Review portal status bar UI/UX

[jasonrudolph]

@simurai: #15 adds a status bar icon for each portal that the user is participating in:

We'd love to get your feedback on the UI/UX. We welcome any and all feedback, but we're especially interested in your thoughts on:

• How do you feel about the icon choice?
• For a guest that has joined multiple portals, how do you feel about the use of color to identify the icon associated with the currently-focused portal?
• Right now, the user can click the portal icon to copy the portal ID to the clipboard. Soon, we may want to allow the host to use the icon to close a portal, and allow a guest to use the icon to leave a portal. Do you have any thoughts or UX suggestions for using the icon to expose both of these behaviors (i.e., copy portal ID to clipboard and close/leave portal)?

cc @as-cii @nathansobo

[nathansobo]

I really don't think we should have multiple portal icons long-term. One icon with a fly-out menu describing the more detailed situation would be better IMO.

[simurai]

How do you feel about the icon choice?

👍 I think it's the best choice and I'm not aware that it gets used elsewhere. Some alternatives:

• broadcast. Typically used for podcasts.
• zap.

For a guest that has joined multiple portals, how do you feel about the use of color to identify the icon associated with the currently-focused portal?

👍 Also good choice. Slack and other messaging apps use green to show that you're "online".

Right now, the user can click the portal icon to copy the portal ID to the clipboard. Soon, we may want to allow the host to use the icon to close a portal, and allow a guest to use the icon to leave a portal. Do you have any thoughts or UX suggestions for using the icon to expose both of these behaviors (i.e., copy portal ID to clipboard and close/leave portal)?

How about a "right-click" context-menu:

Not that easy to discover, but at the same time harder to close by accident. A context-menu would also allow to add more options later on, like "Pause/Resume" or so.

I really don't think we should have multiple portal icons long-term. One icon with a fly-out menu describing the more detailed situation would be better IMO.

Yeah, feels a bit aggressive or more like a bug. But I think ok until Milestone 2 with login and team members.

[as-cii]

I really don't think we should have multiple portal icons long-term. One icon with a fly-out menu describing the more detailed situation would be better IMO.

Yeah, feels a bit aggressive or more like a bug. But I think ok until Milestone 2 with login and team members.

Yeah, I agree 100% with that. If we have authentication and presence we could embed this entire information into the buddy list (which could be opened by clicking on an icon in the status-bar that we always show, e.g. 🗼):

We could even tweak that further to show who's currently viewing your portal and to regenerate the access code (thus stopping the share). Then, on each tab, we could display the avatars of the users who are currently editing that file: for portals, those will correspond to who's viewing the portal, whereas for live branches, they will represent every user that has that file open locally.

Thoughts? 💭

[simurai]

show who's currently viewing your portal

Yes, that would make it a lot less creepy. 😄 I can wireframe the buddy list a bit more, maybe in a separate issue.