Re: panel notification area -- not many apps

[Alan <alan ufies org>]

On Mon, Mar 03, 2003 at 06:00:27PM -0600, Ben Davis wrote:
> I'm curious as to why you think they _wouldn't_ be better suited as 
> notification icons.  Why didn't GAIM just make a panel applet? because 
> it's easier to manage it in the notification area. Why is acme there? 
> Why not just  add a launcher to configure acme?  any kind of application 
> that is intended for informing the user of something should be included 
> as a notification icon.  heres a quote from the freedesktop.org 
> specification:
> 
> "From a UI standpoint, the system tray is normally used for transient 
> icons that indicate some special state, while full-blown "applets" are 
> used for permanent dock/panel features. For example, a system tray icon 
> might appear to tell the user that they have new mail, or have an 
> incoming instant message, or something along those lines."

Good points.  I've always kinda wondered about why ACME was there all
the time when all it allowed me to do was go into a config screen, which
I could get to by going to the config menu IIRC.  

> Why should gweather or the wireless applet be an exception?   They are 
> there solely to notify the user, or inform them.  It would be much 
> easier to manage these as system-tray icons rather than an applet.  In 
> my opinion, the panel is too difficult to manage.  For instance, when I 
> have some launchers and applets on there,  and I decide to remove and 
> applet,  there is a big empty space where that applet used to be.  I 
> have to then move each applet individually so that I don't have any 
> wasted space (so that my window list can use that empty space).  This 
> also happens when I'm moving an applet icon around on the panel -- and 
> as it's moving through other applets it moves those applets permanantly. 
> Then again, one by one, I have to re-arrange my icons.

In a way there's not a real difference between an applet and a panel
notification icon.  I mean in the end, they are *all* icons that appear
on the panel.  Personally I think that it's a bit silly.  Now, I'm not
hugely informed on the nuts and bolts of the two, I assume that there
are fundamental differences in how they are created.  IE: an applet is
it's own program, and a notification icon is created by an application.
However, at the end of the day, gweather, acme, gaim, etc are still
icons sitting along the top/bottom of the screen. 

I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, and if the latter,
what can be done about it, short of rewriting all the applets as apps
with panel notification, or vice versa.

alan

-- 
Alan <alan ufies org> - http://arcterex.net
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"The only thing that experience teaches us is that experience teaches 
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