Re: [Evolution-hackers] Re: [Evolution] Evolution 2.0 UI proposal

[Rodney Dawes <dobey ximian com>]

On Fri, 2003-07-11 at 15:20, Ettore Perazzoli wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-07-11 at 14:38, Calum Benson wrote:
> > Perhaps some well thought-out integration with the panel notification
> > area?   On Windows most mail apps will alert you this way when you have
> > any new mail, but perhaps Evo could alert you when you have any new mail
> > in some designated subset of your folders?
> 
> This sounds like a cool idea, actually.

Indeed.

> Maybe it could be done through a little box that changes color (or
> flashes) when any of the folders gets new mail.  When you click on the
> box it would show you a list of the folders that have had new messages
> since you last checked, and you could click on them to go visit them
> (which in turn would remove them from their "pending" state).

Colors can be one way to do it, but detract from a11y. People that are
colorblind will have some trouble distinguishing the colors, so this
shouldn't be the only method of notification. I've taken a quick look
at the status tray icon in Outlook, and it could use some improvements.
The article on CNet, linked from another mail in this thread, also gives
some interesting ideas, but basically stick to the colors idea. I'd like
to talk to some UI people, fejj, and support people, and come up with a
clear proposal for what to do for the Notification Area icons for Evo.

> The box could also accept drag and drop of folders, and that would be
> the way you add folders you want to be notified of...?

Yeah, that might be interesting. Though, it might be confusing, since
technically the icon wouldn't be shown all the time.

> It might make for a neat panel hack.

Thankfully, it won't depend on the panel, and will work in KDE,
WindowMaker, and any other window manager that has some method
of supporting the XEmbed and Notification Area protocols.

-- dobey