On Fri, 2003-08-29 at 00:03, Jeff Waugh wrote: > <quote who="Sean Harshbarger"> > > > IE acme is a good example. I do not need a acme window open all the time. > > I may use it once every 6 months to setup a new key. Other then that, it > > just sits there. The benefit is that it notifies me that it is running by > > keeping an icon in the "tray". > > acme is a terrible example of the notification area in action. Does it > actually notify you of anything? ... No. Please don't use it as an example > of a good notification icon. Actually at the time I felt it was, however I do see your point. The mechanics of its usability are otherwise terrible, but nether the less, it allows the user to know its there and thats it. The main reason for me picking this was the fact that I didn't need acme's GUI all the time and found the n-area icon to be useful. Of course I will admit your point outweighs mine :) This is indeed a touchy area as an example and understand your point of view on that. > (Note: Notification does not mean "sit there and do nothing, apart from > providing the almost-useless information that a particular process happens > to be running.) No it doesn't, but it also doesn't mean sitting there to do everything. The idea here is to setup some sort of standard to try and keep things organized and with similar behavior. I think we all can agree on that. > Unfortunately, we have a pre-existing pattern that notification icons stay > in the n-area and then flash when they want to notify you of something (the > Red Hat updater thingy, gaim, Windows things) instead of only appearing when > they have something to say... ie. notification. Pattern yes. Standard HIG material no. Unless my eyes be cheated, I fail to see any such guidelines in the HIG. I do see however a need to have this tacked by this group and introduced into the HIG. > This results in behavior such as gaim's: It has a nice big icon in the > n-area, but when it wants to flash up a notification, it uses what you could > describe as an emblem on top of the normal icon, which is perhaps 8 pixels > across. That's not a very bold notification! I know what you mean. Gaim has some strong points and some weak points. All applications do. I think we may want to think about adding something in the HIG for that as well. That woulds go along with the behavior aspect of the n-area. > The notification area should not be used simply to inform the user that a > process is running. They are not interested in that information. If, > however, one of those processes does something that requires their attention > (really and truly, not just silly stuff), then they do care. Agreed and again I will back up my example for ACME with saying that it doesn't do everything. I just would hate to see the n-area become the windows tray all over again. I believe we need guidelines for this in the HIG. -- Sean Harshbarger | "Only two things are infinite, harshy dersoldat org | the universe and human stupidity, http://www.dersoldat.org | and I'm not sure about the former." http://coaster.sf.net | - Albert Einstein (1879-1955) Key fingerprint = 086A AA96 51DD D84D 3E64 1B26 778F 2335 C828 E736
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