Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 5, 2017 17:39 UTC (Tue) by bandrami (guest, #94229)
Parent article: Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Spolsky IIRC once said that Microsoft fundamentally didn't understand how users used Excel. The dev team kept thinking of it as a platform for calculations, and the users insisted on seeing it primarily as a way to spatially lay out information.

Similarly, I get that the Gnome team feels like devs and users have fundamentally misunderstood the notification system for the better part of two decades. The Gnome team wants to provide a way to display transient, time-critical information like "you just lost network connectivity" or "your battery is about to run out" or "you just received a chat message". The problem is, what 3rd party developers and users are much more interested in a way to display permanent heads-up information like "your wireless is still connected" or "your battery is charging" or "while you were out of the room you received at least one chat message". It's not uncommon to have impedance mismatch like that, but what does really seem limited to Gnome is that the team has now spent *years* banging their heads against this particularly wall hoping that eventually we users will see the light like they do. It's all the more puzzling because I can't for the life of me figure out what design principle made them decide this is the hill to die on, over and over and over again.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 5, 2017 21:01 UTC (Tue) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

Without reference to Gnome, that is actually a pretty apposite observation. Yes, you're quite right. That's how I care for my systray icons. They tell me stable information, reassuring me that everything is still fine, not warning information.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 5, 2017 22:32 UTC (Tue) by ms-tg (subscriber, #89231) [Link] (6 responses)

I'm just lost as to why this has to be a conflict. Can someone, preferably *on* the Gnome team (since this is LWN after all), just go ahead and clarify:

1. What is the Gnome team's theory for how to serve the need for "current status" display and interactions:
> a way to display permanent heads-up information like "your wireless is still connected" or "your battery is charging" or "while you were out of the room you received at least one chat message"

2. How is this "current status" theory intended to interact with features such as notifications?

Such a clarification here would be helpful for me to understand, so thanks a lot if you are in a position to answer!

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 9:57 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (5 responses)

> 1. What is the Gnome team's theory for how to serve the need for "current status" display and interactions:
> a way to display permanent heads-up information like "your wireless is still connected" or "your battery is charging" or "while you were out of the room you received at least one chat message"

The first two are easy easy -- wireless connected, battery charging, etc have permanent icons in the upper right corner. They've been there (in one form or another) since the beginning of G3.

I can't comment on the third, though the TFA did mention the recommended mechanism for IM-type notifications.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 6, 2017 12:58 UTC (Wed) by bandrami (guest, #94229) [Link] (4 responses)

Sure, but what Gnome seems fiercely opposed to is allowing developers to supply arbitrary permanent, glance-able status icons; above you can see the repeated charge that too many applications do that if they are allowed to.

Does Gnome want to provide a way for application A to convey information that I can glance at at any time without leaving the context of application B, or am I right that Gnome is opposed to that on design principles?

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 2:08 UTC (Thu) by ocrete (subscriber, #107180) [Link] (3 responses)

> Does Gnome want to provide a way for application A to convey information that I can glance at at any time without leaving the context of application B, or am I right that Gnome is opposed to that on design principles?

One of the goals of the GNOME 3 design is to allow for distraction free work, and to force all notifications through the notification panel (and the notification API), so they can be controlled by the user (who can for example decide to ignore them all. So a status panel is just a bad idea.

The idea is basically to do the same thing that iOS/Android do. They don't have icons for all apps tha can work in the background, you only get a notification if something worthy happens.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 3:09 UTC (Thu) by bandrami (guest, #94229) [Link]

Yeah, I have read that. I try to place myself in a headspace where a huge balloon popping up is less distracting than a status icon blinking or changing colors, and I can't get there. But I stopped banging my head against this wall years ago, and haven't used Gnome since about 3.8. I wish them the best, but I have literally zero desire for a computer (on which I produce things) to have a similar interface to a phone (on which I consume things).

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 3:11 UTC (Thu) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link]

Opinions clearly differ on this point. Strongly. My vote obviously counts for nothing, but I prefer a status panel to notifications. I generally turn off all desktop notifications because they are more annoying than useful.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 4:19 UTC (Thu) by TRS-80 (guest, #1804) [Link]

Android is actually moving towards requiring notifications if you want to run as a background task: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/android-8-0-oreo-...

This is more about power saving though, so the user knows what is running and can stop it to save power. The section on notifications is also worth reading https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/android-8-0-oreo-...