[OTR-dev] initial otr usability comments

[Ian Goldberg]

On Sat, Dec 18, 2004 at 05:24:09PM -0800, jbash at velvet.com wrote:
> > I would like a little more of a warm fuzzy that traffic is being
> > encrypted.  Somehow marking the chat window on a per-line basis would
> > be nice.
> 
> Please, guys, if you do this, make it optional. I can't stand having
> random extra strings, or color codes, or whatever, on messages...  and I
> tend to think that OTR should be robust enough that, if I turn it on, I
> can be confident that it won't turn itself off.  I agree with the idea
> of having a visual indication of whether OTR is on somewhere inside the
> chat window (in fact, I was the one who asked for the existing
> button)... but I really don't want to have something on every line.
> 
> A user only has so many attentional resources... and so much
> screen real estate...

While I agree with jbash on this one, I'm not sure what else the proxy
can do to give you the "OTR: Private" marker.  If we just insert an
indicator message that it's on, then not only do we have to deal with
the possibility that it can be faked, but it'll scroll off the screen.

Any suggestions?

   - Ian