Re: [Usability]Re: Notification Area guidelines



But this is all depending on your interpretation of things. Technically,
to me, the Gaim and GnomeICU Buddy List/Contact List windows themselves
are merely extended status monitors. 

Consider the Network Status monitor. If you clicked (or double-clicked)
on it, it might open up a window with more detailed description of your
connection, such as connection speed, connection time, avg CPS up/down,
the name of your provider, etc. But if I were to close that window, I
wouldn't want to be logged off the network. I just don't want to see
detailed information about my connection. And I certainly don't want to
have it in my task bar when not in use because it's not an application I
interact with; it's merely a status monitor.

Much the same, the Gaim Buddy List is detailed information about my
network connection. Closing it shouldn't change my logon status. And I
don't want to see my Buddy List in my taskbar unless it's actually an
active window, because all it really does is inform me of detailed
status. It doesn't have the same interactivity as say Evolution or
Galeon. And any interactivity it does have is to open windows that do
have the kind of interactivity of Galeon or Evolution.

The way I think about the close button with this application is that I'm
merely closing something analogous to a dialog or a preferences window
or some child window. The parent process' visibility is entirely within
the Notification Area. It's not a window unto itself; that's why it's in
the Notification Area. But closing the Buddy List isn't killing the
parent application; it's merely closing a detailed status window.

So, yes, the lawyer in me speaks. I grew up using the Windows AIM Client
which for as long as I can remember didn't log you off when you closed
the buddy list. It required an explicit log off command or an explicit
quit command from the Statusbar Applet. So I'm comfortable with this
paradigm. I just wanted to chime in that it's not as illogical as it
might first seem.

-jag

On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 19:38, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> Agreed. Using the notification area as some kind of weird alternative
> to minimization seems pretty wacky.
> 
> We *can* trivially add the ability for the minimized app buttons in
> the window list to support things like flashing, or tooltips, or
> whatever. So if "rich minimized state" is wanted, we can do that
> without adding a new kind of minimization.
> 
> Havoc



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Joshua Adam Ginsberg	       Cellphone: 970.749.8530
Rice University '02	       Email: joshg myrealbox com
St. Mark's School of Texas '98
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