auto-resizing. But now I am going to send one of your questions back down this two way street. I am not going to be open minded about auto-resizing because YOUR attitudes have not convinced me to change my lifestyle this way.
Alas, there is no way to restore manual resizing to the main branch of the program we used to love. Sure there are probably thousands of us who would be happier with manual resizing, and sure we helped make Pidgin what it is today, but the developers don't work for us, they work for themselves. We are just a bad case of FSUES.
I would rather let the user decide what features go into a program. Naturally there are limits to this... we don't want Pidgin to be a text editor, a web browser, an newsreader and an email clien
Funpidgin is the best name they could come up with!?
I use Pidgin and the static text-box always annoyed me (it has for all IM clients), and the new dynamic one seems like a fine solution. I just don't get why people don't like it..
I also agree that allowing every little thing to be configured is always a bad idea.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Well, small things like "Let them have cake" often push things over an edge. Of course, that typically means that things were at an edge to begin with. I can live with loading the non-default plugin - it's really not the feature that's the small thing here - it's the developer attitude that's the over-the-edge push here.
Adium and Quicksilver (and perhaps OmniOutliner) are the apps that are keeping me from ever fully migrating away from OS X. Which is a shame, since I really dislike the feel of the Intel macs, and don't want to switch to Leopard, while developers and Apple are trying to force it (wow, virtual desktops and versioning! What big NEW things!)
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
from reading many of the posts associated with the discussion of this code change is that many of the Pidgin developers feel it is their program and their time and they provide the software to the public for use at their own risk. Yes, there are resources available to make your opinion as a user known to the developers but the developers are not required to do anything about your opinions. The developers seem to think they have all the ideas and all their ideas are the right ones. It makes me wonder why user feedback is even allowed if listening to what users say is arbitrary.
It doesn't make any sense to me to remove the ability to do something in an application unless that capability introduces a bug but once the bug is fixed the capability should be added back into the codebase. Removing a capability is reverting, not putting that capability back in. Usually listening to users is the right thing to do but in this case they don't believe they should do so since they believe the only ideas that are useful are their own. So those who disagree with them on this topic should do what they suggest: use another IM client. If enough people do that and the userbase drops because of it then we'll really see just how much the pidgin developers really want to have users outside of their private community. If the forked client becomes more popular and the pidgin developers continue making releases and only pidgin developers use those releases then so be it. They can continue working on a pet project that will always stay a pet project because user feedback doesn't mean anything or at least as much as it should.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
What I found most interesting in the discussion on Pidgin's site is that both the users and devs considered "arbitrary input resizing" to be a feature and not just a standard UI component. Personally, I consider being able to drag the border of that text input box a UI feature, not a program feature. Why would they override what most would consider the default (and expected) behaviour?
Dammit, I meant to post that anonymously!
That feature IS quite ridiculous! I almost smashed my monitor in because I thought Pidgin was broken or some shit. You mean they did that on purpose!?? While I'm at it, I hate Gnome too, always thinking they know what's best for me! Well fuck those guys, F1 means raise/lower window and ctrl-tab means switch workspaces and whatever I want... - obviously i'm a KDE guy for now.
They *do* have a plugin API that supports more than just additional protocols -- I'm not sure if it'd allow this kind of tweak, but to placate the madding crowd it might even make sense to make some internal changes to allow it.
It's not as if they don't still have the code for the old behavior.
I know this story's about Pidgin, but there's always Pidgin and Gnome-do. Adium's basically an OSX frontend to the pidgin libs anyways. There's a ton more apps besides Pidgin itself that uses libpurple. Most build for both OSX and Linux, so you can try before you leap ;)
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
How about categorizing the plugin area? Or in the traditions of many other apps move to a online plugin install database?
Sounds like both sides here need to be seriously betch-slapped. This is a petty argument.
I use Pidgin, and I didn't even notice the change.
Personally, I'm pretty damned sure the fork will wither and die... but unfortunately for Pidgin, its download site will probably sit out there for a very long time, confusing users who search for Pidgin and find this site touting "WE"RE LIKE PIDGIN BUT BETTER!!!1!" but whose last release is years ago.
I do feel the Pidgin devs should probably build a plugin, but *not* make it a default. New users won't even know the old functionality existed and thus won't be accustomed to it (which seems like basically the only reason you'd strongly want it to work that way...) and will not be confused by this incredibly random and difficult to explain plugin.
And the complainers can take 30 extra seconds to download it separately.
Don't forget Facebook!
Saying you require this feature for your "sanity" is a bit hysterical, anyway. Is your sanity is that fragile? I use Pidgin, and didn't notice the missing feature.... What are people communicating by IM that uses more than the 500 or so characters you have to enter before you'll get a scrollbar anyway?
Remember how long it took to add protocol-based icons to contacts, and how EVEN NOW we still only get them hidden out of the way in the sub-contact list, rather than on the main contact? Something about "the protocol is the medium, not the contact". I've accustomed to it, but I absolutely hate having no say in the matter.
If the people who are forking this will extend their ideal beyond simply resizing text boxes, and actually listen to the users instead of trying to teach them to think in different concepts, there is no question in my mind which I'll be using. When you give me an API, I'll learn to use it the way you want; when you give me a GUI I bloody well want to use it the way I'm used to.
GAH. It's been more than a year since I saw that discussion in the bug tracker, and I'm still pissed.
Fear of cluttering up the plugin area?! You're effing kidding me, right? That's lamer than George W. Bush's presidency.
I hear that, I really wish I could force Firefox to NEVER create tabs, PERIOD.
/. stuff in one window and all your work stuff in another, instead of getting them all mixed up on the task bar.
That's funny, I wish I could force Firefox to NEVER createw windows, PERIOD.
Tabs are completely superfluous in Windows, as there are ALREADY tabs for pages on the Windows taskbar, and that's right where I want them.
One word: Nesting. Multiple desktops each with multiple windows each with multiple tabs gets you a lot more documents than you can fit into one taskbar on one desktop. It's a lot easier to be organised too when you can keep all your
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
How that justifies another? Well. If they have no problem with packing along something as useless as the dbus examples in the defaults, what's the problem with adding a feature a substantial number of users are actually asking for? The problem is that the excuse about "clutter" reeks from hypocracy.
And btw, you should read a bit more carefully. "Also explain how that isn't "clutter" while the plugin for resetting the inputbox to sanity is." Ie, the inputbox needs it's sane behaviour returned, not me. But then you wouldn't have had any possibility to indulge yourself in cheap name calling, right?
No-one forgets Facebook, they just try to.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
One man's clutter is another's indispensible feature.
And when the majority of users go "Hey! WTF? Where'd it go??" IT WASN'T CLUTTER.
There was a similar situation back in the early days of Mozilla development. The main devdude decided that he didn't want "BACK" on the context menu when the mouse pointer was over an image, because "it was too much clutter". The user community (then meaning the mozdev newsgroup) HATED this, and took a vote on it -- I still remember the result, because it was so astounding. 700 votes to KEEP "back" on the menu; only 2 votes in support of getting rid of it.
Despite which, the devdude said, in so many words, "Tough shit, this is how *I* like it." And so it stayed, despite a very upset userbase (which not being coders, couldn't really do anything about it).
And people still wonder why a lot of real users get soured on opensource....
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
http://trac.adiumx.com/wiki/VoiceAndVideo
I love Adium, and I think they have the OP's problem solved pretty well, but as far as video and audio you're wrong. It does not support video or audio chat.
This controversy is stupid, but it's also exactly when open source is supposed to allow. The entire idea behind Richard Stallman's movement is that if you don't like something, build your own. At the same time, great design requires saying no. You don't see these stupid option fests in truly great user interfaces.
So thats why pidgin got f***ed up. I was wondering about that after an update, and thought it was a glitch. Someone please kick these old geezers off their high horse and make this open source again!
Bravo. You take one little problem that may slightly apply in this one instance and you explode it into a complaint that you aim at the whole of an entire OS. Your exaggeration only shows what a narrow-minded idiot you truly are.
But, because your flame-baiting idiocy has this amusing feature, moderators are easily dazzled into marking it as "insight." The only true insight you exhibit is in exploiting the flaw in human nature that permits your idiocy an undue elevation in stature.
Rest assured, however, that you are still a flame-baiting idiot, and any intelligent person can see through your bullshit like glass.
A lot of people are blaming the developers here for not creating a good UI. The example given in the enhancement ticket for why the input box needs to be bigger is to accommodate code. Source code that a developer would be sending, perhaps? So do we have developers complaining because because developers didn't create a UI that is good enough for developers? Did the universe just implode?
If someone wants simple "usability" with no configuration options, they can always buy a mac.
"Good people drink good beer"
This is pretty much the same story as the Firefox 3 "Awesome Bar" which, really, isn't awesome. Does anyone else think it looks like a block of spamvertisements? A config option was added to disable it but then it was quickly reverted. Thou shalt use the Awesome Bar! No thanks, I'll just use Safari or Opera instead.
Yeah pidgin devs are kinda assholes ...
... nonsense. It would be very easy to ignore if you didn't want it.
.01 release and give no way to disable them.
Once I asked to move the preferences item to the bottom of the menu like every other gui app ever written, but they would have none of it.
Another time I asked to be able to save an icon selection with my saved status, and they acted like it was a huge burden and that it would confuse users to add a button to a 3 widget dialog
Taken years to get up to date msn support because of infighting.
No real attempts at video conferencing support.
They like to make strange gui rearangements every
Sometimes they back off if the backlash is big enough.
If there were a better free alternative, I would switch right away.
In my experience with dealing with the gaim/pidgin developers, they've come across as self-centered assholes. The only reason they chose open source is because there are so many things they rely on that are gpl'd, and they get free help. Otherwise, they'd have probably kept it closed source and to themselves.
They have a real attitude problem and are control freaks. There was the gaim-vv fork a few years ago, it worked alright, but wasnt quite stable, the developer was running low on free time and the gaim guys obliged to merge the two together.
Then they ended up just throwing out gaim-vv because it didnt meet up with their specifications.
gaim 2.0 was supposed to have voice. never happened. 2.0.0.1 was supposed to have it.
never happened.
switched to pidgin and they just stopped announcing voice support.
The main reason: The main developer doesnt like voice, since he made the application "for himself" dont look forward to ever seeing it in pidgin.
If you ask why it isnt in there, you'll get a lovely "code it in yourself!" I few people have met this challenge, only to be shot down saying it doesnt meet their standards.
Imho, it's about time pidgin forked, it's the ONLY multi-IM app for linux that doesnt completely suck, but Like with the Xfree86 project, the developers resisted change to the point where the project just grew stagnant, and even got quite hostile about anyone wishing to make change. Now look where they're at.
Open source is about progress. The problem that ironically plagues most projects is that the developers have a simple mindset and want to keep things as-is, without thinking "how can I improve this? what's a new feature people wish to have? how can I make it so if people dont like the new feature, they can disable it?"
Many projects that rely on libpurple are finding they cant have video and voice because of this.
They say they'll have it, but with no ETA. as in, they're just saying it to quiet down the constant bitching. People have offered, and have given snippets of code, but get rejected.
Here's to the fork.
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The problem is the same, either a compile- or run-time option: You have to maintain two different pieces of code that basically do the same thing.
I can understand the problem Pidgin developers point and I can agree with their point as a developer. As a user, I still have to see if that really affects me (e.g., does this annoy me?) Right now, I'm away from my Linux box and I'm using Adium mostly.
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Yeah, it is a little inane to be so upset over something so small either way (for or against it), but - the developers broke a huge cardinal rule when it comes to supporting a user base. They didn't announce this "feature", and they have no way to turn said "feature" off. How is this something beneficial to your end-user? Especially considering the typical end-user for pidgin is going to be (best case scenario) at least a little picky about the software they use. meh. like I saw in one of the other comments - it's about time for a fork. imo, gaim 1.5 was the best, and it's been downhill since then, and nary a multi-platform open source competitor in sight.
But what's the "right" way? And who decides?
That was what made the developers in the ticket notes seem so arrogant: they kept talking about the "right" way for the GUI to behave, which just isn't applicable to GUIs.
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
...is the way my editor says it. But the idea is the same.
--jrd
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
a) Configurability; and
b) Sane defaults.
And while one would probably be correct to argue that not every last new, proposed option should be implemented, removing old options is another deal entirely, and refusing to listen to your users when they tell you that they, in fact, relied on the option you just removed - that's asinine.
But hey, that's GNOME (of which pidgin, I think, is a part).
In the famous words of Mr King, "why can we all just get along".
Because of this, there is no software god.
...the worst part is that I am a pidgin user that also hates the feature.
I am drunk and facing layoffs in my M$ code shop in the morning. You squabble on about damned text boxes?!?!?
Any salvation I dreamed of in OSS has evaporated. The bazaar has reached lowest common denominator. i.e. everyone starves.
Colloquy does the same resizing thing by default, but has a hidden preference you can use to change the behavior. It's pretty nice that way because it's not there in the GUI, but if it does bother you it's possible to change it.
Also it's not that tiny and obscure for an IM client. Since most of the things you would do would be to..read and type..
http://colloquy.info/project/wiki/Documentation/TipsAndTricks/HiddenPreferences
And people wonder why KDE is so popular despite so many companies officially supporting only Gnome.
You might wonder that, I don't know who these "people are" or why their opinions have anything to do with this conversation about Pidgin, an open source project written in Gtk+ but otherwise completely and totally opposed to GNOME in every single other way possible. But go on, try to start up a flamewar.
Shame I don't have mod points.
I would be a part of the split that wants it to be an option, an auto-sizing input box would ANNOY me to no end. But you've got to be kidding me that they seriously split over this. Make it an option, stay together, call it good. Wow...just...wow.
Doesn't one of the same guys work on both products? What made you think he wouldn't transfer his "valuable experience" in Human Interface Design from one to the other? ;-)
And I can understand the drive to restrict the number of options to a functional minimum. But I think that should be a guiding principle rather than an iron clad rule.
I suppose the question then becomes: how do you tell if an option is worth the overhead of the extra maintenance? I would humbly submit that, if it's an option that stands to cost you half your userbase then it probably is worth the effort.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Psi has done it for years at least. When I first used it, back when my University first started blocking the MSN protocol (although it might just have been them being incompetent, since many things requiring SSL started being wonky one day) and I could actually find a decent free Jabber server with MSN and AIM transports (it has since shut down) I was quite happy and impressed.
;) )
"Cool!" I said, "this is very nice!"
About a week later it was already driving me insane. However, IIRC you could disable it.
I actually think usability IS largely dependant on allowing configurable options for everything. Many people interact with their computers in very different and particular ways in contrast to other people; you can't always aim for the lowest common denominator and create an interface equally usable and perfect for everyone. In fact, it's damn near impossible. I'm all for being tactical about which options you allow for the sake of being able to code the project without it being a nightmare, but having things that easily could be options instead rely on having to recompile the program not because it's technologically necessary but rather because something has been hard-coded "off" even though the code is still there or trivial to switch on . . . that's just egomania and blindness.
(Makes me kindof glad I use Kopete
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Remember WindowMaker? One day the new WindowMaker developers decided that an option named "AUTOCIRCULATE" made more sense if it meant something completely different from what it had for years. And support for the old option, which was one of the easiest ways to change focus without raising a window to the top, disappeared. Around the same time the Debian wmaker package was also stripped of ALL KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS in the name of "correctness". Complaints were lodged, rebutted, parried, delayed and now it seems the package has fallen into deep disrepair. The current maintainer says he will try to reverse this brain damage, but progress has yet to take hold. I think most people gave up and moved on to one of the "chunky"/flashy fisher-price style window managers or blackbox. The lesson? Never "upgrade" unless you have to. Now this POS wmaker version is "release quality" and polluting all branches of Debian, so downgrading is a bitch.
When are you forking Xfce?
One of the advantage of programming as a hobby over programming for a salary is that you can ignore the whiners, and concentrate on those users who can give feedback without explaining how stupid you are, or how betrayed they feel because you doesn't cater to all their needs. That is, you can concentrate on the emotionally grown ups, and ignore the spoiled kids.
[ And note: This is hobby vs professional, not free vs. proprietary. ]
And some people like the power and flexibility of having such options, the trick is to have sensible defaults, and then file off less common options under an advanced option.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I would, and have. I want a single line text input for irc and im clients. There is no room for negotiation, I will write my own if I have to. :)
Like what I said? You might like my music
This really strikes me as an adjunct of the way the Gnome project thinks, "We are the one true way. Our way is the right way, the only way, no matter what you, the user thinks." I gave up on Rhapsody (for example), when I discovered you can't even adjust the network buffer for streaming audio - god forbid you don't have fat broadband like the developers or poor wifi connectivity or high latency. The response usually to such complaints is "Stop complaining, write the code and submit a patch." - when I checked the mailing-list I discovered someone had submitted a patch TWO YEARS ago that had never been accepted. They aren't interested in any ideas that aren't their own. A coder friend of mine refers to Gnome and related projects as "The Software Taleban" due to their "holy vision" and stubborn refusal of any criticism. Still, the advantage of Freed Software is we are free to choose - dropped Pidgin months ago. There is better available that doesn't treat you like a mentally-retarded shaved monkey.
Interesting. In Pidgin I saw it as disturbing for about five minutes, and after that it never seemed to be a problem.
Can't they just find one of the default plugins to put this under, like the notification plugin or something? There must be a developer in the group of "default plugin developers" who would be willing to add a checkbox?
Clearly, the author who considers end users to be obstacles to be controlled, is the latter kind.
because they create and they virtually give live to machines. They are more Gods than surgeons (the typical example of God-like humans).
I do notice that you didn't answer the question about what usage is actually being broken by the new behavior.
First let me say that I am a pidgin user. I myself have been using it, and am happy with the latest version. However, I do agree that giving users options is important. I would yet again take it another step, though, and recommend an open source Skype replacement feature. We've got the speex codec. We've got some video alternatives I'm sure (xvid, others?). It is kind of silly to me that I can't use pidgin's various protocols (MSN, Y!, Google, MySpace, MSN, AIM, ICQ, IRC, I think I'm missing yet another one that I actually use sometimes....) to connect directly with a buddy and start a video chat, and have it be scientifically better than a Skype call.
I mean, I like Pidgin now, and major kudos to the devs who have made it happen up to today, but let's pass the corporate infrastructure this time, and win on merits and usability, and let's do it on all 3 platforms (MS,LINUX, MAC OS). Put out a distro with that functionality out of the box with an easy wizard, and you can beat Vista, since it is a dogshit botched release. You could package the CD and a webcam and make a killing with some markup. Hell even sell the whole system....
Have a distro like that that might also play san andreas or some other game in wine, and I'm in. And yes I want the pretty compiz spinny window cube.
Now is the time FOSS people. In the words of Mortal Kombat: "FINISH HIM!!!!"
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Is that so hard to implement?
Now there's one hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is!
Usability is defined by your audience.
People, get over it, download the plugin. It takes a few clicks and then you're ready to scroll the window to your full screen.
A while ago, someone changed slashdot so that it is next to impossible to see all the available comments. I suggest a fork!
Not saying that this is an example, but there does come a point where there are too many options. BBEdit is an example that comes to mind. Written for developers, and almost everything under the hood is tweakable, and the preferences (of which there are TWO) have a huge list of windows of options. Azureus is the same way, there should not be over a dozen pref windows that have to scroll to see all the options in each one. It gets worse when the main pref menu is an expanding tree on top of that.
For me the main problem this presents is finding a switch that I want to toggle. (not everyone wants something one way or the other, sometimes you need to change it depending on what you're doing) Sometimes it can take awhile to wade through all the windows to determine where they've decided to classify the option.
So whether or not this is a feature that should be optional, you can't just make a blanket decision that everything should be optional in an app. You do have to draw the line somewhere because you wll approach a point where more options makes things worse on the user.
I would postulate that no app should have more than five panels in the preferences, of which none should scroll. Draw the line somewhere.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Fewer options are usually better than more options. Compare: http://amorya.uwcs.co.uk/prefs.png In NeoOffice, there are so many preferences that the dialog box is daunting. It's hard to wade through because they made everything an option. Why should the user be allowed to choose whether to have icons in the menus? Do a bit of usability testing and find which one makes users more productive on average, and stick to that. The window from Pages is much more approachable. For something to make it into the preferences, a key criterion is "Does this feature make some users much more productive and others much less productive?". If it makes some users more productive but others stay the same, just turn it on permanently. Users don't know what is best for them, so such a decision should be made through UI testing. The feature mentioned somewhere above, allow manual resize and auto-resize when there is more text than the manually specified size, is much better than adding an option. There's no "options hell" in the preferences window, yet the interface can still be manipulated to suit a user's taste. Amorya
Yes, it's petty but not being able to manually resize my text input area has annoyed the shit out of me. That and looking through the menus and plugin options to find what I thought was my user error. Pidgin is growing out of what I used to like about GAIM. I'm moving on and switching to Meebo.
"Keep at least 3-6 full bottles of hard alcohol on hand, a 2 week resignation notice,..." - Poetmatt
just download digsby. much better than pidgin.
Put crap in the default package, and refusing to put stuff people are *really* asking for in using "clutter" as an excuse? How is this NOT hypocracy? And your premise is false, I don't think they should ship the examples as a default plugin, never said so, and never will. I'm just pitting them against each other to highlight that in one case there are no worries about "cluttering" the interface with pure junk, while in the other case it's used as a really poor *excuse* to not ship something people are asking for.
"The inputbox isn't sentient."
Ok, I guess you have a problem with figures of speech. To make myself clear; I, and a lot of other people think that windows that dance, swing, grow, shrink or makes any other kinds of distracting motions on its own behalf are not behaving sane. (Side note; why do you think "nudges/buzz" are one of the most hated malfeatures in MSN? Once you get that answer right you'll know why this new behaviour is a malfeature of pidgin.) Of course that's just another way to put that the coder is an idiot and should be flogged, but the point should be clear.
Well, maybe namecalling isn't the right word, but taking the oppertunity refer to me and my opinions as "hysterical" is rather rude.
I have to admit, I actually like the growing bit. BUT! I also agree with all the users complaints I suppose.
2 lines of whitespace isn't enough. 4 would be ideal.
Getting a scrollbar after X amount of lines is also great (you don't want to make your input box bigger then the output box (incoming msg field)).
So yes, make it configurable. Hell, just put it in the config file and don't offer an option. Something as simple as 4/50% would be great (4 lines of whitespace, show scrollbar at 50%).
Simple fix. Ok, so you can't drag the bar to set your white space (I suppose that would be a limitation of GTK, though if you put the text box in a resizeable frame, you could use the frame size to set the minimum?)
Sorry for whining here and not to the static bugtracker. But yeah I do think words needs to get out.
Unfortunately, as mentioned int he bugreport, the thread will die (it's locked via a static page atm, coincidence?) and people will forget, but always be annoyed.
Another good example is the 'send' button. I don't need it, I don't use it. I think my sister might not even use it, but people like my sister, normal people that use it, like it. They'd miss it. Hell on occasion I even have missed it, and rightclick-send isn't a solution for that.
"if a version shipped with features nobody wanted, people would stop buying it. Instant negative feedback"
Totaly. Dead on, man. I remember when I bought Vista, and its DRM started preventing me from watching movies that I paid Netflix to watch. I stopped buying Vista that day and bam! DRM & trusted computing module were gone by sunrise.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
It still sucks that this app is black text on white background.
Either let us choose colours, like every terminal app did in 1988 on BBS's (fucking store all the colours in an xml and STFU)
Or make two options, light on black mode, or dark on white mode.
White BG sucks, and is so 1999.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
"Pidgin, the premier multi-protocol instant messaging client, has been forked."
How is Pidgin the premier one ? Who decided that ? After that, the blurb became even more ridiculous. Who, the ****, cares ?
As good as the software is, there are numerous design decisions that continue to irk many users and 10x as much effort is spent arguing the point rather that just adding in some basic UI code.
Refusal to include a control to adjust the chat font size within the application has to be ridiculous decision #1.
I'm really surprised it hasn't been forked for this reason alone.
I entered in a bug to get a hotly debate option in ( protocol icons ) and it took numerous locked threads, hundreds of messages, and a fantastic amount of vitriol before it was accepted.
That said, aside from this extreme conservatism, Pidgin is good software.
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The problem with nesting is you can't as easily go directly from one app "tab" to another app "tab" as you can when all the "tabs" are available at the same level. I have my task bar on the left side (widescreen monitor) and fairly wide, so the "tabs" are all stacked vertically and I can get all I need before it starts packing them in too tight to find-- so I usually don't need to nest to organize them. I don't like having a huge amount of crap left running like some people I know. Also, I don't use a PC based email client, so my email page is a browser page, and I want that clearly separated out on the taskbar so I can get to email easily just as I could if Outlook was my email client...
I've seen that.
Like what I said? You might like my music
funpidin has some other features:
* a send button -- here I agree with them, and find the original Pidgin developers especially assholic for insisting that users don't need it...
* an ability to resize the buddy icon on the chat window to bigger than 32x32 pixels -- also a good idea, why the hell did the original devs decide to move that 96x96pixel buddy icon from next to the chat input box to the 32pixel space top left corner. Oh, because they wanted to reduce the chat input box into 2 (or whatever it is) lines. Setting the buddy icon to 96 pixel causes another problem though: your window consists of menu, 96 pixel high name of your chat partner, with his/her pic to the right, then below that the conversation, and then the input box, both of these being about 96px high as well...
* other things that I'm not interested in: http://funpidgin.sourceforge.net/content/features (apparently one of them is master passwords, so your passwords arent stored in plaintext in the accounts.xml file. And this is supposed to be an official Pidgin Summer of Code project?
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
I don't care much anyway, though. I don't use pidgin, and I didn't know it was just GAIM renamed, so now I'm probably never going to use pidgin. Heh.
Like what I said? You might like my music
Most build for both OSX and Linux, so you can try before you leap ;)
:)
You actually were more helpful than you thought. You prodded me to finally actually install that Hardy disk sitting on my desk.
Ah... the time of the yearly Linux install, just to see if I can find something to keep me using it, instead of slowly moving back to OS X/Windows after 2 months due to familiarity.
I just wish that the Mac devs out there would work harder on porting things to other OSs. They have GUI down pretty well, and I know the average slashbot is going to scream at me for this, GUI matters to me. With Adium, I can make my contact list a small unobtrusive blurb off the menu bar, with Pidgin (and all other multi-clients I've found) they insist on being a very large chunk of real estate, in all their blocky goodness. For some reason Mac devs have also mastered expandability. Look at the amount of Adium plugins, compared to the the amount of Pidgin ones, then compare the sizes of the user-bases.
Sorry for the rant, its been one of those weeks. Thanks for the reply.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
- The users seem to think Pidgin is an IM client.
- The developers seem to think Pidgin is a UI testbed.
That sort of difference in direction calls for a fork, no?/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
That's so absurd I cannot really believe you are serious.
GTalk has had this for a long time now. One of the things I like about. No waste of screen real estate until it's necessary.
I'm not a really good goto guy for improving/personalizing IM clients. I mostly just minimize the thing and wait for others to IM me. IRC is where it's at! Look at the number of irssi plugins and scripts versus adium ;)
;)
One of the new features in GNOME that I like is GIO. Basically gnome VFS gets replaced with FUSE, so you can launch mplayer while browsing smb shares etc. Apps no longer have to support GNOME VFS to integrate with nautilus, which is great.
GnomeDo mimics Quicksilver substantially, though still a work in progress. Apparently I missed the fact that it's in Ubuntu repos now. Remember that Ubuntu is supposed to be usable out of the box, it's up to you to make it awesome
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
I'm actually hate new "feature" - it's more than annoying that I can't have input sized as I like to.And refusing to provide option to disable "new cool feature" which is actually "bad bug" for me is sounds like "hey, we have coded some damn cool bulls**t, eat this or go to h*ll, we do not care!".Same goes with virtually all UI settings and preferences in Pidgin.
I hope that occured fork will finally turn Pidgin to something USABLE.Btw, as a professional QA I can admit that Pidgin's usability is awful.Authors are inventing something and then enforcing everyone to use it.They forgot something: you cannot enforce everyone to be happy.That's why good programs provide some configurable options.Not a case for Pidgin though.
Yeah, I realized that, but the feature that seems to be the topic of the discussion is the resizing, and that's available through a plugin. I still think they should have just made all those things plugins instead of forking. I think they did add a plugin for the send button, but it doesn't build by default and I don't know whether there's a binary anywhere. The buddy icon thing is stupid too, but in the end all I really want to do is talk to my friends, and pidgin does that fine. Now, when Kopete gets ported to Windows I might switch, but until then I'll stick with Pidgin.
All your base are belong to Wii.
I don't really know what the fuss is all about.
Every gaim/pidgin user already know the its developers don't actually pay attention to user input.
This is specially noticeable not only in the old icon controversy and this new UI change, but it's there even before the gaim>pidgin namechange (from what I remember, even the new name was not user input, but a dev-only decision) and that comes from the gaim-vv days.
Every user knows that the video/audio features are wanted by a big part of the userbase, but that has been neglected by the developers because "we don't use it, so you don't need it", which was exactly what originated the gaim-vv fork. The team that developed it worked pretty hard for it to work and when it was finally finished and they wanted it to be incorporated in the core app, the gaim devs simply said that it was not well written and as of now gaim/pidgin still doesn't have gaim nor audio features. All that because developers don't need it, only normal users (think all those MSN users that talk to family over long distances, in contrast to some nerds that don't talk to their family in the room next door).
I've been a gaim user for a long time, but now I don't use it anymore, in part because it doesn't support webcam, which I don't really mind except for the explanation of why pidgin doesn't have it, but mostly because it doesn't support offline messages, which is a feature of most protocols but pidgin also insists not to include it (I have some friends which prefer to look offline and only talk when something important arises, because of productivity concerns).
Now I use amsn, in spite of its awkward UI, mostly because of this feature. Gaim used to have a good UI, and pidgin too, but it appers this has changed now. I hope the new fork will bring fresh minds to pidgin environment, to break the endless loop of UI changes (with no real feature addition).
The difference is that the XFree86-Xorg divide contained quite a few peeved formerly XFree86 developers.
What established pidgin developers are preparing to jump ship?
-bugg
*whooosh*
which is totally what she said
Developers at their worst it seems. I've uninstalled Pidgin and started looking into alternatives.
Link pidgin-2.old (2.2.2 in my case) against libpurple-2.4.1. Works perfectly and does everything I might want it to do.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
The pidgin developers can go to hell. They have not addressed, and in some cases, flat out refuse to address various security concerns (like plain text passwords stored on the local disc for instance). They promise things like solid implementation of Google's Jingle, webcam and audio support (not that i use it) and sit on it. Every version that comes out it's just like they did a few bug fixes, changed the UI around again and again and again, integrate MySpace (like anyone gives a shit) via Google's SOC.. and that's about it. They're worthless.
Let's start a war over this.
Two of the developers within Pidgin who make key decisions about the software's user interface are color blind. This is true! So they force all Pidgin users to put up with the compromises they implement to appease their handicaps.
The mentality of the developers is to create something that is incredibly simple to use, hence their removal of the option to re-size windows along with tons of other options over the years. It is completely useless to communicate with these losers because they argue away any suggestion anybody might make, even if it is just a matter of adding 10 lines of code. The problem with their strategy is that they are developing an OSS so most of their users are techies and their software is so dumbed down that nobody wants to use it.
The software is slow and its performance is dismal. It eats huge amounts of memory that it really doesn't need. And on top of that it has very few user options! Doesn't make sense.
There are so many thing which could be done to improve the software but go into their forums and read the arguments that the brain dead developers put forward: "Prove to me that what you are saying is really important from a user perspective!" How does a user respond to that? The arrogant developers are more than just color-blind.
A Fork has been stuck in Pidgin. It is done.