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<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">>><i> On June 23, 2015, 10:40 a.m., Kai Uwe Broulik wrote:
</i>>><i> > I actually really like it, perhaps we should make KDialog passive popup not set an icon by default now
</i>>><i>
</i>>><i> Philipp A. wrote:
</i>>><i> i also like the no-icon no-space version. why add something that just takes up unnecessary space and has no informational value?
</i>
> I prefer the no-icon version as well. I don't think the visual inconsistency is a problem. On the
> contrary, I think reducing the uniformity may somewhat reduce strain when scanning notifications
> since they become more individualized landmarks in the stack. It also makes the presence of icons in
> the notifications that do sport them feel more purposeful, making it more likely to pay attention to
> icons and getting something out of it instead of getting trained to ignore them and look at the only
> reliably disambiguifying content (the text). This way, you look straight at the text - the only
> meaningful content, without having to skip over the icon.
> - Eike</pre>
<br>
If I may be allowed to add some opinion here, being just a
bystander...<br>
<br>
Being trained to ignore a default icon is more like an automatism
and it serves in means of recognition. That doesn't mean you have to
pay visual attention to the other icons or that visual (conscious)
attention would be a good thing. Ideally it becomes a subconscious
process anyway.<br>
<br>
Getting a differing spacing (left-side indentation) for no-icon and
do-icon introduces more fatigue. That means perusing the
notification stack becomes a more tiring thing. The informational
value of the icons or of having no icon doesn't add anything much in
terms of "information intake" and most of the notifications...<br>
<br>
Sorry to say so, but my own personal KDE experience has been that
there are way many notifications and most of them don't serve a good
purpose and clearing the notifcation stack becomes a chore. E.g.
Clementine (I don't use Amarok) sends a play-event/notification to
the stack on every item played. It is pretty senseless to be
notified about new songs in a way that long surpasses what the song
is doing. A temporary song, a temporary item, would better have a
temporary notification (such as the on-screen popup that Amarok does
or used to do and that Clementine perhaps does also (don't
remember)). Helpful would be a vertical stack displayed on-screen
where each item has a timer before it disappears and clears the
stack (or reduces the stack size (vertically, the number of items
present on the screen) and perhaps in conjunction with a permanent
history thing. I feel a large amount of time (relatively speaking)
is being dedicated by the user in clearing that stack. It is one of
my gripes in KDE.<br>
<br>
Applications that don't set an icon is also something that ..how to
say. It could be dissuaded and not designed around. I think it would
be a bad thing if your direction would be about "not trying to get a
consistent look" but perhaps that is irrelevant as each author can
decide by him/herself. I just feel a common default icon would be a
boon in terms of looks and the reducement of visual fatigue as the
user only has to look in a default location for all text (visually
space/oriented) and ease of repetition/recognition is a good thing.<br>
<br>
Lately visual interface designers have for mostly political reasons
I believe done away with the "everything would preferably be in a
default location" concept that has long been the way of doing menus
etcetera. If you can find something blindly, that increases the
speed of your operation of the machine. But recently (e.g. in
Windows start menu etc.) (and the Unity Dock, etc.) <i>searching</i>
has become a more apt way to do things. In Windows it is so bad that
without searching, you can't even find anything. E.g. the
"configuration screen" of Windows 7 and 8 (you can even barely find
it in Windows 10) has been reorganized to the extent that it is very
fatigueing to read any of the text (because it is all very long) and
the only way to get anywhere is usually to search.<br>
<br>
By contrast the KDE menu (Kicker?) is still very doable although it
is not as fast as the Windows XP menu used to be. Searching is still
often an apt way to get somewhere (especially if you don't know
where to look) but at least the results are fast and pleasantly
oriented. A scrolling side-to-side menu is not really a good way to
get anywhere (repeatedly) because every click is a separate action
that requires wait-time before you can do the next move. In
contrast, a cascading/unfolding menu is very rapid because it is
like "one motion" to get anywhere.<br>
<br>
But search always requires mental attention which introduces fatigue
and lowers the speed. Searching is never a trained thing. Which is
why, of course, you can add stuff to Favourites. But there's not
enough space in the favourites to include everything you want. Which
means you get back to clicking on desktop-icons, a thing the menu
tries to avoid or supersede!! Personally I know no way to organize
my favourite applications and I resort to desktop icons and direct
krunner activity.<br>
<br>
But, to recap, familiarity is important, predictability is
important, efficiency is really all that matters, and informational
value of icons is not really all that important (as long as they
look good and are recognisable) (and distinguisable) as it is a
subconscious process anyway. So having a default icon does not
really take away from the recognition of the other icons, but I
deally I would ensure that very few default icons remain anyway. The
default icon could also better be round or square. Anyway, these are
just my thoughts.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
<br>
Bart (Schouten)<br>
<br>
<br>
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