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In my experience, X-Chat as an IRC client is great. However, for new
users and less technical people it leaves a lot to be desired. I aim to
change that.
The first problem is that X-Chat's interface is very busy. There are a
lot of buttons and toggles, and a lot of "close" or "open" buttons where
there need not be any. In addition, there are some pretty bad UI
decisions, like radio buttons which reveal UI elements (principle of
least confusion applies here.)
To that end, I've started with simplifying the Server Selection
dialogue. I've chosen to adhere to the GNOME interface guidelines,
because it's a very good set of user interface ideas, and also because
most GTK+ 2 programs will tend to use it.
You can see the current progress (my dialogue is on the left) at
http://capricorn.woot.net/~jdrew/xchat-serverlist.png . My current plan
is to cause Edit to open a dialogue with the same contents as the "edit"
mode of the current server dialogue (tweaked, of course, for usability).
Add will probably be a very similar dialogue with "Network name" empty
at the top. Currently, both Add and Edit are non-functional, a
deficiency I plan to fix.
I'm writing to solicit comments, suggestions and (yes) even flames. I
have no desire to create my own IRC client or to fork X-Chat; all I want
is an great IRC client with a UI that doesn't suck.
Thanks,
Joe
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