RFC: Put notifications in sidepanel like widget explorer

[Sebastian Kügler]

On Tuesday, October 20, 2015 15:54:01 Martin Klapetek wrote:
> today I was thinking a bit about our notification system. I believe
> that the constraints the tiny popup give us are just too limiting.
> Currently it fits about two notifications and for everything else
> one has to scroll, plus the space is really cramped for anything
> else besides the notifications themselves.
> 
> So it occurred to me that we could maybe reuse the same side
> panel we use for widget explorer and activities, only coming in
> from the right side.
> 
> This would give us much more space and with that many more
> possibilities, like proper grouping of notifications from different
> apps and possibly also putting /all/ notifications there again 
> (I'm still against it but with that extra space, we could afford it).

I can't remember a single case in the last months of usage (except for one, 
see below) that made me want that, notifications are already cleaned up, and I 
simply don't get that many persistent ones.

On the other hand, I find a side-panel much more intrusive, and much less 
quick-peak-dismiss, so it makes the ui and workflow feel heavier.

The case I did have multiple persistent notifications is only after multiple 
transfers, where the "transferring that file is finished" notifications 
persisted.

Perhaps we can instead look into the notifications that stick around and do a 
deeper analysis of where they come from, what they have in common, and how we 
can present that better. More spacing and grouping sounds like a very 
technocratic solution to me. I'd rather have the notification system be 
smarter, than presented in a different way, since that would make the 
improvements transferable to other formfactors as well.

> Basically the idea is to reinvent the notifications in Plasma a bit
> and create a kind of notification center.
-- 
sebas

Sebastian Kügler    |    http://vizZzion.org    |     http://kde.org