Re: [Ayatana] Notifications are annoying when typing in the upper right corner of a window

[Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Steve Dodier wrote:

I dont think we'd gain much by trying to guess the behaviour of the user, because it requires being able to imagine absolutely any activity / behaviour (s)he can have. My HMI courses were poor but i've been warned that it wasnt an feasible task, back then. We would always forget an usecase and disturb someone who's focusing on his work.

That's why i think it would be wise to only delay notifications when it is obvious that the user needs his(her) eyes somewhere else. The best approach for me consists of making notifications that are easy to spot on the screen but that someone focusing on something else can easily not notice. I think notify-osd is approaching this state now, and we should focus on improving its last bugs, this will likely receive more praise from users ;)

+1

I think we can identify a set of "fine motor control" activities, as Celeste described, where you have "brittle state", like driving your mouse through a menu or a dropdown listbox. A loss of attention and consequent slip there is really irritating because you have to "start over" on the brittle work. We could delay a while on those actions, IMO, usefully. But beyond that it becomes a mugs game to guess intent.

Mark

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