KTp/Components/Account Management GUI

WARNING: Brain-dump on this page. Please take with a liberal pinch of salt

Design Notes/Features

• KCM Module - can be reused in config dialog of any Telepathy using App to give a "configure accounts" option.

• Built in default auto-generated UI as a fallback for configuring any Connection manager.

• Plugin interface to provide prettier UI's for particular connection managers.

• Plugins for most important connection managers asap:
  • Gabble
  • Butterfly
  • Salut
  • Haze (mainly the more common protocols in Haze)

Current Status

Written, with a gabble plugin. HOWEVER, the design turns out to be a bit crap, and quite limited, so we need to refactor quite a lot.

TODO: Explain what's crap about the current design (Grundleborg 15:37, 12 January 2010 (UTC))

Contact

Developed mainly by George Goldberg (Find me on IRC in #kde-telepathy as 'grundleborg' or email me: 'grundleborg googlemail com'.

Redesign

Use Cases

Add an Account

Imhotep has a Yahoo Messenger account which he wants to use to text chat with his friends. He's not particularly computer savvy, but knows his username and password. However, he tends to get confused when presented with too many unfamiliar form fields.

Pretzel, on the other hand, is at school. He wants to be able to use his netbook to chat to his MSN buddies during classes on the school network. However, the school uses a proxy server and blocks the default MSN port. Pretzel is pretty good with computers so wants to change the advanced network and proxy settings of his MSN account to get round the school network limitations.

Conclusions

• Adding accounts needs to be as simple as possible by default, only presenting the minimum necessary fields.

• Advanced options need to be accessible but not threatening to less tech-savvy users.