Position of notification bubbles could be configurable

[Peter Miller]

It could be possible to configure the position of the notification display - top right, middle right or bottom right, etc.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Peter, that was an appallingly phrased report. Your reports will get better attention if they are credible, and they'll be more credible with less sarcasm and strong language. Your opinions are most welcome, but please phrase them constructively.

[bdunn (bradleyjdunn)]

Mark,

I think a lot of the frustration with the notify-osd relates to a couple of things. First, many of us choose to use linux because it gives us the freedom, even without coding experience to choose the experience that our OS gives us. From that framework, it is understandable that a new notification system that gives us no way without going into the code to configure or modify it would frustrate people. Furthermore, the placement of the notifications bubble in the latest update is illogical if you consider the goals you set out for the project:

"We want to make notifications truly ephemeral. They are there, and then they are gone, and that’s life. If you are at your desktop when a notification comes by, you will sense it, and if you want you can LOOK at it, and it will be beautiful and clear and easy to parse. If you want to ignore it, you can safely do that and it will always go away without you having to dismiss it. If you miss it, that’s OK. Notifications are only for things which you can safely ignore or miss out on. If you went out for coffee and a notification flew by, you are no worse off. They don’t pile up like email, there is no journal of the ones you missed, you can’t scroll back and see them again, and therefor you are under no obligation to do so – they can’t become work while you are already busy with something else. They are gone like a mystery girl on the bus you didn’t get on, and they enrich your life in exactly the same way!"

I am confused about how placing the notifications in a much more awkward place on the desktop do you achieve that goal. Justs putting it in the center east of the screen makes you forced to look at it because it is something flashing in a part of the screen that is both unusual for most users, and also is in the field of vision for many programs. It is much more intrusive and demanding of action than the original notifications were, and at least when they demanded attention you could make them go away or perform an action. In short they are nothing like the mystery girl on the bus, they are like the smelly dude that sat next to you when there are a bunch of open seats.

I hope that this will be corrected in the next notify-osd update and thanks for all your hard work.

[Pavol Klačanský (pavolzetor-deactivatedaccount)]

I have the notify bubles positioned at middle of screen

See screenshot

[Pavol Klačanský (pavolzetor-deactivatedaccount)]

please send me patch, or chagnes, I want know how have you repaired it

[hanzomon4 (hanzomon4)]

I also have some notifications that show up in the wrong position.. not as far down as Pavol's but still very apparently wrong. It only seems to do this with new email, empathy, music players. Things like volume, screen brightness show up fine

[ɞєᾐ ἂ. (talkingwires)]

I found this link which provides information on patching the location of the notifications: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=30857&p=178376

Also, I'm in the same boat as hanzomon4. Volume adjustments appear in the right spot (adjusting the screen brightness only works until right before the GDM loads, so I can't test that), but other applications' notifications appear too far down. They appear twice as far down from where they should, almost like there's an invisible space reserved by another notification.

I don't know what the OP said, but if osd-notify is buggered up to the point where some of us have them popping up all over the place, at least let us manually adjust them somehow.

[Kristoffer Lundén (kristoffer-lunden)]

I thought it was pidgin's libnotify that was broken. Putting the notifictaion somewhere out on the screen without anchoring it anywhere feels very wrong, and is very annoying. I've started to turn off most of the pidgin notifications because it bothers me.

+1 to get it back to as it were.

[pelle.k (pele2)]

I think it's highly subjective what position is the best for notification bubbles, and as much as I prefer the old position (from jaunty), even that could be upsetting to some users.
The new position "offset" (bug or not, screenshot attached), should be optional IMHO. So should the preference of what corner of the screen to show notifications in.

Gnome has always allowed me to make *some* (at least minor) adjustments to the "sane defaults". It that wasn't the case, i wouldn't be running it really.

[John Stowers (nzjrs)]

Are the notifications supposed to be 70% of the way up the screen, they look weird. Can they be moved back to the top please?

[HBLaw (huangbolaw)]

If there should be any default, the notification should be near the corner of the panel where the user put the "notification area". By default Gnome has an upper panel and a bottom panel; but for people (like me) who choose to delete the upper panel, the notification on the upper right corner just seems weird.

Also, I am not sure whether the position is mirrored for those who use right-to-left languages.

Best Regards,
Bo

[robled (robled)]

To extend HBLaw's comments I'd like to offer a reason why the top panel might be deleted - widescreen monitors. The industry has standardized on widescreen monitors, many which have fewer vertical pixels than older 4:3 monitors. And in recent times 16:9 has become standard, with even less vertical space. The two-panel setup consumes too much vertical space, with the upper middle section usually empty unless a user adds a lot of applets/launchers.

It's great to see a fix released for this. I don't see its effect in 9.10 beta, so I hope to be able to test it in an upcoming release candidate. Is the fix providing complete positioning control for all edges of the screen? Thanks!

[Paul Sanders (paul41)]

I installed the final release version of 9.10 yesterday and my notifications are way too low. I attached a screen shot.

[hospadar (hospada1)]

It seems to me the issue of certain notifications appearing weirdly spaced too low (See attached screenshot) stems mostly from src/stack.c in the department of line 915. Certain notifications get the top slot (like volume changes for example) while others get the bottom slot.

It seems as though it would make more sense to always give everything the top slot unless it's already taken. I believe the function that calls stack_get_slot_position() (the function I referenced) first checks to see if the slot it wants is taken, and if so waits (perhaps?), maybe a better behavior would be to just grab the next slot down.

[Erik Gregg (ralree)]

So, I realize the last post in this bug was a year ago, but I have something to add. I run 2 monitors - a small one below and a 42" one on the wall above. My notifications appear at the top right of the TV, where they're not in my field of view. I'm using Twinview with Nvidia. Is there currently any way to configure this in 10.10? All I want is for them to be on the lower screen. Cheers.

[Malik Malhan (xmxaxlxixkx)]

Same here on maverick. Notification are too low. i would like them to show in top right corner. I don't have hard keys like volume bright ect on my keyboard to use. A configuration tool would be better

[David D Lowe (flimm)]

Why is this bug marked as fixed released? Is the location of the bubble configurable now? How? Which version of notify-osd fixed this bug?

[Malik Malhan (xmxaxlxixkx)]

i don't know what it is marked as fixed bur i solved with http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=30857&p=178376

[Pavol Klačanský (pavolzetor-deactivatedaccount)]

fixed? holly crap, this is hardcoded settings

please, try submit branch with gsettings keys