thoughts on the systray

[Jason Keirstead]

On Monday 14 February 2005 1:33 pm, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> it's a complete abuse of the concept of a system tray 

That totally depends on what yor interpertation is of the purpose of the 
systray. Like I said above(and below).. I don't think it was ever intended 
for notifications. It is highly un-optimized for this task.

> and is what we have a  taskbar for. if the issue is "it takes up too much 
space to have a taskbar entry" then that can be handled by the taskbar.

There is a big difference between taking up less space vs. taking up no space.

For apps that are running 24/7, people don't want them in the taskbar *at 
all*, because the utility of having them there is zero - in these cases, the 
process is no longer a task - it is never going to be closed - it is more 
like a daemon.

> positioning is changeable. we're talking about the actual concept at use
> here.

Not really.. you are arguing that new users don't understand the concept of 
docking.. how many would know how to move the system tray? Heck, even if you 
do know how, it is a non-trivial job.. you need to create a kicker entention, 
position it on the screen, put it there... it is not like you can just move 
it.

> that's kind of the point. a place for non-urgent, on-demand status updates.
> we don't want kmail to blast a huge notification in the middle of your
> screen by default whenever you have unread mail. 

No, of course not, but...

> it makes lots of sense to  have it in the systray where you can glance down 
> at it.

No it doesn't. If I have to glance at it to even know it happened, it is not a 
notification. For it to be a notification it has to at least cacth the eye - 
once it has caught the eye, you can choose to look at it to read it, or 
ignore it until you are done your task.

As it stands right now, the tray is in such a position that it doesn't catch 
the eye. Thus the only way to use it for notifications is to show a big 
passive popup window, or play a sound and animaiton or both. 

If notifications took place in the upper left / right of the screen, as I 
suggested, there woudl be a much higher liklihood that you would notice the 
change, even with no sound or baloon.

-- 
If you wait by the river long enough, eventually
you will see the bodies of all your enemies float by.
    - Sun Tzu