If you selected multiple names, though, that same colored, gradated bar would be repeated once for each selection, creating what I found to be an undesirable Venetian blind effect. True, it’s not so visually offensive that I ever thought much about it, but it wasn’t going to win any awards, either.
Now, when you select multiple names in Adium 1.0, you’ll find something subtly but significantly different. The newest version treats all of the selections as a single group, rather than several individual items simultaneously selected. No Venetian blind effect this time; rather, you’ll see a single color field spanning all of the selections, with a single, much more subtle gradation across the entire group. Much, much simpler, and much, much more visually pleasant.
There’s no good reason why this change had to be made, to say nothing of a business case — Adium is developed for free by volunteers and given away free to all comers. No one — I mean no one — would have complained if it had never been implemented. Nevertheless, someone with a passion for this product took the time out to reconsider the problem, develop a solution, test it and champion it all the way to its ship date. As feature modifications go, it clearly qualifies as non-critical, yet in its final, completed form, it’s elegant, perfectly logical and, now that it’s a shipping feature, appears indispensable.
+