unity-design team mailing list archive

[Praveen <tgpraveen89@xxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Praveen <tgpraveen89@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 12:15 PM
Subject: Notification in fullscreen apps
To: ayatana@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


I recently read the karmic-notify-osd proposal and it has a section for what
is to done when applications are fullscreen, it currently states that
non-critical bubbles must be suppressed.
Are notifications from pidgin/empathy considered critical or non-critical?

I think that the right way of dealing with fullscreen applications is to not
suppress notifications by default. instead providing a global do-not-disturb
mode is more useful as whatever we do we may never guess the intentions of
the user.

Eg.1. Say i am waiting for a IM from my friend, and while waiting i decide
to watch a movie. Then if by default i don't get notified while i am
watching the movie in fullscreen and the movie goes on for 2 hours, then
this is undesirable. Also IMs are meant to be acted upon instantly.
With email this gets more complicated. Some people with some emails want to
reply immediately and would like to be notified. Some people get 100's of
email and possibly reply only once a day to emails.

2. I set a reminder in evolution for an event to occur after 1 hour and
watch some documentary. I certainly dont want to miss the reminder.

3.I might be watching a movie while i wait for a torrent to finish
downloading. In this case notification for loss of net connection is
important,but in other cases it might not be.

So i suggest guessing what notifications user wants or doesn't want in
fullscreen is not really possible. Hence by *default* they must be *
displayed* in fullscreen and a *do-not-disturb mode along with the system
indicator+message indicator *should be  a option to be set.

What do others think on this?