How To Fix Skype-for-Mac 5.x

As everyone assumes at this point, Skype for Mac 5.x is hopelessly broken and deserves nothing more than to be thrown away. But that's not going to happen.  So in an effort to be both practical and hopeful, I here offer a plan to fix it.  

But first some history... which I have gathered only by reading between the lines.   The actual details may never be known.

Skype 2.8 was a much beloved product, having a simple and effective user interface.  At the end of 2009, plans were in the works to move on with an evolutionary step, a familiar user interface yet one that allows multi-party video and all the many other advanced features we are now seeing in the Windows version. A firm called "80/20", as we now know, was behind the new user interface, and the project they submitted to Skype, or at least one of its alternatives, looked like this:

Note the separate video window, contact window, and conversations window.  From appearances, it would have been an elegant evolutionary step, something that Skype's Mac users would have understood and appreciated. Then for reasons that remain a mystery, management, under the direction of Josh Silverman chose to go with the single window approach, dressing itself up to look like Skype for Windows.  

The decision might not have been not a bad one by itself, but Silverman, according to my theory didn't tell the developers to make it exactly like Skype for Windows. He only gave the guidance to make it similar.  That's where things fell apart, and in the rush of the sudden change of direction, the Mac team did not consider the views of either users or beta testers with respect to design.  

Over the next 9 months, they put together what we now know as 5.x, which Skype users find to be "an abortion at best and an abomination at worst."  Even though it was full of bugs and the user interface was only half-ready  in the fall of 2010, Skype released a public beta for reasons that one imagines were much disputed internally.  As should have been expected, it satisfied nobody, either the beginner and occasional Skype user or the seasoned power user.  Complaints were many, loud and clear, but management which by now did not include Mr. Silverman, didn't hear them.  Development slogged on, adding features that should have been there in the first beta, fixing a few bugs but adding others.  By now everything was spinning out of control, going in every direction at once while the development team desperately hoped for a magical solution before their middle managers met the fate of their predecessors, laid off in Skype's house-cleaning operation the year before.   And then to add insult to injury, they brought it out of beta with a "gold" release. 

To the relief of the entire Skype-for-Mac community, hell finally broke loose when this article appeared.  Top management finally woke up and within a day they had decided that users should have access to the prior 2.8 version.  Their response.

So now comes the task of fixing the problem.  The code base of 2.8 is such that development cannot proceed from it.  As for the aborted multi-window interface, who knows?  It may or may not have a suitable framework.  I will assume, for the purpose of what follows, that it does not.  This is a proposal for fixing 5.x, which I must say is a choice that most members of the Skype-for-Mac community say will be a waste of time.  I just don't see any alternative, and I do actually think that 5.x is worth fixing.

Before going there, let's look at the current Skype-for-Windows and Skype-for-Mac side by side.

You will notice a similarity, but the Windows version has lots more features.  It also has a consistent approach to its management of contacts, groups, conversations and calls.  Although there is much that a Mac user might complain about; particularly its overly busy and crowded interface, the features of Skype-for-Windows work consistently and as one might anticipate, with lists of contacts,  conversations calls on the left and the content of those items on the right.  The Mac interface, by contrast, is all mixed up.  Things pop up in unexpected locations and in formats that are both strange and unusable.  Some of the features are too buggy to use.  Others are annoying, or meaningless, or simply dead, and several things that were admired in 2.8 have gone missing.

Suggestions for fixing 5.x

All might not be lost, and the Skype-for-Mac community should take heart that underneath the bizarre UI of 5.x lies a powerful and capable Skype engine that can do everything the Windows version can do.  Here's a list of recommended changes to rationalize and streamline the Skype-for-Mac UI:

• Remember the nice toggle switches we had in 2.8 for seeing lists of contacts, members of groups, and members of conversations?  
  
  That concept should be brought back.  Contact Lists (and member lists (for group conversations) should be simple toggle switches.  They should all be in the left column.  The contact book icon should toggle open to a list of groups and then each of those groups should toggle open to a list of contacts.  
• There should be no lists of any sort in the right column.  The right should be for conversations and dialogs... nothing more.  
• The ability to have permanent "Favorites" should be retained, again with toggle switches for list of contents as appropriate.  Favorites should include contacts, groups of contacts, dialogs, and conversations.
• The separate groups window and dialer window should both be trashed.  
• A separate call window should be added; one that handles all types of calling.  It should have a dropdown dialer.
• A separate profiles window should be added so that one can read a profile, a call and a conversation at the same time.

So there you have it, a rational framework for 5.x; one that can serve as the foundation for future development. Cheers!

• 2 April 2011
• Views
• 1 Comment
• Permalink
• Favorited 0 Times
• Tweet