unity-design team mailing list archive

[Vincenzo Ciancia <ciancia@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Il giorno mar, 16/06/2009 alle 15.48 +0200, Vincenzo Ciancia ha scritto:
> On 16/06/2009 Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> > 
> > Ted Gould has been a proponent of a system / hardware indicator, and 
> > I've been working on how to handle things like USB-unmount and 
> > Bluetooth-connect and am coming round to the idea. What do you guys 
> > think? If there's support for the idea, we could do a round of design 
> > work and present it here for more detailed discussion.
> > 
> 
> Do you mean like the messaging indicator but for system messages? If so, 
> would it also handle update-manager interactions? I think this has been 
> proposed by many both here and on the u-m bug so there should be wide 
> consensus. I'd love it.
> 
> If I misunderstood what you said, perhaps some more detail is needed.
> 
> Vincenzo

You asked me to discuss this topic in _this_ thread, and here I am :) As
you can see I already posted the above. To make it clear, it would be
nice IMHO if some form of system indicator could replace the infamous
popup.

I also suggested in this time window that notifications in the panel
could be something like the FUSA, with text instead of an icon, and if
you are low on screen space, you can right click on it and make it an
icon. Then, whatever icon it's used, it will be clear since *the user*
turned text into icons and saw the icon the first time. More details on
an earlier post: https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg00253.html .

I posted a mockup for the update-notifier recently which I think would
fit for a system indicator (did not add it to the wiki yet, sorry) here
is a pseudo-screenshot

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotificationDesignGuidelines/Comments?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=text-notification.jpg

and the idea, if extended to system indicator, is as follows: if there
is only one message "pending" then it has a short title written in bold,
like "A system update is required" in the screenshot (perhaps terrible
english :)). I imagine that clicking on it pops up a short menu with
options like initiating interaction (e.g. "update the system...") or
"remind me later". 

If there are more than one message, the text in bold may read something
like "System events pending" and clicking on it reveal a menu divided in
various areas, like the "system" menu in our default panel. Each area
has perhaps no submenus, but a non-selectable bold entry for the message
itself, and the actions below it. Every message can obviously have its
own menu. E.g. "Your house is burning" "remind me later" would not make
sense :)

Vincenzo