unity-design team mailing list archive

[David Barth <david.barth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ted Gould wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-08-24 at 20:07 +0100, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
>   
>> Noel J. Bergman wrote:
>>     
>>> Aha!  And this is the nature of the bug as I see it.  I do not HAVE a
>>> message of any kind, but I still have the e-mail icon.  Please switch to
>>> some other icon when there ARE NO MESSAGES, and I'll be satisfied.
>>>   
>>>       
>> I agree, there should be no icon if it serves no use.
>>
>> In 9.10, it will be possible to launch messaging applications from the
>> menu. It should also be possible to configure the apps NOT to be there
>> (so, for example, if you don't use evolution then it needn't be
>> possible to launch it from there). If there is NOTHING in the menu,
>> then it should disappear.
>>     
>
> Yes, we spec'd it as such.  Someone will have to disable the launchers
> that they've installed via the preference dialog, but after that it will
> disappear.  (sorry, I hadn't updated the bug since we discussed this)
>   
The current proposal to remove the icon, but only if:
  1. there are no messages waiting
  2. each of the application launchers have been manually disabled by
the user

seems a bit difficult to discover.

I think we need an option in the Preferences to hide the icon.

Proposed change:
 - if no app launchers are registered, or all of them have been
blacklisted, then the option should automatically check itself ("Hide
the icon when there are no new messages")
 - when the option is set, the UI to arrange app. launchers should be
grayed out (indicating that none of the launchers will be shown anyway),
whereas when it's not set, the user can then fine tune the list of
displayed launchers.

David