An update on Skype for Mac
Over the last few days we’ve seen renewed interest in the design of Skype for Mac, and I’m going to give you some insight into our thinking and into our plans to address some of your concerns.
Some background: at Skype, we build products for users ranging from grandmothers in China to 15 year old students in Connecticut – and everyone else in between. We take a huge number of factors into consideration when designing software: from different usage patterns (video/voice/IM) to technical literacy; from age to cultural norms. All of these have an impact on everything from product and process design, user interface layout, iconography and more. And given this diversity of design decisions, some of them occasionally fail to please segments of our users. I’d like to reiterate our commitment to one segment in particular – those of you who’ve been vocal in your feedback on the most recent versions of Skype for Mac.
The shift in user experience from 2.8 to 5.X is a significant one, and we acknowledge that this was a lot to have delivered to existing users in a single update. Nevertheless, we believe that the 5.X platform offers significant advantages over the previous versions for the majority of our users, and this is borne out in the usage and opinion data we’re seeing from the Mac user base as a whole.
However, there’s still plenty of work for us to do and we know that not all of you prefer 5.X. To that end, we’ve taken a comprehensive look at the feedback from the last couple of months and identified two broad patterns. I’ve captured a distillation of some of the issues we have heard.
Some of you want to be able to multitask more within Skype
We’ve seen a number of comments from people who want to be able to make video calls and have IM conversations at the same time, or have multiple IM conversations visible at once – and many more permutations and combinations. If you’re in this group, you probably find the current 5.X interface less flexible than 2.8.
What are we doing about this? Two things. First, we’re making Skype 2.8 available for download from our website, and it’ll be available for the foreseeable future. Note that it doesn’t let you make (or participate in) group video calls, nor does it contain all of the performance improvements we’ve made in 5.X. But the last thing we want is to prevent you from using software you prefer.
Second, we’re planning to make some additional changes which will allow you to multitask more effectively within Skype, including a change to the UI which will allow you to continue an IM conversation with one person or group while participating in a video call with another, or when switching to another app.
It’s also worth pointing out the call monitor window, which has been in 5.X since the beginning, which shows you the status of the current call, allowing you to adjust volume, mute, and so on, no matter what you’re looking at. Additionally, the compact sidebar view should help you navigate quickly among a larger number of concurrent IM conversations.
Some of you want to be able to multitask more between Skype and other apps
This is how we interpret feedback about the overall ‘size’ of Skype. Many of you have commented about the size of the Skype window, and published screenshots of how you use Skype 2.8 in conjunction with other apps.
We introduced the contact monitor panel in 5.X, which gives you an easy way to see your contacts’ status while you’re doing other things. To display it, just press Command-3. You can choose whether you see all of your contacts, or just a certain group or groups.
On the other hand, we will be sticking with the metaphor of a primary, combined window which newer users and less frequent users find easier to learn. We plan to introduce overlay panels like the contact monitor to provide additional flexibility for those of you who need it.
The future of Skype on the Mac
Mac OS X continues to be a very important platform for us, and we’re very privileged to have such an active and vocal user community on the Mac platform. As Krishna said in his previous blog post, we’re moving to a much more rapid delivery cycle for our products, which should give us opportunities to iterate and improve on aspects of functionality and experience in a much shorter timeframe than we’ve been able to in the past. We’re committed to delivering regular improvements to the product – and those listed above are part of a direct response to your feedback. Please keep it coming.
Yeah – but while you are at it will you make it look and feel like a Mac program instead of Windoze? Please…
The new interface is horrible, frankly its down to where I only login if I know someone needs me otherwise I don’t run the app.
Looking forward to seeing what solution you can come up with.
How about you consider creating a version 2.9 of Skype that features exactly the same interface as 2.8 but also enables group video?
Why don’t you just commit to supporting 2.8 indefinitely? Most of us would be happy if you did.
I have no complaints with 2.8. I’m not sure why you felt it needed such a drastic overhaul. I can multi task, phone, IM and video just fine. So can my 70 year father and 90 year Grandma. Seriously. They tried Skype 5 and I had to revert it back for them. There is just too much going on there for it to be at all user friendly.
2.8 is fine. Don’t add anymore features to it. A lot of us just use iChat for screen sharing and group video anyways, and I won’t pay for group video, thats ridiculous.
The whole ICQ/old Skype/Adium/iChat/Jabber/Google chat paradigm—a tight floating contact list + floating (tabbed or separated at will) chat windows—did not ever need to be broken or improved. It was good, it was what Skype was about.
People devise a small portion of their screen for the contact list to be always visible, then add or close chat windows. That’s all there is to it.
Roll back to that (2.8) visual style and you will get no less than 80% of users happy.
2.8 did have its problems, like i.e. lack of new message notification in dock icon during conversation (bumping the icon doesn’t count, you need to add number of unread messages like all good software does). This is something you might want to deal with.
Anyway, good to finally see you acknowledge user feedback. When you first published the 5 beta, you removed my negative comment from your blog.
See what Twitter is doing, they just removed quickbar (#dickbar) from iPhone client and rolled back to a clean, “old” version.
There’s probably a million people who would be thankful if you did just that.
oh look its april fools. is it just me or does that basically read we’ve read your comments and are going to just go ahead and ignore them. If you want the old skype here’s the link but dont expect it to be updated.
I guess Rick has also made it quite clear that the combined window is staying for good, so much for hoping that’ll change! Note how skype only cares about less frequent and new users — time to look for a replacement!
I dislike the new UI but why not a choice of interfaces as I like the appreciate performance enhancements.
For more than ten years I am using (paid) Skype (still can remember the first time I noticed 1million users at one time) and am happy with the way it is. Group video calling and such are a waste for me at this stage.
Please consult a user group before making these major UI changes as you can loose us easy to new market entrants.
I won’t mind the “one window” layout if you make some enhancements to the Contact Monitor HUD as follows:
1. Don’t make it a HUD. Having the option to have it always on top might be nice, but it’s intrusive.
2. Allow us to select multiple contacts in order to initiate a conference chat/call/etc.
3. Allow us to drag files to it.
4. Allow us to specify the order of groups within it.
So basically, make the Contact Monitor exactly like the old buddy list.
I want to add this in and hopefully it makes a bit of sense:
The chat box underneath a call, especially on MacBook and MacBook Pro models, doesn’t normally allow the user to view too much of the chat unless the top area (normally containing video, but if video off it’s an icon) is dragged up.
However, I’ve noticed quite a big of useless space between lines of text sent and an even larger gap between the last message sent and the input box.
I understand trying to make the chat more readable, but optimal readability can still be attained while dropping a few pixels here and there—especially the 20 or 30 between the last message sent and the input box.
Thank you, Skype for Mac team. I am glad to hear this. i was seriously considering seeking an alternative, but this post has changed my mind. I hope in the next few iterations that issues with video quality for those of us with third-party HD webcams on the Mac (mini) will be resolved so I can take advantage of the ‘HD’ part. Also, I am wondering if an HD audio codec is going to be implemented on Skype for Mac. Thank you again. Keep up the good work.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! For listening to your Mac users!
Dear Skype,
Please quit trying to “interpret” what we are telling you as you are failing at that too. The Skype 5 UI for Mac doesn’t just fall short in some aspects. It’s a complete train wreck! We want the Skype 2.8 UI back in Skype 6. No interpretation necessary and no excuses.
Not only do advanced users find the new UI difficult and frustrating to use but novice and new users hate equally as much. Everyone I know who has come into contact with Skype 5 (including grandparents, parents, teens, and children) has commented on how frustrating and annoying the software is. This includes mothers and students in China (No Chinese grandmothers were available for comment).
Please note that while I understand mistakes do happen, as a paying subscriber I will not hesitate to take my business and that of my family and friends elsewhere should you continue in the current direction.
PS: Why did it take you so long to repost v2.8? Your own user support team has been left covering for you by handing out links to mac.oldapps.com for months.
A good start to alleviate my frustration would be to stop floating the contact monitor above all other windows. i currently have it pushed to the lower right corner and mostly off the screen, and yet it still gets in the way. Command 3 is nice, but consider this: command 3 only works if you are actively using Skype. if it’s running in the background, command 3 is useless. At least allow me the option to decide if I want to devote a large portion of my screen real estate to Skype, or to the application I choose. You guys work on skype all day long, so of course it’s the foremost app on your screen. When i am working on a project, but waiting for a call, I want to work on that project, and worry about Skype when the call comes in, but not before.
“Nevertheless, we believe that the 5.X platform offers significant advantages over the previous versions for the majority of our users, and this is borne out in the usage and opinion data we’re seeing from the Mac user base as a whole.”
Can you share the source of this information with us ?
It’s the opposite of what I see at work. I don’t know a single user that stuck with 5.x.
Thanks for the comments so far – for those of you advocating a complete return to the 2.8 UI, I have a question: do you think we’ve accurately captured your frustration with the 5.X UI with the two statements in the blog post? Or is there something else you think we should look at?
Thank you for making the latest version of 2.8 available for download. Installed now.
Let me know when you allow us to hide the sidebar. The window *is* too big.
This is a rather mealy mouthed response to an overwhelmingly negative response to 5.X.
The majority of people don’t like the design choices you’ve made. In fact many of them were simply wrong. Please acknowledge that rather than telling us that we simply don’t “get” it and you’ve designed the new interface for everyone.
Why not simply make the perfectly usable 2.8 interface available with the next version as an option with the various performance tweaks under the bonnet? I understand you spend a lot of time, and money, developing a new interface “experience” and you want to stand by that. But this smells of someone’s personal project rather than sensible design.
Consider the recent UI update on the Steam platform before it was rolled out on OS X. Steam has always been small and tidy and sits in the corner of my Window’s desktop all the time. (Just as Skype 2.8 does on my Mac) It can be expanded into the larger Steam Store/Community etc. In the beta they introduced a much larger chunky UI without the popular compact mode. Huge amounts of feedback petitioned for a return of the compact mode which was promptly delivered. Why? Because this compact mode is how 99% of users actually use Steam. In the same way people have certain expectations regarding IM clients. It’s a utility, a small app that sits to one side and allows you to do things on the side. Steam lets me mange my games but doesn’t get in my face other than to offer a list of games. Skype 2.8 offers a nice small list of contacts that I can interact with and if I need more focused usage I can open a larger window. When I’m done it goes back away into it’s corner.
Even my own computer illiterate mother wanted to go back to 2.8 after she got lost in 5. If you think jumbo icons make things easy for older people or less tech savvy people, your mistaken. The debacle over Office 2010 testifies to that. I’ve found such folks typically have to learn everything as a procedure. If there is an update like the one from 2.8 to 5 they suddenly panic because they have to learn a new sequence of steps from scratch.
Such a drastic and unnecessary change is only going to piss off everyone. People “wot aren’t good on computers” will find it disorientating and confusing while everyone else will be annoyed by the Fisher Price look.
A short answer to Peter would be “no”. People here are not talking about frequency of multitasking, they are talking about screen real estate usage. This comes at a real premium on laptops and Skype should not assume that its program is so invaluable as to take up screen space for unnecessary information and graphics. When users are having a video call, they want to be able to just display the video window. If users mainly use Skype for chats, they want to be able to hide all other parts of the program. Simple as that. I don’t think anybody has a problem with the unified window mode for new users, but please, make it optional.
I’m glad to see Skype is actually listening to it’s users. But skype is still ignoring the main complaints. By multitasking within Skype, people mean being able to see, simultaneously, each chat, video, or call that is happening, if they want to, as well as all contacts; switching the mode of a single view is no substitute for this.
When people complain about the size, they mean literally that: it’s too big in relation to other apps they also need to work with. What does Cmd 3 to view contacts have to do with it? That’s important, but a completely different issue. Also, despite how much screen real estate the new window steals, there is so much less info shown: only about 1/3 the contacts as before.
I understand that skype has invested a huge amount of time and resources into 5.x, but the criticism from users in this and other forums has been consistent and concrete for some time now, and skype just appears stubborn in response. For example, in the blog post, scare quotes were place around ‘size’ and the writer, basically, just changed the subject. There is a lot of merit in what users are saying.
I use Skype for business. I have about 4 or 5 contacts that I regularly need in my contact window for IM chat. For my calls I use the search bar to quickly gain access to one of my contacts. This is the easiest way. I don’t want to have all my contacts in my face, nor do I want previous contacts, “this week” or floating contacts or whatever else.
I use video chats once or twice a week with my family overseas. 2.8 is simple for this. Every so often we open iChat for group video, but not enough that we would ever pay for the service on Skype.
This is how I use Skype. I understand other people might have 30 contacts that they might want to see at one time of whatever, but the fact is, its your job to design and accommodate both types of users.
Speaking of iChat. I can have a Skype 2.8 contact list, and an iChat contact list beside each other, and it still takes up less screen real estate than Skype 5. This is a problem for me. The amount of real estate Skype 5 takes up is the single biggest issue for me. I do not want the all in one window solution you are trying to push on users.
I am still getting to terms with 5, generally welcome. using Skype a lot I do need an easy way of knowing my missed calls. in 2.8 they were clearly identified. Now I have to work to find them. today calls with a red symbol would help as before
Skype, please, please take note: with this new Mac version, what you have done is the same as what Tropicana Juice did when they tried to overhaul their product packaging – they made everyone very unhappy, but they learned, and switched back straight away to the old design. They got a ton of POSITIVE publicity as a result.
I have no idea why you have changed a great app into something barely usable which looks like it was designed to run on Windows XP. It’s TERRIBLE. Please just change it back and keep your Mac fans on your side!
I just want to see my Skype video contacts first, and those with phone numbers underneath, as before. I can also cope with a lot of info on the screen at once, and so can a Chinese grandmother, please don’t be so patronising, who are you, Microsoft?
We have already reverted back to the old version (2.8.0.866) so we have all our Skype video contacts together and can see which ones are online.
The new UI is a disaster mainly because the giant buttons. I am using skype as a chatting tool not a web browser that takes up almost all my screen. At least offer people some choice to modify the layout. The coverflow is useless also. So I am going back to 2.8 without hesitation until they fix this problem. For the new UI designer, YOU SUCK!!!
I think you are missing the point that the single combined window IS the issue for MacOSX users. If you want Skype for Mac users to use your premium video conferencing services, en masse, then you are going to have to modify v2.8 to support video conferencing.
As it stands, Skype 5 for mac is the best advert for Gtalk I have ever seen.
I’m downloading Skype 2.8 as I type. Good riddance to version 5.x!
Besides the UI being a step backwards from the manageable little window we had before, I have noticed more problems with dropped calls, failed connections, and poor audio quality, and outright crashes than I had when I was using 2.8.
The UI problems are serious and go beyond the “advanced multitasking user” points you make in this post. The first thing I noticed on day one of using Skype 5.0 is that I can’t look far back in my history any more. Where are my old calls? I used to use that information. The contacts list is a mess. This program isn’t Photoshop – you shouldn’t need or want to take up such a portion of the screen.
I hope version 2.8 will remain supported until Skype can take the reaction of version 5.0 seriously and learn from this mistake. If that doesn’t happen, don’t expect to see any more Skype Credits purchased from my account.
Hello Peterparkes,
I don’t think you have accurately captured my frustration or those of my family or friends at all. Your own post is an excellent example of this. You are clearly aware that most of us want, as you put it “A complete return to the 2.8 UI”, yet the original post states “we will be sticking with the metaphor of a primary, combined window”.
We want a minimalistic slimmed down multi window UI similar or identical in design to v2.8 or Adium. Its that simple.
PS: Im sure most of the Mac users at Skype feel the same way as the rest of us.
I gotta say I’m glad you are continuing to support the old version. I really can’t stand the new one and have used it less and less due to the horrible interface. What exactly were you guys smoking when you came up with that GUI anyway?
Just to counter all the negativity. I love the new interface… especially the hiding of contacts that I rarely ever talk to. So much simpler. Take heart though – people always get precious when you change an interface people have grown accustomed to.
I think 2.8 had bad usability. I always searching for the right button to push, but now things are where I’d expect them to be intuitively.
So thank you – and don’t let the complainers get you down. Innovate fearlessly.
@Peterparkes
No, I don’t think that you’ve captured our frustration with the statements in the blog post.
Like many above, I interpret it as bull-headed developers / designers who have sold themselves on the coolness of their design and are currently incapable of a) recognizing that they’ve made a mistake and b) attempting to recover. Step one is to identify that you have a problem – you’re still in the pathetic denial and limp attempts at pacification phase.
At its most basic, I believe that you have confused “design” with “usability.”
For example – at no point in the statements above do you say anything about screen real-estate. I use skype every day from a laptop……with a laptop screen……not a particularly large laptop screen. With the new design I have to keep the program maximized to be able to see anything more than 15 lines of chat log. The increase in spacing between chat lines and the thick user bar at the top make it difficult to glance through the chat logs of the multiple skype chat rooms I’m currently in and I’m incapable of viewing an active skype chat on one side of the screen and a terminal / text editor / etc. on the other side.
Your “design” is getting in the way of my ability to actually “use” the program.
I don’t know how you justified these and similar decisions in your mind, but the “more like a mac” cop-out is pretty weak. Apple came out with a revolutionary phone that has one button and nobody freaked out – they loved it. You came out with an update to your layout and had to close comments in the announcement post because you were getting blown out of the water by how much people hated it.
It’s quite clear that you folks are no Steve Jobs and the sooner you embrace that fact and stop trying to tell your users what’s good for them, the sooner you’ll be able to put up blog posts without cringing.
Ah, my downgrade to 2.8 has finished, now I can get back to work.
@peterparkes: The problem with the contact monitor, is that it is always on top. The problem with the combined window is that it is just too big.
The old two window system meant that I could hide the contact list behind another window while having the chat window open, or vice versa. Both windows were significantly smaller than the combined window.
What is even more repugnant is that you forced the upgrade thru, ignoring my preference to skip it.
While the reinstatement of 2.8 is much welcomed, thank you, my treatment in this case has lead to a serious erosion of trust.
In response to “do you think we’ve accurately captured your frustration with the 5.X UI with the two statements in the blog post?” I’d say, no, not exactly.
There’s a distinct spin you need to apply to interpret the near-universal comment “the interface takes up too much space” to a desire to do more “multitasking”, either inside or outside of Skype.
Most of the time what Skype or any IM or communications app is doing is idling, providing updates on user presence. It should do this while consuming a minimum of system resources– screen real estate included. It should stay as far out of your way as possible until the user indicates that interaction is desired. Already, Skype 2.8 is not as good at this as many other apps on the Mac: Adium for IM and, incredibly, FaceTime for VOIP, which essentially has no UI whatsoever until a call is initiated.
Even so, 2.8 can be tweaked to provide a minimal, online contacts list with updated presence information that doesn’t obscure too much of the screen to allow other apps to be used. It is disingenuous to describe this as “multitasking with other apps”. It’s a skype-centric viewpoint to call it that. This isn’t “I want to do other things while I have Skype open”– the idea is that while I am actively engaged in using my computer for other things, it is to some degree useful to have Skype open should I need it. With Skype 5, the app became a positive hindrance to doing anything OTHER than using Skype– to the point that it encourages using the machine solely for Skype while it is open, and then closing Skype when finished, or at least, hiding all of its windows. The contact pane takes up too much space even to keep that open– even the revised one.
Thanks again for the follow-up comments. To address a few of the questions raised:
We realise that it’s frustrating to be told the new design works when (in its current form) it doesn’t work for you. That’s why we’re committed to making changes to address your feedback.
On the ‘screen real estate’ point – we hear that loud and clear. But we think heart of the problem is actually about multitasking rather than window size. The reason you ask for a smaller window is because you want to see your Skype contacts (or a video call) while doing something else.
And some specific replies:
@adrianlafond – to your multitasking point, that’s exactly how we interpret it too, so apologies if that wasn’t clear in the post. We plan to make changes to allow you to see multiple modes at once.
@rickyegeland – your full history is still there – just click a contact, and use the ‘View Earlier Messages’ bar across the top to navigate back through the history. You can also type in the search box to search through your IM history.
@notgeorge – we launched a chat style competition a couple of weeks ago, and I expect that the results will include some more compact designs.
@rrooley @mxpal1 – thanks for the specific feedback; we’ll be sure to note it.
@flash5standingby – 2.8–5.X wasn’t a forced upgrade; you should have been given the choice. If not, and you can repeat the problem, please let us know!
thanks for the udpate!
I’m glad there seems to be a dialog here. Otherwise I wouldn’t bother to comment.
I’m pretty sure there are a good number of us who don’t spend a lot of time using Skype yet do use it regularly, say once or twice a week. (Wouldn’t this include the vast majority of your new users?)
So, I have no interest in having a Skype presence of any size visible and taking up screen space (or other machine resources). I thought that 2.8 was pretty unintrusive, but 5 is there in my face. Maybe I just haven’t figured out how to use it , but for now my solution is command-Q. I’m going to switch back to 2.8 and try 5 again sometime in the indefinite future (having held onto the 2.8 install image).
Thanks for making 2.8 available again – this is definitely a good step towards restoring some sanity in the user experience on Mac.
As for 5.x it’s nothing short of an abomination. The only reasonable answer would be to rewrite the UI from scratch into something decent. An please, please fire your UI designer – he is a deranged man !
@peterparkes no, Skype is not capturing the idea of why 5.x is bad. Single window design is a failure for most Mac apps, multi-window is essential to my continued use of Skype. Screen real estate is an issue – twice the space for half the contacts doesn’t work, it’s been said a million times before, look at Adium for an example. Being able to organize video/chat boxes on their own, around whatever else I’m doing is an issue. Bringing a PC app to the Mac is an issue. Skype 2.8 was such a good UI, I can’t believe there was even talk of going away from it. Whoever made that decision should clearly not work at Skype anymore.
5 is a complete failure. Windows users, perhaps, need simplicity (and solitaire). Mac users want usability and productivity. I’m sorry, but the thing taking up 2/3 of my Macbook Pro screen won’t cut it.
I’ve reverted to 2.8. Small amount of desktop real estate. Everything at once glance without scrolling. Moving stuff to my screen where I want it, and hiding stuff I don’t want to see.
Please hire some real Mac programmers and software design specialists.
Dear peterparkes
In response to your statement “we hear that loud and clear. But we think heart of the problem is …”:
If you didn’t wan’t to hear our answer then why did you bother asking?!
Dear peterparkes
In response to your statement “we hear that loud and clear. But we think heart of the problem is …”:
If you didn’t want to hear our answer then why did you bother asking?!
Am I the only one who had major problems with the actual functionality of making calls, video or just audio? With Skype 5, when I would receive a call it would continue to ring for about 15 seconds AFTER I answered, and the same would happen when I would make a call – it would keep ringing well after the person responded. Also, video became an impossibility. I have the highest speed internet you can have and suddenly my video became consistently choppy. I have NEVER had either of these problems with 2.8, and I can’t tell you how happy I am to have it back.
Here’s a very simple idea, that you could probably implement in less than a day that would make Skype easier for everyone (stupid and smart people a like).
Make an option for the Monitor List (Online Contacts List) to not always be on-top. A single small list of people exactly what most of the people here want. However, making it always on top of other windows is infuriating. Just a list of online contacts. That’s it. Simple.
(See every other IM client ever made for reference)
… and a comment about your concern for “grandmothers in China”. I’m going to out on a limb here and say you need to satisfy the people that are actually giving you feedback. If that includes “grandmother’s in China”, then they should be included. But telling a bunch of people that actually take the time to provide feedback that you consider those that arn’t giving feed back just as important is insulting.
We’re here. We’re talking to you. We are proving that we care enough to participate. It’s most probable that we’re your core customers. Satisfy your core customers, and they’ll do more than your company could ever do for product evangelism.
… and finally… about the following quote
“We take a huge number of factors into consideration when designing software: from different usage patterns (video/voice/IM) to technical literacy; from age to cultural norms. All of these have an impact on everything from product and process design, user interface layout, iconography and more”
No you don’t. You might have a guy that thinks he’s the end-all-be-all of UX. You might even have a team of people that think they’re the great wizards of coming up with a design that’s “fresh, new, exciting, focused’, blah blah blah.
If you do, they need to be fired.
There’s ZERO you’ve done in this UI that any-joe-off-the-street couldn’t have surmised with a 10 minutes and a scratch pad. You’ve not made a new UI elements that don’t exist in a thousand other applications. You’ve not arranged them in a way that makes simple use easier. There’s not a single thing in this UI that wasn’t avaible in most applications in 2001.
The only thing you’ve done here is take very standard elements (lists, chat windows, buttons) and arranged them in a specific and fixed way. There’s a reason EVERY OTHER IM CLIENT USES MULTIPLE WINDOWS. Because it’s tested, tried and true. If you think your team is “innovative” or “considerate” because they tied a chat window to a left hand side list, you’re delusional.
“On the ‘screen real estate’ point – we hear that loud and clear. But we think heart of the problem is actually about multitasking rather than window size. The reason you ask for a smaller window is because you want to see your Skype contacts (or a video call) while doing something else.”
No, I do not need to see all my contacts while i’m doing other things.
I want to easily show the contact list when doing other things, but it does not need to be on the screen at the same time – with 200+ contacts it does not really have a purpose on my screen.
What I want is that I can decide where on my screen I want the various chat/call windows – and they might be on different areas of the screen or on even different monitors.
That can’t really be fixed without supporting multiple windows as an option.
And btw. Cmd+3 mentioned in the original post is rather useless since you have to use the mouse to browse through all your contacts instead of just typing their name.
Yep. Rolling back.
You know what? I actually *like* the new chat style. For the most part. The visual design of 5.0 is pretty good – god knows that 2.8 needed some love in that regard – it’s the new UI that I can’t stand.
For all the problems with it, lack of separate windows, confusing-as-hell-sidebar, etc… The dealbreaker is the loss of the history. My old history *isn’t* still there – I’ve looked. I use Skype for two things, mainly – as my “home phone” and for work conference calls / chats. Guess what. Group chats sure as hell aren’t listed. Messing around with it now, looks like I can bring up those chats by searching for them by name, but is that really the only way?
And not everyone who calls me is in my contact list. Sometimes these numbers even leave me voice mail. I’ve tried and tried to find those in 5.0 to no avail. I even tried searching for the phone number, thinking that maybe they worked like group chat. Can’t find’em. Can’t find any of my voicemail.
So yeah, I’m rolling back. From the sound of it, I won’t be upgrading anytime soon, either.
Yep. Rolling back.
You know what? I actually *like* the new chat style. For the most part. The visual design of 5.0 is pretty good – god knows that 2.8 needed some love in that regard – it’s the new UI that I can’t stand.
For all the problems with it, lack of separate windows, confusing-as-hell-sidebar, etc… The dealbreaker is the loss of the history. My old history *isn’t* still there – I’ve looked. I use Skype for two things, mainly – as my “home phone” and for work conference calls / chats. Guess what. Group chats sure as hell aren’t listed. Messing around with it now, looks like I can bring up those chats by searching for them by name, but is that really the only way?
And not everyone who calls me is in my contact list. Sometimes these numbers even leave me voice mail. I’ve tried and tried to find those in 5.0 to no avail. I even tried searching for the phone number, thinking that maybe they worked like group chat. Can’t find’em. Can’t find any of my voicemail.
So yeah, I’m rolling back. From the sound of it, I won’t be upgrading anytime soon, either.
Peter and Rick, thank you for looking at this, and acknowledging that there’s dissatisfaction out there.
But going down the line of “you’re plainly saying x, but we think you really mean y” seems like an odd way to do customer service.
I think it’s actually multitasking *within* Skype that’s the issue. Skype 5 is basically one big modal window. Of course it’s not, because it’s still possible to chat while calling, but it doesn’t feel that way at all. When you’re in a call, it feels like navigating away will end the call. It doesn’t, but that’s how it seems. Again, when I’m in a chat: will navigating away close that chat?
Modality works for something like iTunes, mostly, because it’s usually for one main thing: playing music. But Skype, like every other chat app, lends itself to non-modal layouts because you would expect to be able to do more than one thing at once, like talking to Grandma while chatting to a couple of friends. These are separate, discrete tasks. So they can’t all happen in the same giant window. This was what worked for me about 2.8. I could have a video call in one window, while having all chats in another (though it would have been better still to have a window with tabbed chat).
Please consider that your users have something to say here about how the giant, universal window doesn’t fly.
Thanks for listening to the feedback. Unfortunately, I am stuck with 5.0 because we use group video at work. I am actively exploring other options to suggest to the company, though. It pains me that I’ve been a long time paying customer, and you release sub-standard designs. There was an auto-charge for a Skype subscription again, and I just felt angry. I closed the automatic renewals now.
Nobody here has yet pointed out the main problem with 5.0. It is ugly. The bulky window wastes so much space it feels far from a native Mac app. The chrome in the top bar is huge and completely unused. The contact list is bloated and grabs too much space and cannot be condensed. The group video chat window (yes that feature>) is a leviathan. Where should I put my own window, that single floating thing? I move it around the calls all the time.
Then of course, usability. Poor access to chat history is just an unbelievable screw up. Accessing chat history feels like a hack every time, opening that huge list of messages from the last months or weeks. Did you test this with real users? I think the problem hasn’t been so much the UI people, but the user testing. Please fix that.
We do want you to progress and innovate. We don’t want 2.8, though it was better. We want better things. We just want them done properly, according to what we need, not what you think we might need and force upon us.
Thanks for listening to the feedback. Unfortunately, I am stuck with 5.0 because we use group video at work. I am actively exploring other options to suggest to the company, though. It pains me that I’ve been a long time paying customer, and you release sub-standard designs. There was an auto-charge for a Skype subscription again, and I just felt angry. I closed the automatic renewals now.
Nobody here has yet pointed out the main problem with 5.0. It is ugly. The bulky window wastes so much space it feels far from a native Mac app. The chrome in the top bar is huge and completely unused. The contact list is bloated and grabs too much space and cannot be condensed. The group video chat window (yes that feature>) is a leviathan. Where should I put my own window, that single floating thing? I move it around the calls all the time.
Then of course, usability. Poor access to chat history is just an unbelievable screw up. Accessing chat history feels like a hack every time, opening that huge list of messages from the last months or weeks. Did you test this with real users? I think the problem hasn’t been so much the UI people, but the user testing. Please fix that.
We do want you to progress and innovate. We don’t want 2.8, though it was better. We want better things. We just want them done properly, according to what we need, not what you think we might need and force upon us.