Systray jobs and notifications

[Rob Scheepmaker]

On Friday 10 April 2009 17:50:54 Marco Martin wrote:
> On Friday 10 April 2009, Rob Scheepmaker wrote:
> > I've been doing some more thinking about this: what about splitting this
> > up in 2 icons? One "i" icon with a number that shows the total amount of
> > notifications, and the spinner with a number showing the total amount of
> > running jobs. It takes up a little bit more space, but makes it much
> > easier to see at a glance what is going on.
> > Then both icons trigger showing the dialog, but when the notifications
> > one is clicked, it hides the entire job group, and when the job one is
> > clicked, it hides the notifications. Still one extender, but then
> > filtering certain information. That also solves the problem of a crowded
> > systray extender. I think it might make sense in that case that both
> > icons toggle (they're either monochrome or color or something like that
> > to distinguish whether or not they're on or off)
> >
> > What do you think of this idea?
>
> wouldn't it add complexity?
> even if the two icons are very different, i wonder if it would become not
> immediate to know what triggers what, for the principle of making the user
> to less think about stuff as posssible when he wants to perform a certain
> action

Well, the problem kind of is that the systray shows multiple things: running 
jobs and notifications, which are distinctively different. Still the user most 
likely wants to be able to see if, and how many, notifications and jobs there 
are. If both are available, I think having 2 icons makes this clearer. The 
running jobs one is distinctively different because it's animated, implying 
some sort of activity (job). For me, 2 icons would be more obvious then 1 icon 
with 2 numbers. But then again, people differ, and brains work in mysterious 
ways. 
One icon that somehow clearly conveys what jobs and notifications there are 
would also be ok, but I just think that a spinner with 1 or 2 numbers doesn't 
convey it's message as clearly as possible. Trying it out will probably tell 
us.