Re: [Usability] A battery applet...

[Sergey Udaltsov <sergey udaltsov gmail com>]

> There is one problem with this "present choice to user" stuff. We should
> just try to be creative and try guessing the right thing. What users
> care is "how much longer can this thing run without AC power?". What
> devices would there be to choose from? I mean, just combine them all and
> show the total amount of juice left. (Maybe you mean this with the
Total amount of juice in the battery case is absolutely meaningless
thing IMHO. If I have 99% of the laptop battery and 1% of the mouse
battery - I can run things for a long time (probably, switching to the
touchpad very soon). But the other way around - I should immediately
save my work and do "suspend". In both cases showing %50 does not make
any sense. Also, 1% of the PDA battery should not really bother
desktop user too much (well, it should - but it is not critical to the
desktop functionality).

> "automatic icon pickup, I am not sure) - but really, do we need a
> setting at all?
Yeah - if we show separate statuses for separate devices.
 
> It's great that we are having HAL stuff and the notifications. The right
> thing would indeed be to just show applets for things that exist on the
> computer: gnome-bluetooth would start automatically when such a device
> exists, network applet would show once link gets up, a battery meter
> would appear on machines that have a battery, etc etc.. There is no need
> to _add_ those by hand.
Well, I absolutely agree with this point. I just do not know whether
current panel (notification area?) architecture allows to create
applets (tray icons?) "on demand" (from the system, HAL side) easily.
Is there any example for something of that kind? It would look
reasonable - if the applet/icon appear automatically - only when it is
really necessary.

Sergey