(In other versions of Skype,) what's with the random color swapping of contact names? I'm used to the system randomly assigning uniquely contrasted colors for each participant and keeping those assignments for the entirety of the conversation.

Skype 1.3 and Skype for Windows seem to always make the user black, then the person who talks directly after the user is blue, and if a third person says then something, they are light blue. The chat UI appears to try its best to rotate those three colors as much as possible ... but in a chat with even as few as three people, for which there could be a one-to-one color-contact mapping, colors are nonsensically assigned, and I find myself tripping over who is who.

I assume that there is some methodology to the coloring that makes sense in a manner I haven't been able to figure out, and that Skype 1.4 calls this "Skype Style" for "preferred chat style" (though this appears to not yet work in Skype for Linux 1.4.0.58_alpha).

I also assume that "IRC Style" will match colors the way I expect (given how it's rather standard in IRC programs to fix specific colors to people), but like "Skype Style," this mode seems to be monotone at the moment.

If that's not the (intended) difference between "IRC Style" and "Skype Style" for the "preferred chat style" setting, what is?

If you take a look at IRC style vs. Skype style in a not-color-bound fashion, you'll quickly note the differences between those modes.

IRC style is more textlike, Skype style is more graphic rich.

Perhaps its just me, but I see absolutely no difference between IRC style and Skype style. Both black for both users, and just text (which is as I would expect perhaps the IRC style to look like).

As far as I recall from 1.3:

IRC style meant just the name (and possibly time) followed by a colon then the text.
Skype style meant a "who said this bar" showing the name and time of the post. Continued posts were then thin bars that ballooned at one end to show the time. It also then used colours to differentiate the various states of speech (I never did quite figure out the pattern)... 5;)

Personally, it doesn't make much of a difference as long as I can clearly differentiate between the message (as with the Skype style) and the name, times and messages are all aligned so that any name/time/message text always starts in the same location, so that I can easily skim down a long list and know directly where to look to find the information I'm after. Currently if you have users with very long and very short names, the messages start at different places on the line, and it's slightly less accessible than having the names/times in a name area and the text always starting in a fixed location (like x-chat) for instance. Previously I think the Skype style met all of these criteria, so that's probably fine by me... 5:)

Colour-wise, as long as there isn't too much colour flying about on the screen it's probably fine. Fixed colouring can be tricky, but since the majority of chats are two person, an us and them colouring is unlikely to be a problem. It might be interesting to use the colouring to show whether/when a message has been received (slightly grayed out means the other person hasn't got it yet)? Otherwise the message text should probably be one or two colours at most, the names could probably be more as long as it doesn't get distracting (ie, the colouring should all be useful rather than a hinderance or just for show)...

Mike

If you are speaking about 1.4, the switch there is not functional yet. It should have been disabled actually.