I was thinking... how cool would it be to have all your contacts display pictures when doing a tabbed chat instead of wasting all that space on the left. So I thought... perhaps this would be a good idea:



Just a thought. Optional of course, but I think this would be pretty cool .

Thoughts? Comments? Ideas? Patchou ?

EDIT: And have it flash orange (or another color ) when a new message is sent >_>.

It looks "ok" I'm happy with it as is though, having the display pics and stuff like that would be more of a waste of space imo. No doubt though, lots of people would really like the idea.

i like the idea but it has quite a few problems.

• Patchou would practically have to recode the tabbed chat feature from scratch to make them inside the actual chat window (that is, if its possible at all, which i doubt because at the moment its a sort of wrapper window with all the chats as child windows)
  
• where your display picture would normally be (bottom right) is also removed and if it wasnt then it would look weird because there would be a huge empty space alongside the main chat box.
  
• what would it do with multi-contact conversations?
  
• wayyyyyy too many arrows

You've made some good points. I didn't even think about your own display picture! My bad . Maybe keeping your own, and condensing the message box... but that would be beyond what I think even plus could do.

I agree there are quite a few arrows... maybe only show a display picture for the contact window currently open? And then when you click another contact, their display picture would be revealed and hide the other one? Which would kind of defeat the purpose of this lol.

I think thats about all I can think of . Webcam and games would still show up on the right before anyone mentions that .

Thank you for your comments, and I guess my picture is as close as I will get to this look .

Well, if it is technically possible, I like the idea.  Personally, I have display pictures hidden, since they rarely change, and they waste a heap of space underneth them that could be better used to show text when they are visible.

It would be nice if they could be shown in some form (small preferably), while still being as compact as possible.  Perhaps loose the hide Display Picture buttons (make them clickable so that they can be hidden that way perhaps?).

So something like
_____
|  DP  |  Persons Name
|____|  Personal Message?

And stick the users status in the corner of the DP perhaps.

And of course, keep the Tab Strip open at all times, instead of when there are 2 or more chats going on.

As for the loosing your Display Pictures.. well, personally I never saw the point in them being there anyway, its shown in the Contact List, so your going to know what it is and don't need to be told every your chatting to a contact what your DP is.. but thats just my opinion.