I agree that an X button isn't
needed, but I think the notifications would be improved if they all
had a subtle indicator of how long until the notification will
disappear.
The problem with that is that the subtle indicator isn't useful if it's
subtle :-) If my attention is on the thing I'm doing, and a
notification pops up, I have to decide without looking at it if I want
to break my attention. If I have to glance at a progress indicator I
have already broken my concentration for the notification - I might as
well just look at it :-) The countdown was arguably useful when
notifications had actions, but in practice it just created this weird
race-to-the-button experience.
With regard to "how long", the answer is that the notification should
be there "just the right time". Of course, that's very difficult to
define, but we're going to try :-)
In 9.10, the notifications will actually have variable duration (I
don't think they do in 9.04, that was spec'd but didn't make it). The
inputs to that time are complex and many: the urgency of the
notification (which means we have to hunt down and destroy abusers of
notification urgency), the amount of text, whether the notification has
been appended to or replaced with updated content, and the urgency of
the things queued but not yet displayed. We're also thinking of using
things like "the user is busy typing, give him a few more milliseconds
for this one" to let users finish a sentence then look at the
notification.
So, notification duration would be a fruitful topic for a thread on
this list. MPT would be the man to convince, and Mirco would comment on
whether ideas are implementable.
Mark