[Design] [Sum] Aug 7-13

[Sheila Mooney]

Not too much activity on the design list last week....

New Threads:

Sheila sent out a link to the first draft of the Beta email spec.  
This first iteration only has the details for Alpha4 specifically and  
will be updated further once the Beta plan becomes clearer.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-August/005219.html

Matt posted to the design list about Fonts for the Web UI. Although  
not well specified, one of the Cosmo 0.5 tasks involves handling  
fonts. Matt had found an old Chandler visual guidelines wiki page  
which specifies fonts based on OS. This discussions continued really  
around how to handle stylesheets rather than about fonts  
specifically. Priscilla will be sending a summary email closing the  
thread.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-August/005220.html

Sheila sent a summary of the Bridging the gap - email options thread  
detailing the discussion around all the suggested scenarios we could  
handle in the Beta timeframe. Some proposals were discussed more than  
others and there were 2 additional suggestions (osaf email accounts,  
thunderbird extension). Emailing items to collections was the only  
item that had any lengthy discussion. The PPD team put forth a  
proposal that we handle Dnd emails, subscribing to an IMAP folder,  
emailing collections and special Chandler headers in the Beta  
timeframe. The next steps are to further spec out these features and  
iterate with development on scope.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-August/005225.html

John replied to an email from Darshana about Suggestions on Quick  
Item Entry in the Search Bar. Darshana is working on Quick Item Entry  
so users can type in commands to create items easily on the fly. She  
was asking for some suggestions about how to use NLP in the search  
bar and particularly about how we might handle a drop down for auto- 
completion of the commands ie: /Note, /Event.
+ John expressed concern about using the search box for this and how  
this type of text entry seems unrelated to search. He suggested a  
toggle for another search area. He feels that this will be confusing  
and not easily discoverable for users.
+ Philippe commented that this kind of dual use for a field is not  
uncommon and we are simply extending this beyond a basic search box.  
He felt a toggle might be more confusing. In general he prefers less  
clutter in the UI but more powerful widgets.
+ There were a couple of others than felt similarly to John and  
worried about giving the search box this extended functionality.
+ It seemed as though we should stop referring to this widget as a  
search box and call it a command line or command box to better  
reflect it's capabilities.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-August/005229.html

Jeffrey started another thread titled Suggestions on Quick Item Entry  
in the Search bar  to continue the discussion around the quick item  
entry feature. Jeffrey pointed out that it really is a command line  
utility but we simply implemented search first. Also, it's simple  
since search is the default functionality for non-power users and  
only the more advanced users will discover the other command  
possibilities using the drop down.
+ In response to one of John's replies, Mimi asked what the usual  
command line quoting options are.
+ Jeffrey responded to Bear's comment about escaping command mode to  
get back to search mode.
+ Now that there has been more discussion around the command box  
field, Bear feels it's less confusing.

In order to provide some more context on the Quick Item Entry issue,  
Jeffrey forwarded some links to some old threads that provided some  
idea of how we were envisioning the command line feature to work.
+ Travis references the quick item entry feature in 30boxes.
+ Mimi suggests that the default behavior be to create a new note and  
that you invoke search using a command. It could be that people will  
be creating new items more often than searching.
+ Mimi asked several questions about how often people search in their  
task apps compared to their email clients.
+ Philippe didn't have a strong opinion on the default but asked if  
the last action persists.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-August/005241.html

Sheila sent out a summary of the How basic can we stand for email?  
thread.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-August/005231.html

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