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Windicators

 

Hello!

Starting a new topic to discuss the suggestions, comments, ideas regarding
the windicators <http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/333> 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<http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/333#comment-327067>,
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<http://code.google.com/p/gnome-pulse-applet/wiki/Screenshots>
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...

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