notifications, again :D

[Chani]

On January 25, 2010 04:20:56 Marco Martin wrote:
> howdy all,
> so, based on both ersonal experience and feedbacks i'm of course stilkl not
> happy on how notifications work, that's the pretty hard question of being
> informative enough, vs not entirely cover the screen.
> last thing i was thinking about was something that resembles rssnow:
> http://imagebin.ca/view/fiFONCc.html
> this would resemble the pattern of the appletbrowser, search and launch and
> possibly other stuff in the future.
> 
> -only one notification is shown at a time
> -still valid notifications scrolls automatically or after arrows press,
> like rssnow
> bottom arrow would switch from valid to recent expired notifications

ebbeh... three arrows?
my first impression is "eek! different! scrolling! scary!" ;)
I kinda feel like this is just hiding the problems instead of really solving 
them.

so.. stepping back for a minute, here's what actually causes me trouble with 
the current notifications:

-they cover a rather useful chunk of my screen.
I guess I could solve that myself by putting my systray in a less convenient 
place.

-they cover too much of my screen.
I think there's a lot that could be done to save space before showing only one 
at a time. those two extenders for completed vs. incomplete take a big chunk 
all by themselves, even when they have nothing under them.

-they're not easy to dismiss. 
I did try to hit the little X last time, but the stack of notifications went 
away just as I was clicking the mouse and I hit something in kmail instead.
I really really miss the "click anywhere (other than a button) to dismiss" 
behaviour.

-they cover it for too long. 
something that especially bugs me is that when the latest notification itself 
goes away, the rest of the stack (even if it's just those two category 
headers) hangs around for an extra few seconds, and because of that my panel 
is also staying visible for those extra few seconds. I just want the darn 
thing to go *away*.

-a lot of notifications shouldn't be there to begin with.
I really don't care that ksnapshot is downloading my last screenshot over sftp 
when I run it. I don't need that completed "download" hanging around for 
minutes adding to the size of my notification area. perhaps this is ksnapshot's 
fault, but still, improvements could be made in what not to show. or at least 
what not to keep around once it's done. the same sort of thing happens if I 
open a link in gwenview or okular or something. on the one hand it's nice to 
know that something is happening; on the other hand if it's just a little 20k 
image it'll be done in under a second and then I'll have that completed 
"download" clogging up the notification area for much longer.


so... showing only one at a time would solve the "covers too much of my 
screen" problem, which in turn would make me not care so much about the rest 
of the problems... it might introduce other potential issues too though. like 
the (probably small) chance of a low-battery warning being missed because 
something starts downloading a file half a second later.

hmm. it could make sense to show only the most recent in the popup (and have a 
minimum display time of a couple of seconds perhaps?).
I don't like the idea of clicking arrows to show them one by one, though. I 
feel half-blind when I can only see the current item in a list and don't know 
how many items there are or where I am.

I'd suggest rethinking how all the other notifications are shown.
show the one most recent, yes, but perhaps have a button to expand and show 
all the recent/in-progress notifications. and another small button somewhere to 
show a log of old/completed notiiciations, in a separate window. more like a 
log viewer - yes, we haven't actually implemented logging of the notifications 
yet, but it'd be a place to put them when we do. and some things, like those 
ksnapshot and gwenview downloads, maybe they shouldn't be logged... but if 
they immediately went to that log viewer when they're done instead of hanging 
around on screen then I wouldn't care so much.


-- 
This message brought to you by eevil bananas and the number 3.
www.chani3.com
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