[Kde-pim] Improving the address-book

[Janne Ojaniemi]

One of the comments related to my "Personal Wikipedia"-message was that I
should only post messages directly related to KDE-PIM on this list (although
my post was PIM-related, it just wasn't 1:1 related to any of the existing
apps). Well, I live to please. Here is my take on the Address Book that
ships in Kontact. Rest assured, I'm running out of things to comment about
(I might have one more thing to comment on), so I will soon leave you alone
:).

It seems to me that the Address Book suffers from the same thing that the
Korganizer is suffering from. The default UI looks quite confusing, and the
most important data if tucked away. Ad it too seems to suffer from those
terrible "resources".

Well, I started to think that what is really important in an address book,
and it could be presented to the user in a more straightforward way. And I
came up with this (again, just to give you an idea):

http://img377.imageshack.us/img377/9928/contactsnf8.png

Although looking at the mockup, it might be worth thinking about moving the
list of groups to the bottom of the screen, so the first thing the user
sees, is the list of contacts. Although the current location at the tops
give the user a sense of progression. First he selects the group, he views
the contents of the group, and the views the details of an individual entry.
So both approaches has it's merits.

Instead of having distribution-lists, we would be using tags. Each entry in
the address-book could be tagged with one or more tags. "John Smith" could
be tagged as "Work", "Marketing" and "Close friend"-category, and mailing
those groups would of course work. "All Contacts" would naturally list all
contacts, regardless of the tags they have. Of course the user could create
any tags he prefers.

If there are directory-services and/or other network-addressbooks, they
would be listed here as well, under a separate section.

The list of contacts would have a jump bar that the user could use to jump
to specific letter (like the contacts-list in the iPhone for example), and
of course the contacts would be fully searchable.

The toolbar would have just one button by default. I don't really see that
much use for other buttons in day-to-day use. Yes, some users need all kinds
of advanced features and whatnot, but for most users, "Add contact" is
enough. And of course the toolbar would be editable.

Not directly about Kaddressbook, but about how addresses are handled.... Any
plans on turning addresses in Kmail in to "objects", like in MacOS's
mail.app? I have always liked that particular feature. What it means that
you can drag the recipients around, and if the recipient has more than one
address, you could easily select which oh his address yo would use. Also,
addresses could be flagged so that if you try to send a mail both inside and
outside your organisations, Kmail would notify you of it, just to make sure
you don't mail sensitive information to outside.

I have just one more suggestion to make, from then on I will only reply to
comments directed at me. I promise :).
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