unity-design team mailing list archive

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad <joerlend.schinstad@xxxxxxxxx>]

Den 31. okt. 2011 19:25, skrev James Jenner:
> I only say this because often I will see a notification from an 
> application that is on a different workspace and the effort to open 
> said application would be simplified if I could just click the 
> notification (which currently just makes the notification go fuzzy, 
> not sure on the logic for this). Again, maybe it's just the 
> notifications I'm dealing with and maybe other notifications support this.

The logic is that it should be possible to notify a user without 
requiring any action from that user that will be annoying and cause loss 
of focus. It would be inconsistent if some notifications would require 
an action and other not. Also, suddenly displaying a clickable 
notification above your application can have some very unexpected 
consequences. For instance, say I have Thunderbird maximized and I want 
to search my emails. I click the search field to give it focus, but at 
the moment I click, there is a notification. Because I clicked so 
quickly, I could not see what the notification was about. With your 
suggestion, it would also open another application and give it focus.

Notifications are transient. They do not usually require an action, 
though I think it's possible for applications to present actionable 
notifications though they are discouraged. Indicators, on the other 
hand, is well suited for things that require an action. You also have 
status information on launcher entries, with quicklists that can make it 
easy to react to them.

In addition to notifications, indicators and launcher entry status, you 
also have application urgency, which makes the entry shake and the 
"window open" arrow turn blue. Because this is urgent, I think it would 
make sense to have a keyboard shortcut to focus it. The question is what 
keyboard shortcut to use. Ctrl+BAT might be useful. (BAT == Button Above 
Tab -- and Tab backwards :))

Jo-Erlend Schinstad