Re: notifications in gtk

[Matthew Brush <mbrush codebrainz ca>]

On 12-11-06 07:23 AM, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> It has been clear for a while that GTK+ should provide an api to
> support notifications, so that applications don't have to a separate
> library (libnotify) for such a minor detail. Since our apis should
> serve the application designs that are implemented with it, lets have
> a look at these designs (for GNOME) before getting into the details:
>
> [snip]
>
> Let us know what you think about this.

I hope it's not off-topic to give ideas/feedback in a usability sense 
here (as opposed to technical/API-wise).

Speaking strictly as a user, I absolutely 100% despise notification 
bubbles/overlays/distractions of all manner (whether attached to a 
status icon or not). The balloons famous for annoying Windows XP users 
are a good example and the libnotify ones (or whatever XFCE uses) being 
another good example of how to completely tear the user's attention away 
from what they're focusing on for what is 99% of the time not attention 
worthy.

Actually, one of my favourite things about OSX is that it does not have 
these annoying notifications (except when apps force them using 3rd 
party libraries that users have to disable). If OSX has something really 
important to tell you, it pops up a proper dialog box (ex. when the 
battery is almost depleted or updates need to be installed).

So just a few suggestions with my user hat on:

* There should be some HIGs describing when using them is a good idea 
(ex. low battery, hardware failure, etc.) to minimize the flagrant use 
of notifications that plagues Windows and Linux desktops (and oddball 
OSX apps) currently.

* On win32 and (certain) Linux DEs it could use the flashing of the 
window in the taskbar (not sure what it's called, the thing with the 
app's icon and window title that shows in the panel that you can click 
to (de)iconify windows) which, while still super annoying, is far less 
annoying than bubbles. One example of this is Firefox's Downloads dialog 
when a download finishes.[note1]

* On OSX it could use the feature where the app's icon in the dock does 
some little animated wiggling to let you know it needs your attention 
(which is again annoying as hell, but far less than popup 
overlays/bubbles). One example of this is Colloquy when someone pings 
you.[note1]

* An alternative for "all 3" operating systems would be to just animate 
an icon in the panel's notification area. An example of this is XChat 
when someone pings you. This is by far the least annoying of all others 
I've encountered.[note1]

* It should be possible to globally disable all notifications entirely 
as opposed to simply per-application.

* No matter what, it shouldn't use the clichéd semi-transparent black 
overlays/HUD/OSD that everyone is using lately :) Regular old dialog 
boxes (with or without window decorations) have the advantage here since 
they'll naturally fit in with the users theme.

Just some ideas/feedback, feel free to ignore.

Cheers,
Matthew Brush

[note1] Obviously these do require a running, non-daemonized 
application, but perhaps they could be used as a default where the 
application is a "normal" running GUI application and real GtkDialog 
boxes could be used for background-type applications.