unity-design team mailing list archive

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

Den 19. nov. 2011 05:22, skrev Roland Taylor:
> The solution here would be to stop crowding the messaging menu (which 
> really makes no sense), and allow autohiding of indicators, similar to 
> the KDE systray.

I agree that the messaging menu is bordering on being crowded, but 
hiding indications make no sense to me.

Instead, apps that have no indications should not display an indicator. 
For instance, apps like Transmission and Tomboy should not display 
indicators. They should use quicklists instead, since that is what they 
are. Also, Thunderbird should not display entries for writing email and 
opening contacts. That is not an indication. It is an action. I think 
the MM should be used for incoming messages, since that is something 
that needs indications. The availability status should be moved to the 
user menu and would be used not only for IM and such, but also to choose 
the notification level. When you open the MM, you should get a list of 
apps with numbers on them. When you expand the indications of one app, 
then you would collapse the indications of others. This reduces the 
clutter, and also works well on small screens where you might want to 
display one menu at a time.

The concept of using indications to hide windows, is a throwback from 
really old versions of Windows, which had terrible window management. We 
should fix the problem by providing good window management instead of 
hiding it -- quite literally. A better idea would be to have a special 
workspace for backgrounded apps. It would get a launcher entry. You put 
it in the background, the launcher entry disappears and it is gone. We 
could then have an urgency indicator that would display a menu of all 
apps that have called for attention. Selecting an app from that menu 
would move it to the current workspace if it was backgrounded, or move 
you to its workspace if it was placed somewhere else. Or perhaps, rather 
the "background area"  launcher entry would display urgency when at 
least one app has urgency set, possibly indicating the number of windows 
by using the same scheme that apps use to show the number of open windows.

Sounds reasonable?

Jo-Erlend Schinstad