[Ayatana] Windicators

[Roth Robert <evfool@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello!

Starting a new topic to discuss the suggestions, comments, ideas regarding the windicators Mark blogged about.

The idea seems awesome, but there are many minor details which require discussion in my opinion. Some of them were already noticed by readers on Mark's blog, like the problem that the sound windicator raises, that people will have more sound applets, one for the system, and one for every application that uses sounds. This in my opinion needs rethinking because there are problematic usecases, like:I am listening music with Rhythmbox, and working in a maximized window with some sourcecode in an IDE. I receive a voice call from a friend (through Empathy) - in that moment I want to mute the music playing... or maybe I just want to lower the volume... I have to switch to the rhythmbox window, lower the volume, switch to empathy, accept the voice call. So the point is when indicators were introduced, some of them were general - like the sound applet, status menu - these shouldn't be duplicated as windicators. A sound indicator handling all the applications would be better, just like the gnome pulse applet but implemented as a system indicator, maybe added the now playing information and general sound-related actions, as discussed earlier. 

Otherwise I like the idea to use the right side of the titlebar to show progress status, app status, share icons, etc.

Another tiny detail I have a problem with... having progress status indicators on the top right side and having the transient status message appear on the bottom left side seems strange... do the status messages have to appear on the bottom left? Until now it was fine because the progress indicator was in the statusbar and the status message also, but these belong together in my opinion. What if they'd appear below the windicators for a short time? Going even further with the idea... what if they would be NotifyOSD messages with smaller bubble, font, and positioned below the window border?

So these are my ideas now regarding the idea of windicators.... but I'm thinking how to mix the idea of windicators for indicators and esfera for window management, because both seem very useful ... 

Ideas, suggestions, comments please...