Comments on: libnotify in GNOME Applets

By: Ralph Aichinger

Ralph Aichinger — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I think notification about new weather reports is quite useless and distracting. Now if there was an applet to display thoses “The system is goning down in 5 minutes” reboot messages, *that* would be cool ; )

/ralph

By: ffub

ffub — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

They both seem unnecessary. As you seem to admit, the reason they are going into this software is to try out libnotify. The weather one is distracting. If the user wants to know the weathere they can look at the applet or click on it, it’s not up for the computer to decide when they want this information.

The trash applet notification is also pointless. As the user will be initiating the deletion to trash, and a progress dialog pops up in most cases (e.g. nautilus) this is just superfluous.

The statement, “These notifications expire a few seconds after they are shown, so they should not disturb the user at all”, is false. A redundant popup for a few seconds is wholly disturbing.

By: Daniel Borgmann

Daniel Borgmann — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Well, why do I want to know that something in the trash has changed? Maybe there is a point to it that I’m just not seeing.
I’m not so much worried about the distraction, but rather that lots of meaningless notifications might de-empasize the actually useful ones.

By: Simon Howard

Simon Howard — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I hope these are changes which aren’t being checked into GNOME CVS.

By: Sven

Sven — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

What about a nice notification that informs the user when the position of the mouse has changed?

By: Jon Cooper

Jon Cooper — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

While I think it is good to have a testbed, I don’t believe these applets require notification.

Look at how ForecastFox quietly and successfully does weather – like the weather panel applet, by providing a simple icon, which on mouseover provides more details. You don’t need to know when the weather changes via a notification.

A user will always start a Trash related action, hence no notification is required there either. Perhaps if the trash was getting close to a predefined limit a notification would be necessary, but other than that I see no use.

Gaim needs this functionality, however, and it needs to do it well (cf. MSN toaster popups). The battery status applet could also use this in a useful way. Finally, E-D-S needs notifications for calendar events / tasks etc. When evolution is running, using notifications for new email would also be a bonus (cf. Outlook 2003 notifications).

All in all, libnotify will be a good standardisation, but please don’t add features to release applications just for the sake of it.

By: Michele

Michele — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I think all these notifications are useless and disturbing.
If the state of my trash changes is because I’ve trashed something, so why do I need a notification for something I’ve just done?
IMO those things belongs only to important events like battery discharging/charging, evolution alarm, im clients, completed downloads…

Hope we don’t get the same selvage use of notification area and balloons as in windows.

Ciao.

By: upset

upset — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

That’s a lot of negative comments. I hope you got the message: no frivolous notifications.

Thanks!

By: SchAmane

SchAmane — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

This feature for is disscussed for more then year. I hope this time it comes something realy included to gnome.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I was gonna post “Good God, No!”, but it seems other people beat me to it. The popups look cool and this is a really nice proof of concept, but the applets in question should not have popups for reasons already mentioned.

One question: why is the weather popup shown in the bottom right corner? Wouldn’t it be better to show the popups next to the applet they relate to?