Re: [Usability] Re: [Rhythmbox-devel] Rhythmbox tray icon - again

[Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>]

On Thu, 2003-09-11 at 08:53, Vidar Braut Haarr wrote:
> >>If its a popup, could you not force it to show for x amount of seconds
> >>then hide again?
> > Yep.
> 
> While I do see that this is good enough for Rhythmbox, since it will 
> most likely only run when the user is using the computer. And it's pure 
> information.
> 
> However, if the application is trying to notify the user because it 
> needs him to do something, then I don't think balloon tips that 
> auto-hide is a very good idea.

Would it not be good then to have different message classes - i.e.,
"information popup" (fades/hides after time), "error popup" (stays there
until dismissed by users), and "critical popup" (irritates hell out of
user w/ flashing, modality, whatever until she deals with it) ?

Rhythmbox would only ever need the info popup, I'm sure (even most
errors aren't something the user *needs* to know about), while something
like a kernel event saying that disk C is starting to die might be a
critical popup, and so on.

Other events might have other requirements tho - for example, a new IM
notification in GAIM should stay until the user opens it, but it's not
an error condition - perhaps just make another "long-term popup" class
that hast he same behaviour as the error class?

*Is* there any documentation anywhere detailing all the projected use
cases for the notification area, or is everyone still running around
guessing what it's good for?

> 
> Just my .2 :)
> 
> Has there been any thought to implementing a desktop-wide notification 
> system ?
-- 
Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
AwesomePlay Productions, Inc.