Re: [Usability] notification - design proposal

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Thu, 15 Apr 2004, Joaquin Cuenca Abela wrote:

> Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 23:32:53 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Joaquin Cuenca Abela <e98cuenc yahoo com>
> To: Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>, Chris Altmann <altmann surewest net>
> Cc: usability gnome org
> Subject: Re: [Usability] notification - design proposal
>
>
> --- Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 13 Apr 2004, Chris Altmann wrote:
> >
> > > Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:15:29 -0700 (PDT)
> > > From: Chris Altmann <altmann surewest net>
> > > To: usability gnome org
> > > Subject: Re: [Usability] notification - design
> > proposal
> > >
> > > What MS has planned for Longhorn "Notifications"
> > maybe of some
> > > inspirational use:
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/understanding/ux/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnaero/html/wux_topic_alerts.asp
> >
> > These seem like a follow on to the 'useful but
> > non-essentail' notification
> > features seen in Micrsoft Office XP Edition, which
> > (I was told) do not
> > take focus and interrupt your typing and go away if
> > you ignore them (but
> > isn't that what the status bar is for I thought!).
>
> Except that nobody looks at the status bar :-)

Yeah but fixing the status bar and improving the quality of the
information shown there isn't sexy and you cannot market it as an
"innovative" new feature.

Maybe the status bar could be made more noticable in some way, perhaps by
flashing once.  It might be more useful if there was a way to review the
status bar messages (show messages that were displaced too quickly) or for
users to get more information on one of the status messages (like a
shortcut to a relevant page in the documentation).

The status bar will make a comeback I tell you!

- Alan