Re: Re : interapplication communication

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Mon, 2010-01-04 at 14:59 -0800, David Hamm wrote:
> "Our hope is that message tray will further reduce the need to
> switch windows - that you won't need to switch windows because a new
> message came in, or your music player shuffled to a track you don't
> like. You'll only need to switch windows if you decide to do something
> different."
> 
> "The message tray is meant to be self-introducing, because it pops up
> by
> itself when something comes in. So hopefully, going back to the bottom
> of the screen will be natural to users; they'll pick up the idea that
> "messages are at the bottom""
> 
> Ubuntu nailed it with having messages in the top right, along with the
> whole user activity/switcher part. Instead of working on a whole new
> part on the bottom of the screen teams should be working together.
> 
> For the same reason gnome-shell has a top bar instead of a bottom bar
> like windows, the message tray shouldn't be at the bottom.

Hmm, I guess I'm not really picking up the specific reasons you are
referring to here. The main reasons I'd say that we have the panel at
the top are:

 - Continuity with existing GNOME design (the clock, system tray,
   and user menu are already there in a normal GNOME configuration
   and the Activities button is a bit like the GNOME menu.)
   
 - Many of the items act like menus, and menus pop down more
   naturally than they pop up.

Neither immediately seems to apply to the message tray.

I expect lots of conversation about messaging and other topics when all
the designers get together for a hackfest next month. The work that the
Canonical designers did on notifications and messaging is certainly one
of the inspirations going into the message tray, but you can't really
take a GNOME 2 design and apply it verbatim within a GNOME 3 setting.

- Owen