As part of its initiative to improve the usability of the Linux desktop, Canonical has made a proposal for a desktop notification system for both GNOME and KDE. Mark Shuttleworth announced the proposal on his blog earlier this week. The mockup video shows notification more or less like the 3d party Growl system for Mac OS X. Since we are talking Linux here, the meat is in the implementation details and cross-desktop compatibility.
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Member since:2008-08-19
Seems to me that if you really need to know about it, an unobtrusive panel icon is the last thing you need.
Personally, I favour both for urgent issues - when something goes wrong, show a notification to get my attention when I'm sitting in front of the screen, and leave a blinking icon in the system tray where I'll spot it when I get back to my desk. Because if it's something I really need to know about, I really do want to know about it.
Member since:2005-07-24
Well, blinking would be OK, I guess. I was thinking more in terms of the nonblinking, but still noticeable panel icon that appears when a reboot is required after a kernel upgrade.
Persoanlly,I'd be inclined to reserve blinking icons for when the computer is about to explode and I'm supposed to run for cover. Then again, my family used to get frustrated with me for completely ignoring local tornado warnings...
Member since:2005-07-01
What I hate about notifications is the way they seem to become a manifestation of an application's ego. It's as if the developers have decided that their app is so important that the user will want to be notified of every little thing it does.
Take, as an example of this, Firefox's "Firefox has found updates for some of your extensions" notification. This fascinating tidbit of information which is clearly non-critical - I don't know anyone who interrupts their browsing to act on this info - is delivered not using the OS's built in notification system but rather Firefox's own system which crawls above all other apps to interfere with whatever you're doing. At best it's bad manners. In some situations, it can be a downright nuisance.
Usually there's some option somewhere to turn this type of thing off. In practice notifications should all be off by default. The user should have to say "I want to be notified of X, Y and Z", not "Stop bugging me about W".
Member since:2005-07-24
Steve has discovered that Steve is annoyed by some applications' self-important insistence upon referring to themselves in the third person. ;-)
Edited 2008-12-24 01:09 UTC
Member since:2006-03-29
Well it really depends imo.
I like to be informed that a KTorrent download has been finished, that way I could start buring the iso-image I downloaded right away.
And if I missed the notice I would controll the state myself.
So the notification can be usefull if you are there and it does not bother you if you are not there.
What bothers me with the path Canonical is taking is that they strip it completly down. Another imo better way would be to have it like KDE: You can modify all the notifications.
Now what Canonical should do is find good defaults for their user group while not taking features away for others!
Member since:2008-03-17
It is following the classic gnome approach, not so much because it is rather sparse, but more the idea behind it.
"Flexibility is bad" one approach because programmers would butcher it (they might, but is not a given) and users are confused by buttons or options ( they might be, but not everyone is an idiot) allowing them to set the level of "intrusion".
The total lack of granularity feels a bit weird, but I'll reserve final judgement when an actual working implementation shows up
Edited 2008-12-24 14:51 UTC
Member since:2005-07-24
History disagrees. I don't know if you followed the Mozilla Suite through all the years that they spun their wheels, user share remaining stagnant and tiny, until they discovered that the "less is more" philosophy had huge advantages. The "stripped completely down" Firefox *saved* Mozilla. And did it almost literally overnight. KDE folks seem to prefer the "keep adding more and more features" approach, presumably thinking that will make it more popular. But the balance of the actual real world evidence supports the "less if more" philosophy, despite the fact that it may seem counter-intuitive to some.
Member since:
2005-07-24
I rather like the idea of making them so completely ephemeral and nonessential. Because that means I can just turn them off. When those little balloons pop up, I get the distinctly unpleasant (and likely irrational) feeling that I am running Windows. They are an annoyance I can well do without. As Mark says, anything that I really need to know about should have an unobtrusive panel icon that I can take action (click) at my convenience to find out more about. Notifications are messages from the devil. ;-)
Edited 2008-12-23 20:58 UTC