Scriver

[Old_Death]

As mentioned before, infobar can be easily hidden and the window will become simple again.
I do not see the reason to display avatars when infobar is hidden. Avatars do not change that often so what is the point in looking at the same picture for hours?
That is why I am not going to add any legacy mode do display avatars in the place they were displayed before.

That's the wrong approch, I think. I am used to a very minimalistic chat environment and therefore I'll probably not use this bar, simply because it needs extra size, not because I dislike the concept (in fact, the idea is very good). As somebody mentionned before, the avatars are quite important in order to identify the differnet chat windows, especially if there are more than only 4 or 5 on your screen.
Therefore having the avatar be displayed where it was before as an aditionnal option is really needed, since else, a user has only the 'all or nothing' choice, which is generally a bad choice if you have to take it.

Greetings,
Old

[Spoon]

Perhaps there should be a possibility to STYLE the infobar...it's quite ugly...and doesn't harmonize with the used IEView skin (starts with the color)

[Tara]

Perhaps there should be a possibility to STYLE the infobar...it's quite ugly...and doesn't harmonize with the used IEView skin (starts with the color)

The colours can be changed through the options (Miranda IM Options >> Customize >> Fonts >> Messaging >> Single Messaging).

[rikiriki]

For what matters, I too am disappointed by the mandatory moving of avatars to the infobar - which is huge and far from my eyes when I type messages. Of course I respect the author's work, but this change, with no possibility of customizing where the avatar should be shown, looks to me like regress, not progress.

[dreadnaut]

As mentioned before, infobar can be easily hidden and the window will become simple again.
I do not see the reason to display avatars when infobar is hidden. Avatars do not change that often so what is the point in looking at the same picture for hours?
That is why I am not going to add any legacy mode do display avatars in the place they were displayed before.

Simplicity and usefullness are very personal concepts, and every person has a different opinion. For me simplicity is fewer objects on screen and low redundancy of information. I keep mood icons, activity icons and chat states disabled, and I already see the name in the tab name, chat log and window title.

This is all I need from a message dialog:

and it's the reason why I use Miranda instead of other -more baroque- clients: it can be minimalistic and complete.

The avatar is something that helps me recognize an incoming message or an existing session at a glance: I don't look at it for hours, but I can look at it for a few milliseconds and know who the session belongs to, without the need to read small text or uncover large areas of the message window. It is very useful to have it in a corner, similar to a notification, and next to the message box, where it does not consume vertical space, so limited on many screens.

I hope you will consider reintroducing this option, in view of the many arguments supporting it appearing in the last pages.

[the_leech]

ok, I think we will ditch the inforbar then.
Now, have you guys any ideas how we should handle avatar size?
I REALLY do not want to put all these options to limit height back.

[Targaff]

You could just lock it to the height of the messaging window plus the toolbar (i.e. anything below the main window). I'd be surprised if many people had a setup that would make that unreasonable - certainly most of the images I've seen seem to be along those lines.

[the_leech]

You could just lock it to the height of the messaging window plus the toolbar (i.e. anything below the main window). I'd be surprised if many people had a setup that would make that unreasonable - certainly most of the images I've seen seem to be along those lines.

It does not sound good:
1) What about auto-resizeable input area?
2) What about people who disabled toolbar (avatar will be really, really small) ?

[Targaff]

I don't really see why either of these are issues. If you set the avatar relative to the input area then the image would, by extension, scale accordingly; and if someone disables the toolbar the avatar's never going to be higher than the height of the input area in any event. In effect you're defining the size of the avatar not by the height of the input area or toolbar but by the bottom border of the main window.

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/7615/scrwin.png

(i.e. Height of avatar = height of window minus height of main window, width = relative to height of avatar)

It may be that I've got the wrong end of the stick, but when you say you don't want to put the options back I would understand this to mean that in effect a design decision needs to be made on how the rest of the window is set out, because essentially you have two options: hard-code the avatar size or make it relative to something else. Purely from a design point of view, this is the most elegant solution.

[dimas]

what is bad in options for avatar height? i found idea with min/max height very nice.

look here - we have quite a lot space in the middle of toolbar, and it's unused. if needed, you can make it a little bit higher to get enough space for 1-2 text-lines.
so, i suggest smth like this: