[Usability] Integration and Standardisation of Notification area and behaviour

["Thilo Pfennig" <thilopfennig foresightlinux org>]

Hi,

I would like to know if there were already some thoughts on redesining
the communication that applications do with the users?



Some elements of criticm in GNOME
===========================
Applets, Panel, Messages, Notification Area & Application behaviour.

* Applications:
  * When closing an application some applications keep running and be
     visible in the notification area
  * Some applications like workrave seem to use different mechanisms
    to communicate to the user.

* Notification area:
  * Every application does behave different when you right or left
click on its icon
    in the notification area

* Messages (libnotify etc.)
 * Sometimes you get messages that disapear and you can
    not get back (no glipper kind of functionality)

* Panel
  * If you add more nice starters and applets, the panel gets
cluttered more and more.
  * You sometimes loose a function/applet from the panel that is core
to the desktop.


Suggestions
==========

* All applications of a kind should only be allowed to use the
notification area or GNOMEs notification system if they use certain
kind of messaging. I expect different classes of applications to work
in the same way.  I would like to see every music application to react
the same way on:
   * single click
   * double click
   * right click

The notification area is something that I expect my desktop to have
under control. I should not need to learn about how different
applications react. For instance some music browsers require a right
click and choice to skip a track and some open the skip dialogue with
a left click.

* I also suggest to have a more standardized and monolithic panel
that can not be destructed
by accident. Since GNOME 2.2 or so where I started to use GNOME I
experience now and then that parts of the panel got lost. This could
also be better from a memory perspective. Today you have a panel and
many processes and some alone take some 50-60 MB. I suppose if these
were integrated this would be less?

* If somebody wants to add additional functionality I suggest that
this functionality is added where it makes sense from the panels
perspective (or better from the perspective of HIG, usability
standpoint)

* I would expect more features like queuing of icons/messages/applets
on the panel to save space. Like the "Window selector applet" - you
only have one visible icon but then can select multiple applications.

* Somehow the icons in the notification area have become another menu
for applications. I mean you can open preferences and much more (like
with GAIM).



Any thoughts or plans on this?


Thilo





--
Thilo Pfennig
http://issues.foresightlinux.org/confluence/x/R