EmpathyVsPidginUsability

Revision 20 as of 2008-08-18 16:06:51

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This is a comparison of the usability of Empathy and Pidgin (as suggested in DesktopTeam/Meeting/2008-08-07), to help in deciding which should be used in Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex.

Test performed by MatthewPaulThomas from 11~18 August 2008, with empathy 2.23.6-0ubuntu2 and pidgin 1:2.4.3-ubuntu1 on Intrepid Ibex alpha 3.

Access and installation

In the Applications menu, Empathy had the tooltip “Send and receive instant messages”, and Pidgin had the slightly geekier “Send instant messages over multiple protocols”. In both cases, this is slightly missing the point: sending and receiving instant messages are the means by which you chat with people, not ends in themselves. (And in Empathy, you can have voice or video chats without sending or receiving instant messages at all.) A better tooltip would be “Chat with people on AIM, Google Talk, MSN, Jabber”... etc.

Empathy access

Empathy appeared in “Applications” > “Internet” as “Empathy Instant Messenger” with an icon of two blue blobs.

Pidgin access

Pidgin appeared in “Applications” > “Internet” as “Pidgin Internet Messenger”, and a purple bird icon.

Installation

Whichever program is chosen will be installed by default, so the package description matters more for whichever program is not chosen. However, the description still appears in Add/Remove Programs’ “Installed applications only” view. And for both programs, the description presented in Add/Remove Programs is user-hostile.

In Empathy (inappropriate sections underlined): ()

  • Empathy Instant Messenger

    High-level library and user-interface for Telepathy

    Empathy consists of a rich set of reusable instant messaging widgets, and a
    GNOME client using those widgets
    . It uses Telepathy and Nokia's Mission
    Control
    , and reuses Gossip's UI. The main goal is to permit desktop
    integration by providing libempathy and libempathy-gtk libraries.

    libempathy-gtk is a set of powerful widgets that can be embeded [sic] into any
    GNOME application.

    This packet contains the empathy IM application and account manager.

And in Pidgin (inappropriate sections underlined): ()

  • Pidgin Internet Messenger

    graphical multi-protocol instant messaging client for X

    Pidgin is a graphical, modular Instant Messaging client capable of using
    AIM/ICQ, Yahoo!, MSN, IRC, Jabber, Napster, Zephyr, Gadu-Gadu, Bonjour,
    Groupwise, Sametime, SILC, and SIMPLE all at once.

    Some extra packages are recommended to use the core functionality present
    in most pidgin installations:
    * gstreamer0.10-plugins-base, gstreamer0.10-plugins-good
     - Sound support.

    More extra packages are suggested to use increased functionality:
    * gnome-panel | kicker | docker:
     - To use the system tray icon functionality (minimizing to an icon, having
    the icon blink when there are new messages, etc.)
    * evolution-data-server:
     - For interfacing with an Evolution address book
    * libsqlite3-0:
     - To use Contact Availability Prediction plugin

    Homepage: http://www.pidgin.im

Setup

How easy is it to:

  • set up my existing Yahoo, Google Talk, AIM, and Jabber accounts?
  • create a new Jabber account?
  • connect to Freenode IRC with automatic NickServ identification?

  • connect to Canonical IRC with SSL and authentication?

Empathy

On first launching Empathy, nothing appeared to happen: a non-expert might easily think that the program doesn’t work at all. A small grey square appeared in the notification area, but it took me a while to notice. (fixed in trunk)

Clicking the grey square opened an empty “Contact List” window, with an “Accounts” window over top of it. The window said: “To add a new account, you can click on the 'Add' button and a new entry will be created for you to start configuring.” This made it unclear how to set up an existing account (), why the “Add” button hadn’t clicked itself (), or why I’d be interested in “configuring” an “entry” instead of setting up an account. The “Add” button required further interaction to complete its goal, but did not end with an ellipsis ().

Clicking “Add” changed the right side of the “Accounts” window into a form for setting up a “New Account”, despite having an “I already have an account I want to use” checkbox (). The “Undo” button didn’t actually undo anything; it just returned to the “No Accounts Configured” display (). If the “I already have an account I want to use” checkbox was checked, the “Create” button didn’t actually create an account either ().

empathy-new-account.jpg

Accounts were given weird names by default, for example “jabber0” or “aim1” (bug 546445).

The “Login ID” or equivalent field should have been focused by default, but was not ().

Expanding the “Advanced” section enlarged the window, but collapsing it again did not return the window to its previous size ().

Empathy repeatedly asked to create a “default keyring”. If I chose not to do this (by clicking “Deny”), Empathy falsely reported that all accounts had an “authentication failure”, and it wasn’t obvious why this had happened ().

Pressing the Enter key in the password field did not complete setting up the account (). And whenever an account was created, by default it was not “Enabled” (). These are likely to make people wonder why the account setup isn’t working. Even after enabling an account, Empathy remained “Offline” by default, when the reason I set up an account in the first place was almost certainly that I wanted to use it (). The status menu did not extend to the full width of the menu’s button, making choosing a status needlessly difficult ().

The Accounts window covered the entire contents of the Contact List window by default, making the effects of account changes difficult to see (), and the Contact List window could not be brought in front of the Accounts window ().

Failed authentication was cleverly shown in the contact list with an “Edit account” button, but this panel was not scrollable, so in a small window it subtracted from the space available to show contacts in other accounts (). And the notification persisted even after the account had been removed; clicking the “Edit account” button in this case produced a malfunctioning Accounts window ().

Clicking “Remove” produced an obnoxious alert telling me that “Any associated conversations and chat rooms will NOT be removed if you decide to proceed”, despite Empathy knowing that there were no associated conversations or chat rooms ().

Yahoo

With “Yahoo” chosen, Empathy asked for “Login ID” and password, which — because it was in a single “Settings” group — looked wonky (). Having previously used my Yahoo account with Yahoo Messenger and other chat programs, I was familiar with the term “Yahoo ID”, but not “Login ID”, so it wasn’t clear whether I was supposed to enter my Yahoo ID or my entire Yahoo address ().

Entering just my Yahoo ID, I successfully connected to my Yahoo account.

Google Talk

With “Google Talk” chosen, Empathy again asked for “Login ID” and password. My Google Talk account uses an e-mail address, not a “login ID”.

Entering my e-mail address in the field, I successfully connected to my Google Talk account.

AIM

The first field was correctly labelled “Screen Name”, but again was not focused by default.

The “Advanced” section of the account setup was not lined up with the rest of the form ().

I successfully connected to my AIM account.

Existing Jabber

The Advanced section was oddly indented and poorly aligned (), and contained a “Use old SSL” checkbox for which the meaning of the off state was not obvious ().

I successfully connected to my existing Jabber account.

New Jabber

I guessed that to create a new account, I needed to uncheck “I already have an account I want to use”. However, this appeared to do nothing: the resulting form looked identical to that for adding an existing Jabber acount, and it did not ask me to enter the password for my new account twice (as a registration form should do). I went ahead anyway, and Empathy pretended to add a new account, but uselessly showed the error “Name in use” in the Contact List, instead of showing it in the registration form when I might have been able to do something about it ().

Freenode IRC

There was no apparent way to set up an IRC connection in Empathy.

Canonical IRC

There was no apparent way to set up an IRC connection in Empathy.

Pidgin

On first launch, Pidgin helpfully noticed that I had no accounts set up, and presented an “Accounts” window with a welcome message inviting me to “press the Add button below and configure your first account”. Since this was the only useful thing I could do, it wasn’t clear why the “Add” button didn’t click itself (). The button also required further interaction to complete its goal, but was missing an ellipsis ().

pidgin-first-launch.jpg

On clicking “Add”, a fairly straightforward “Add Account” window appeared, with the only slightly confusing details being “Protocol” () and “Local alias” ().

The “Add Account” window was not a dialog, so it was possible to return the “Accounts” window to the front, click “Add” again, and open any number of “Add Account” windows. It seems likely that the only reason people will ever do this is by mistake ().

pidgin-add-add-add.jpg

The “Add Account” window should have focused the first text field by default, but did not, instead focusing the “Basic” tab (). Almost the entire contents of the second tab changed depending on the “Protocol” menu selection, which was confusing because that menu was inside the first tab.

Choosing a different account type caused the window to resize in both directions, causing even the account type menu to jump around ().

The button for completing the account setup was labelled “Save”, when “Add” would have made more sense (). The button did not respond to the Enter key ().

Yahoo

On choosing “Yahoo” I was invited to enter my “Username” and password. Yahoo accounts have Yahoo IDs, not “Usernames” ().

On clicking “Save”, the (now very different) “Accounts” window showed that I was online with Yahoo, and my Yahoo buddies appeared in the “Buddy List” window.

Google Talk

On choosing “Google Talk” I was invited to enter my “Username”, “Domain” (defaulting to “gmail.com”), “Resource” (defaulting to “Home”), and password. In contrast, Google’s own Google Talk client asks only for “Email” and password. I had no idea what a “resource” was in this context, and there was no help available ().

Ignoring the “Resource” field, I successfully connected to my Google Talk account. Confusingly, it showed up in the “Accounts” window as an “XMPP” account rather than a Google Talk account (). (I know that Google Talk uses XMPP, but presumably the point of having an explicit Google Talk option at all is to hide that implementation detail.)

AIM

“AIM” was the default “Protocol” choice, and invited me to enter my “Username” and password. AIM accounts have Screen Names, not “usernames” ().

I successfully connected to my AIM account.

Existing Jabber

The protocol menu contains “XMPP” but not “Jabber”; even if technically correct, this is unhelpful, since even people who use Jabber may be unfamiliar with “XMPP” (). (One way of solving this would be to label the choice “Jabber/XMPP”.)

On choosing “XMPP” I was invited to enter my “Username”, “Domain”, “Resource”, and password. I was used to entering my complete Jabber ID (mpt@jabber.org.nz), not separating it into a “username” and “domain”, and again I did not know what a “resource” was.

I successfully connected to my Jabber account.

New Jabber

There was no apparent way to create a new Jabber account within Pidgin.

Freenode IRC

On choosing “IRC” I was invited to enter my “Username”, server, and password. Here “Username” meant “Nickname”, and this time it wasn’t just misleading, it was false: the real IRC “Username” field was on the “Advanced” tab ().

I successfully connected to Freenode, and a small window opened containing server messages that I wasn’t interested in. This happened every time I connected to the network ().

Canonical IRC

I successfully connected to Canonical IRC using SSL.

Accounts

  • Can I easily tell which accounts are online, and toggle accounts online and offline?
  • Can I easily change my picture, choosing from a set of default pictures or taking a photo with a built-in camera?

Empathy

...

Pidgin

...

Status

  • How easily can I see my current status?
  • How easily can I change my status?

Empathy

...

Both status menus were available when no accounts were set up. This is probably more confusing than useful ().

Pidgin

...

Contacts

  • How attractive and compact is the contact list?
  • How easy is it to find someone and tell whether they’re online?
  • How easily can I add and remove contacts?
  • If someone has multiple accounts, how easy is it to group them?
  • Are animated pictures distracting? If someone has a garish or unrecognizable picture, how easily can I override it with a photo of the person?
  • How well-integrated is the contact list with my address book?

Empathy

...

Copying and pasting a colleague’s Jabber ID, I copied some leading and trailing whitespace as well. The “Identifier” field should have ignored this, but did not ().

Pidgin

...

Notification of new conversations

  • What happens if someone starts a chat with me?
  • What happens if someone mentions my name on IRC?

Empathy

...

Pidgin

...

Text chat

  • How easy is sending a message?
  • Are conversations attractive and easy to read?
  • How well are long messages handled?
  • How well are URLs handled?
  • How well are emoticons handled?

Empathy

...

Pidgin

...

IRC channel windows were the same size as an individual chat window, which is inappropriately small for a chat that is likely to involve dozens of people ().

Voice chat

  • How easily can I see which people accept voice chat?
  • What’s the sound quality like?
  • Is it easy to mute the input? or the output?

Empathy

...

Pidgin

Pidgin does not have voice chat.

Video chat

...

Empathy

...

Pidgin

Pidgin does not have video chat.

Sending and receiving files

...

Empathy

...

Pidgin

...

Chat logs

...

Empathy

...

Pidgin

...

Other cool stuff

...

Empathy

...

Pidgin

...

Conclusion

...

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