Ideas/Mockups for Mobile System Tray (GSoC)

[Marco Martin]

On Monday 05 April 2010, Yuen Hoe Lim wrote:
> > right now when you tap the systray you get another view with expanded
> > icons: while would be quite easy with the statusnotifier protocol,
> > wouldn't be really with plasmoid based ones (and would like to use
> > plasmoids based ones quite heavily, with a popup that becomes instead
> > a full screen app)
> 
> But the current systray's expanded view seems to work really well even with
> plasmoids. Is there some special manipulating going on underneath? I
> thought about having another drag-down panel at the top, but I don't know,

it works because plasmoids are either on the systray or in the expanded view, 
never in both

> on the techincal side, just keep in mind we don't really have any way
> 
> > to link notifications to an owning systray icon. the infos the
> 
> Aw shucks. Okay, will have to rethink that one. Thanks :)
> 
> first of all: I suggest you post that somewhere public as well, so that
> non-
> 
> > mentors can give you feedback. :)
> 
> I think it already is (public). There is a checkbox that says "make public"
> that I made sure to check :) If anyone is unable to see the proposal though
> let me know and I'll copy it out somewhere.
> 
> For SMS, I proposed that first (huge and persistent) notification because
> that's the way one my old phone does it, and I personally thought it was a
> really good idea if it was primarily a 'phone' device because it's usually
> in my pocket so I actually want it to make a big deal out of things that
> happen, so that even if I somehow didn't hear the alert or feel the
> vibration when I next take out the phone I immediately see ah! new SMS, and
> in one button-press can reply/etc.
> 
> Was thinking a dismiss-all button could immediately free up the screen but
> the systray should probably start flashing or have a new flashing icon or
> something to say "hey, you previously put away some notifications, come see
> it when you're free kay?".
> 
> Another thing that could probably be done is to group notifications (since
> we have application name and SMS's probably all come from the same app), so
> that if someone sends you 10 SMS's you'd see just one notification that
> says "You have received 10 text messages" and the button says "Go to your
> inbox" instead?

well yes, it's possible to group by name and that's what i'm doing right now.
i would also conserve an "expanded view" of notifications basically identical 
to the current one (it even already support flicking)
to know the "go to your inbox" actionyou have to base on the actions bundled 
with the notifications.
there will be a set of actions for each notification... i'm not sure if we can 
assume those could be grouped by name too...
but in the end i would do something really really near to the desktop one, 
just shrinked down.
the authomatic popup would show a single notification, in a single line (maybe 
scrolling) and maybe event setting extended structs so applications will 
resize to make room for this line.
clicking on it it would open a fullscreen explorer jus like the current popup

> yes, a modal notification is no more a notification
> 
> 
> Not sure I understood this sentence >.< I suppose my first (huge and
> persistent) notification is considered "modal", so this does not count as a
> notification? Or? I suppose now that I think about it it does work more
> like a modal dialog than a notification, but I just thought it made sense
> for a particular kind of use.
> 

in the sense: your first mockup is a fullscreen window, so it totally 
interrupts the user work.
i think this is fine for phone calls, not anything else, that should be more 
discrete

Cheers,
Marco Martin