Review Request 124151: Add a default icon to, notifications popup

[Xen]

plasma-devel-request at kde.org schreef op 23-6-2015 om 18:22:
> Today's Topics:
>
>     1. Re: Review Request 124151: Add a default icon to
>        notifications popup (Eike Hein)
>     2. Re: Plasma-devel Digest, Vol 84, Issue 78 (Xen)
>     3. Re: Review Request 124151: Add a default icon to
>        notifications popup (Xen)
>     4. Re: Review Request 124151: Add a default icon to
>        notifications popup (Martin Klapetek)

> This exact issue is addressed in Plasma 5 - Clementine, Amarok and Spotify
> by default get only
> one single notification popup which is not stored in history. So if you
> quickly switch songs and/or
> change states of the playback, there will always be only one popup with
> always the latest data
> (because the previous data is obsolete by then anyway). Any other
> application can be added
> to the list by adding it to a config file (not ideal but also not meant to
> be a public configuration
> at this point).

Right. I was still using KDE 4 (Kubuntu 14.10) as the icon theme 
integration for the Oxygen icons is/was so bad that you'd still have 
Breeze icons all over, and I can't really live with them. Thanks for 
your update. Perhaps a grouping of noticiations is a good idea anyway. A 
summarizing, I mean. I don't really know why there should be a stack of 
history items as it draws a lot of attention away from the applications 
where it belongs, and Dolphin (for example) would be better suited to 
display all sorts of progress indicators rather than in the history 
stack, but having a summary of things might perhaps be a very good 
thing. Having one popup or history item per application might indeed be 
a very good thing. That way you have a status overview of what is 
currently going on. Anyway..


> The ease of repetition and recognition was what I had in mind with the 
> first patch, yes. 

Yes.

> Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I tend to agree with you but I'll 
> leave the final word on this particular issue to our Visual Design 
> Group. Cheers 

I'd like to add one thing, if it's a means of disecting arguments or 
rationale:

Eike Hein wrote:

"It also makes the presence of icons in the notifications that do sport 
them feel more purposeful, making it more likely to pay attention to 
icons and getting something out of it instead of getting trained to 
ignore them and look at the only reliably disambiguifying content (the 
text). This way, you look straight at the text - the only meaningful 
content, without having to skip over the icon."

This rationale is meant for information value of both icons and text. If 
less meaningless information is present, you are more likely to stay 
'acuit' and alert and focus on everything that is present.

Information value is related to passive attention grab. In colours (at 
least the HSLA model) this is related to opacity (on the one hand) and 
lightness (on the other). The more opaque something is, the more 
information it contains. The lighter something is, the more attention it 
gets from you. This is because opaqueness determines how much something 
'adds' to the background, while lightness allows you to focus on it. Or 
even the other way around, I don't remember :P. But there's a balance to 
be struck between information and attention. If something has a lot of 
information but no attention, it will annoy, because there's something 
there and you can't see it. If it has a lot of attention but no 
information, it sits in your face without adding anything. So the 
visibility of something should be (or is) related to how much it 
actually has to show.

I have just one thing to show for it, it is just a test script I wrote 
to do some experimentation with colours. It's at 
http://www.xenhideout.nl/alphamod/alphamod.php. Pardon my embarassment, 
it is a long time ago. You can see how pleasing to the eye the colours 
are. Most of the colours have 75%/75% or 90%/90% lightness and opacity. 
Only white has full opacity since it is the only that has 100% 
lightness. Things that do not require attention, do not get it.

Generally on websites everything is full opaque. That means everything 
sits in your face and gets a very "hard" look to it. It is treated as a 
"full white" but it really should not have that much information. You 
can strike a fine balance between how much something has to offer (or 
should offer) and how much visibility it gets. This might only work on a 
dark (black) background though ;P.

But the idea is that something that provides only limited value or 
information does not require full attention. By way of placement (and 
harmony of design) in general icons tend to have a high degree of 
'surface invisibility'. Any icon that is comprehensible to you quickly 
fades into the background because you require no mental attention or 
effort to 'read' them, just the way it is with a good or regular font. 
When the interface stops screaming at you, that is very pleasing.

I think indeed if you create a disturbance in the indentation, the icons 
that remain will get more attention. That is correct. You will have to 
do work, after all, to see what's what. It's like confusing someone to 
keep him on his toes, or beating him with a stick to make him awake 
(like the Zen masters do). But that's just because there is a higher 
degree of chaos. Your ability to automatically parse gets limited. Now 
everything is more difficult. So you see the icons better because it 
requires more attention anyway == fatigue.

Blending it into the background certainly makes for an easier way of 
doing things, and the icons still anchor and distinguish the fields 
(notifications) and identify them. Icons are recognisable and therefore 
useful anchors. They make it easier to parse the text. But only if the 
text is in a default location and the icon is suitable for its task. 
Seeing a notification without icon and different spacing will each time 
create a "what's this??" moment. The text without icon will get much 
more attention than the other notifications that do have an icon. You 
will instantly get focused on it. It will appear odd, out of place, and 
therefore critical.

So yes icons do create a sense of "oh, that again" but i'm not sure if 
that's a bad thing. I think you want the thing to be as pleasing as 
possible and to my extent and recognition the notifications have never 
been that important. I don't think we are dealing with mission-critical 
tasks here, if that was the case you would not want these notifcations 
to appear in a history-based lower-right side that is out of reach of 
the main windows and sits in the background.

Opening the stack is like opening a drawer in your home. You do it so 
see what's left in the drawer, to refresh your memory. It's not 
something you do every 5 minutes, or even every hour, it escapes 
attention, it is too far away. You open the drawer if you need something 
from it. When you are done with other tasks, perhaps. It is not highly 
visible. Stuff that's important you keep close by.

I personally find it offensive that I have to open the drawer to check 
up on a file transfer progress, for example. Dolphin's progress is not 
very visible. But that aside, I just wanted to share some info on 
visibility and information and attention.

Good luck with everything, and thank you all.

Bart.