unity-design team mailing list archive

[mac_v <drkvi-a@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> 
> For the moment, I think the messaging menu will stay binary ("no queue"
> vs "stuff to do"). But we definitely have a priority / urgency goal for
> Karmic in notifications. We are turning on a debug behaviour for
> notify-osd so that urgency will be visible on notifications (it will be
> turned off again before the release) to help us identify which apps use
> urgency well and which abuse it. And we'll be testing various algorithms
> to use the notification urgency for message duration, queuing priority,
> and discarding in the case of an overfull queue. So there's lots of
> thinking to be done on the general subject of event / message urgency,
> and perhaps that will bring us back to the messaging menu with a
> different perspective.
> 
> Mark

i'd say * too much thoughts are being put into this indicator * applet...

a simple indicator applet behaviour would be to
1> consolidate all the different messaging icons in one location
2> instead of using the general envelope icon for im clients, a logical
icon would be to show the icon of the application being used,
ie: if pidgin is working > indicator applet shows the icon of pidgin ,
3> if several messaging apps are open , show the icon of the last
application used , and the rest in the dropdown menu.
4> clicking the icon displayed in the applet should directly show the
application
5> applications minimize to the indicator applet when minimized
6> displayed icon  of the application retains the options available for
the application, which were present on right clicking the icon in the
notification area.

more pressing concerns in the indicator applet are:
1> envelope icon as universal indicator applet icon makes no sense ,
since most of the *general population dont use the email clients * ,
rather they use the im clients more .
2> thunderbird the more popular email client than evolution , is not
listed in the indicator applet
3> even though the indicator applet shows the pidgin/xchat , these
clients , are displayed in the notification area , this dual
representation destroys the purpose of reducing the abuse of
notification area...

this weighing is based that an email/im has more importance, which is
flawed thinking,
 * only the user can know which is more important * .

so when any new event occurs showing the icon of the application and
then implementing the red/yellow/green dots for the contacts is more
practical.

message weighing purely based on dots and the envelope icon are not that
helpful. the weighing needs to be for that particular application.

cheers...
mac_v