Systray jobs and notifications

[Celeste Lyn Paul]

On Monday 06 April 2009 08:01:16 pm Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Monday 06 April 2009, Rob Scheepmaker wrote:
> > On Monday 06 April 2009 19:02:58 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:

> > > what about the busy widget we have? we could just use that, with a
> > > number in the middle of it showing how many jobs are currently being
> > > processed?
> >
> > That's a very good idea... but what if there are both notifications and
> > jobs present?
>
> how about: animate the spinner if there are jobs, show the number of jobs
> and notifications combined?

What information are you trying to find out when you look at the widget? Total 
number of jobs (progress bars), or the number of jobs that have finished and 
are ready to be opened (notifications)? 

At first glance I think there are two things you would want to know 
immediately: 
1) are there any jobs running?
2) are any of my files completed?

At that point, I don't think the widget needs to provide any more information 
than that, because the user can always click on it to get further details.

I think the idea of using animation to indicate a current job running is a 
good idea. Is there an icon designed for this yet? At first I thought of an 
animated Down arrow (a metaphor that is used throughout KDE4 in download 
icons), but Aaron mentions a spinner that could work too.

He also mentions using a number to indicate some state. I think the only 
relevant information would be how many files are completed, but that number by 
itself may (or may not) be confusing. I'm not sure if some users will think of 
it as the total number of files instead of completed, or if that is something 
that can easily be learned. What about completed/total? Would that be too big 
compared to just using completed or total?

-- 
Celeste Lyn Paul
KDE Usability Project
usability.kde.org