Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 2, 2017 8:26 UTC (Sat) by callegar (guest, #16148)
Parent article: Day: Status Icons and GNOME

I suspect this means breaking the default experience with Skype, Dropbox, Telegram, Nextcloud, Jitsi, Blink, Owncloud, Pidgin, many clipboard managers, some highly specialized commercial products (EDA, etc) and a few other things that do not come to my mind right now.

This also means that the developers of these things will need to implement a new Gnome way of doing things either dismissing the old one (i.e., forcing the change onto the users of other desktops too) or supporting both. As if the linux desktop was not fragmented enough.

Seen some of this when KDE dropped the xembed protocol for the system tray and then went back to provide the xembedsniproxy.

Hope that Ubuntu with its new gnome interface is going to stick with the indicators.

Also wonder why there is this common conception that once the weather indicator works, nothing else matters.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 2, 2017 17:53 UTC (Sat) by patrakov (subscriber, #97174) [Link] (1 responses)

At least with Pidgin, the experience is not actually broken. You can always alt-tab to its window. And the fact that there is a message that needs your attention is well communicated in another way.

Where Allan's theory of "we can talk to upstream" breaks is not open-source Linux apps, but Windows apps that the user attempts to run via Wine. Their authors just don't care.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 2, 2017 22:34 UTC (Sat) by sramkrishna (subscriber, #72628) [Link]

Yeah. For that, it's better to just use TopIcons.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 2, 2017 20:19 UTC (Sat) by ocrete (subscriber, #107180) [Link] (3 responses)

At least Nextcloud is already working on implementing libcloudproviders, I expect other similar apps will follow. As for IM apps (Skype, Jitsi, Telegram, Empathy, etc). They can either keep their main window around or keep running even when the window is closed and just send notifications, this is how all mobile IM apps work, you don't need a status icon to know if it's running or not.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 4, 2017 11:11 UTC (Mon) by callegar (guest, #16148) [Link]

> They can either keep their main window around or keep running even when the window is closed and just send notifications, this is how all mobile IM apps work, you don't need a status icon to know if it's running or not

I tend to disagree here. The status icon is generally not for checking whether the application is running or not (even if this too can be handy), but for: (i) recalling if you have configured yourself as contactable or non-contactable in the application; and (ii) initiating calls. Keeping the whole main window open for the latter task messes the desktop for no reason.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 18:00 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

> you don't need a status icon to know if it's running or not.

I think its more user-friendly if there is some obvious user-visible place that shows these background processes. Take a look at the new design standards for Android 8 Oreo and how they require a user-visible notification line if you are going to run in the background, so the user can make informed decisions and is aware of the state of their system.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Dec 18, 2017 22:43 UTC (Mon) by immibis (subscriber, #105511) [Link]

I believe this has been an Android requirement for quite some time. Even back in 2.2 Froyo, your app was likely to be randomly terminated unless you created a special notification icon that says it's running in the background.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 3, 2017 19:51 UTC (Sun) by CycoJ (guest, #70454) [Link] (2 responses)

I find it ironic that the same people complaining about the "dumbing down of the user experience" and "catering to the touch screen" are the ones screaming for some of the most "dumb" user interfaces, which clearly cater to the "I can only click on things crowd". I'm not a gnome user, but the reason for 99.9% of systray apps seems to come from a windows world of where every service needs an item that the user can click on. Unix has had daemons which perform pretty much the same tasks (only as system user) as many of these systray apps.

I never understood why things like dropbox, nextcloud ... need a freaking systray item, what information does it actually convey?! I've "mounted" (instead of properly mounting it), the drive? Similar to all the messaging apps, why do I need to see the status of each of these apps (instead of just going to the virtual desktop where it's open). Two of my favourites atm are davmail and keepass2, the only info that the davmail icon gives me is, that yes when I switch off networking I can't connect to the server anymore ...duh! Keepass2 is similar, the only thing it tells me is that keepass is running and if it's locked. I always notice if I try to get a password and the db is locked, so what is the information that is being conveyed here?

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 3, 2017 23:29 UTC (Sun) by mcortese (guest, #52099) [Link] (1 responses)

Sure, some apps' status icons are pretty useless. But some do convey information, and when they do, they express a status, something that is not captured by the notification system which is for events. For instance, I agree that keepass2's status icon is stupid and serves no other purpose than taking up space. On the other hand, I find it a good idea for IM programs to show an icon with busy/away/dnd/... and to allow me to change it on the fly.

Getting rid of the whole concept (or hiding it behind an opt-in extension) just because some apps use it badly is like throwing away the proverbial baby.

A better option would be to let me choose which icons I want and which I don't. The ones I want shall go to the top-right corner, because that's where my eyes are trained to go to when I think about status (and no, I don't buy this thing about not mixing system and non-system icons, lest poor users get confused; if you really need to stress such distinction, a spacer or a vertical bar is enough).

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 5, 2017 12:50 UTC (Tue) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

FWIW your suggested solution is exactly what KDE Plasma allows you to have.