IM status icons aren't lined up with application icons

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

indicator-messages 0.4.92-0ubuntu4, Ubuntu Ocelot

The addition of IM statuses to the messaging menu makes it clearer that its items are badly aligned. It is now too ugly to remain an exception to the standard menu layout.

The left edges of IM status icons and application icons should be exactly aligned.
The left edges of IM status text and application names should be exactly aligned.

Wireframe: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MessagingMenu?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=messaging-menu.png
Current screenshot: https://launchpadlibrarian.net/77028366/Screenshot%20at%202011-08-11%2016%3A23%3A34.png

[appi2012 (appi2012)]

Since the chat status buttons only pertain (that is, change the status of) the chat client, shouldn't it go under the "Chat" heading?

Unless the plan is to support multiple chat clients. However, since most people only use one chat client, the positioning seems a bit awkward.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

The theory is that multiple applications can either use, or otherwise react to, the status you set. Empathy already does, but so could (for example) XChat and Skype. That theory could change in future, but it won't for Oneiric, and this bug exists in Oneiric.

[Ted Gould (ted)]

Uhg, I read this bug wrong and fixed something else :-/ Glad that's fixed though.

Anyway, I don't think that we can really do this. The big reason would be that if we left the gutter for the radio items and the arrows, and the arrows are still left aligned then the space between the arrow and the application icon would be almost 15px -- which is a lot of space there.

So, I think we'd need to change something else in the design to make this work. Either make the arrows larger or shaped differently, or something else to make it seem visually connected to the application icon.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

It may make sense for the triangles to be larger or closer, but that does not need to block fixing this bug at all. Even if you think the distant triangles in the wireframe are unattractive, it's pretty clear they're much less unattractive than the bad alignment is.

[Jan Schürmann (visionfactory.net)]

i thought that isn't a bug because for me it's much clearer like this.
the status is something else than the applications.
btw, status for Gwibber and received emails in Thunderbird are correctly lined up with the IM status so everything is fine!!
i think this isn't a bug, please don't change anything there

[Lars Karlitski (larsu)]

I have a fix for that in https://code.launchpad.net/~larsu/indicator-messages/style-cleanups (screenshot is attached, separators will be shown in the real version).

I agree with Ted that the space between triangle and the application icon looks awkward. Maybe we can tweak the theming to make the left margin a bit smaller. I'd reopen the design task, but seem to be missing the rights for that.