Any objections on this? It's about time to voice them.
If not, this should be added to the relevant HIG article,
http://elementaryos.org/docs/human-interface-guidelines/user-workflow/background-tasks
2013/3/22 Nishant George Agrwal <nishantagrwal12993@xxxxxxxxx>
Okay, so the thread about Noise not complying to the HIG turned
into quite a general discussion about the HIG and background
application behaviour so I am creating this new thread with a
better title to continue it. Here's a link to the old thread:
https://lists.launchpad.net/elementary-dev-community/msg02046.html
Summing up, we need to think about proper ways to create and deal
with background applications, i.e, applications that don't require
interaction with the user for most or a big part of the time they
are running, like mail clients, IM clients, music players,
microblogging apps, etc. Typically, these apps don't fit well into
any one task the user is performing, so it often doesn't make sense
for these applications to be bound to a particular workspace either.
To this end, applications are to intelligently handle closing the
window to do whatever best suits the situation. The following could
be guidelines to what the app must do (this deals with the
user-facing elements, not the implementation)
"If you'd check a specific application frequently but not in
reaction to notifications it raises (e.g. group chat, even if you
weren't pinged directly) or if it has to be accessible as quickly
as possible while it's running (e.g. music player, to pause music),
the app should display an icon in the dock while it's running.
If the app is primarily brought up in reaction to a notification
and if the state of the app doesn't significantly affect its usage
frequency (e.g. microblogging client - if the user tweets often
they'd pin it to dock anyway), it should display an icon in the
dock only when there are unattended action items (e.g. new
messages) along with the action item count in the dock badge."
As far as implementation goes, this branch was recently merged into
plank, which enables preliminary support for batches and progress
bars without the need for an open window.
https://code.launchpad.net/~ricotz/plank/launcherentry-items
For hiding the window while keeping the dock icon visible, one
solution would be to make better use of minimize. The following
blueprint would need to be implemented:
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/gala/+spec/minimized-as-closed
That's all folks.
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Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff
OS architect @ elementary
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