"Hide in System Tray" and Plasma Active

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 10.04.2012 14:41, Marco Martin wrote:
>> So for me the question is: in which cases would an (active) application
>> need some sort of icon highlight to awaken interest to the user? Would
>> it be in the thumbnail in the task switcher? Would it be in some sort of
>> global notification dialog?
>
> i think notifications

+1.
Alerting in the task switcher does not seem to make sense to me since either, 
it's rarely visible. I'm fine with the central notification system which is 
already in place (although I think it could be refined, by e.g. cleaning old 
notifications up faster and allowing more rich interaction inside the 
notification popups possible). It works fine on the desktop so it should work 
fine in PA as well.

> bangarang can be minimized in the systray for a desktop use: making it play a
> list of mp3s being completely in the background, without cluttering the screen
> or the taskbar. use case that is perfectly valind there, but i think not on
> mobile.

I was just typing the same answer, but you were quicker ;)

I never meant to portray Banagarang as an example where a systray icon would 
make sense, because it isn't ;)

The only case where such an icon would make sense is if it visualizes a status 
which a user may want to monitor continually (in contrast to only being notified 
of specific changes).
However, this would actually be a valid case for displaying the information in 
the task switcher thumbnail instead of the tray, so the user can just "peak" 
(here we are again! ;) whenever she wants to check it. For that, however, it 
would be necessary to display something that is better readable than the current 
thumbnails.
What I think would be awesome is a way for an application to replace its 
thumbnail with a custom non-interactive QML or another kind of flexible enough 
visualization. Would that be possible?

Okay, so this is what I take from your replies (and what I support 100%):
- We keep the tray as it currently is in PA
- I write an HIG which tells devs to never ever use a systray icon on PA, let 
alone hide the whole application there.
- We come up with a way to display information in a readable way in the task 
switcher
- All kinds of notifications / alerts are displayed via the notification system. 
If developers need something which the notification system can't do, then the 
notification system has to be expanded.

Cheers,
Thomas