[Telepathy] UI thoughts

[Varun Madiath]

Hi.

I have had a couple of ideas which I think could improve the user 
interface of empathy when emapthy is run in a large window (say for 
example in the maximized state).

As it stands now, the emapthy interface looks something like what is 
shown here when the window is not too wide. This is a rather efficient 
display model given the space constraints of the window.

<link1>

When the window is expanded horizontally however, the usage of space is 
less than ideal. The Treeview simple expands horizontally, to place the 
image at the absolute right of the viewport, and there is a lot of space 
that is left unused.

<link2>

What I am proposing is to have this extra space used by more than one 
column or contacts. For people with long lists of contacts, this would 
reduce the amount of scrolling required to find people. I've created a 
mock-up of what I'm imaging and you can find it at the link below. I 
apologize to those of you who rightly fail to see great artistic talent, 
but my abilities with the GIMP are sub-par.

<link3>

I was informed on the IRC channel (by two very helpful people who use 
the nicknames wjt and danni) that I should discuss my thoughts here 
before I begin to implement any of my ideas, so I'd love to hear any 
feedback people have. Should I get the impression that this is something 
that could possibly of utility to the project I'll get started on 
working on this.

Cheers

Varun 'vamega' Madiath