unity-design team mailing list archive

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx>]

I, err, have to jump in here and say Please, If you're going to do
anything with when windows are raised, raise them more aggressively!
Or fix how windows that aren't raised are handled; right now they are
completely muted.

One of favourite horrible things: choosing to show a window via an
indicator applet, like Empathy, or Rhythmbox, or Transmission,
sometimes causes it to appear below the stack of windows. Then I can
either reach to the window list applet (which I am opposed to for
moral reasons), or I can click the indicator again and choose hide
window, then click the indicator AGAIN and choose show window (while
crossing my fingers).

Now, the real issue there is that windows demanding attention are
barely given any share of the screen. They are represented by a tiny
box in the window list applet, which may be a little bit brighter than
all the other tiny boxes in that applet. Any other notifications live
at the top of the screen.

Moblin and Gnome Shell both do something nice here: a notification
bubble appears saying “this window wants attention,” giving it a great
deal more presence without interrupting the user. In their case, you
can click said bubble and the window appears. (Not that I really want
interactive bubbles, but in this case I wonder a little if it's maybe
worth it).

Gnome Shell's case is particularly effective, because all of the
notifications live in the same area, and every notification stays in
the message tray, so the window demanding attention still has a small
presence as a notification (instead of just one of many windows) until
it is given attention.


Thanks,
Dylan