RFC: Put notifications in sidepanel like widget explorer

[Marco Martin]

On Friday 19 February 2016 13:06:28 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> They both have a quite powerful sidebar (they both actually do their whole
> system configuration in there, which I find a bit extreme, but it seems to
> be working out pretty well for them).
> 
> Just for a quick glance, feel free to look at this screenshot from the
> Budgie sidebar:
> http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news2/solus-linux-os-gets-new-dai
> ly-iso-budgie-next-improvements-updated-installer-496874-2.jpg

Apart that he has my approval for the choice of music :p, I really feel this 
proves *exactly* what I was fearing:
The first column is really, really cluttered. It's pretty much the image and 
reputation KDE software has been fighting the past 10+ years to get away from, 
I would find this really a step in the opposite direction to what we should go.

Imagine it from the UX perspective: I want to connect to a wifi network, I see 
the wifi icon shows it's not connected, I click it and I am presented with the 
first column... whhaaat? i then have to search for a while that in the middle 
of all that stuff oh yeah, there are wifi settings as well.. phew! (and the 
"simple by default" just flew out of the window, just because we feel is safer 
to follow instead than to lead [1])

While the second column is indeed desolately empty (in that case, having by 
default the panel at the bottom, has an huge mouse travel distance (can be 
flipped in this case, but then you have an huge empty area at the top that 
looks really sore)

And what if the systray is not at the bottom-right or top-right of the screen?
the visual disconnect grows even more.

To me it really seems a case of OSX does that [1], therefore is correct....

>> Note that since I'm rewriting the systray from scratch, I'm quite affected
>> by wether the decision is, I need to take the "proper" architecture, I
>> don't want to rewrite it a 3rd time that's for sure!
>
>Yes, you're absolutely right. If there is a time to decide this, it's 
>definitely now!

btw with the new architecture (that is almost ready and I want to merge like 
the day after of 5.6 branching) it would be "slightly" easier to do something 
like that, even tough not without significant challenges.

[1] http://www.macworld.com/article/2364274/hands-on-with-os-x-yosemite-widgets-by-any-other-name.html

-- 
Marco Martin