Re: Request for Comments: GNOME Notifier

[Daniel Brodie <daniel brodienet com>]

On Tue, 2004-07-27 at 23:42 -0700, Alan wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 28, 2004 at 08:35:48AM +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
> > 
> > > This allready exists and is called dashboard.
> > 
> > This project seems to be for displaying simple messages such as "your
> > network connection has been lost". I don't think dashboard is meant for
> > that.
> 
> Agreed.  I think that this is one of the things that WinXP got right
> with their little bubbles and ability to hide systray icons.  It would
> be nice to see something similar (but better and more evolved of course)
> in gnome for simliar actions.
> 

Your kidding, right?
Anybody that I have talked to despises and hates the Windows balloons.
The only reason hiding systray icons was done was because WAY TOO MANY
applications were using systray icons and that meant that during bootup
a regular machine (no spyware or anything like that, regular installed
with most day to day windows software) would have a systray wider then
the taskbar.
The problem is that the 'Notification Area' in gnome is starting to,
slowly slowly, get the same treatment, and is very annoying.

The hiding of the icons is something that only experienced users use. I
have never seen a regular user even knowing it existed or even caring
about most of the systray icons to begin with. Infact, I see it as a
patch over a horrible ui, much like those 'auto hidden' menu items you
get in the main menu, which is also an extremly annoying feature (One of
the first things I was asked to disable when I installed one of the
newer ms office)

One of the even more annoying 'feature' in WinXP are those balloons.
They sit there in the corner of your eye, obscuring part of the window
and they sit in such a way that it is almost impossible to continue
working without dealing with it. It really tries to be out of the way
but instead it is sometimes more annoying then a dialog box.

</rant>
So please don't consider adding a simmilar 'feature' to gnome.
Notification? Great! But none of those balloons or anything like that
please.

Sorry for the rant,
Daniel


-- 
Daniel Brodie <daniel brodienet com>