IDETalk usability is really bad

Hi Keith,

Thanks for your valuable feedback. I've just returned from the vacation and going to address
IDEtalk issues in the nearest days. I don't promise I'll fix all the issues in this message but I'll
review all of them.

Kind regards,
KIR

Keith Lea wrote:

I finally used IDETalk today.

1. Someone IMed me. I heard a noise but I didn't know where it was coming from. Idea didn't provide any visual indication that someone was talking to me (flashing the window on windows & bouncing the dock on osx would really help)
2. The IM window is very unpleasant:
- The input box is huge. I don't see a reason why it needs to be taller than 1 line
- Pressing Enter doesn't send the message, and ctrl, alt, or apple enter don't work either
- Brown and purple are ugly, and are definitely not IDEA colors
- The text is rendered in courier new instead of a reasonable font
- Moving the slider between input and message box cuts off the bottom of the message box and forces me to scroll down after moving it
- Resizing the toolwindow large then small again results in the same cutting off
- The window is called "IDETalk history" even when I'm typing into it. It's not history if it's an active conversation
- The "x" hides the window, it doesn't close it, like every other X in idea does. Providing a button to hide the window is unnecessary because the minimize button is already there.
3. "IDETalk" window should probably be called "buddy list" or something. It's pretty confusing to have 2 IDETalk toolwindows
4. The buddy list window is unpleasant:
- It shows me offline buddies
- It shows me empty groups
- It shows a green icon and also says "(online)"
- Some options are in the "options" menu, but those are also in the options dialog
- There's a "delete" button in the toolbar. Deleting a buddy is a rare thing and this should go in the context menu not the toolbar.
- The delete button is blue instead of red
- "Send message/stacktrace" should be split into "Send stack trace" and "Send message"
- "Send message/stacktrace" does nothing when I click it
- Clicking the green "connected" icon seems to disconnect me from jabber. For some reason this icon is not in the toolbar but at the bottom of the buddy list.
- "Find and add users" and so on are in the context menu even though they are not context-sensitive to what I'm clicking on. These are already on the toolbar so they should be removed from this menu.
- "Rename User/Group" shows for users and groups. This is awkward and should be changed to "Change nickname" if a buddy is selected, and "Rename group" if a group is selected
- Groups are shown with a folder icon instead of a + icon, which makes it hard to tell quickly whether a group is visible or hidden
5. There's lots of awkward language, like "Hide tool window with IDETalk messages" tooltip, "Show floating popup window" option, "Show user's history" button, "Find and Add Users" button. In fact I think almost every label, button, and tooltip should be re-worded. If you want me to go through these and come up with better wordings I wiill do it, you just need to ask.

I don't want to file jira issues for these because it would probably take me a while, and I think simply spending an hour would solve half of them.

--
Kirill Maximov
Software Developer
JetBrains, Inc.
http://www.jetbrains.com
"Develop with pleasure!"

One of the things that annoys me with IDETalk is that I can't set the priority of the Jabber session. Or for that matter - reconfigure the jabber settings, or disabling the jabber side of things completely (it gets in the way of my real jabber client).

Just needs a bit of love I guess....