Notification bubble + autohide panel = bad notification

[Chuck Smith]

I realize right off the bat that this is A) a bug people will have to customize Ubuntu a fair amount to find and is thus B) a low-priority bug. But we're trying to be Dapper, right? So I'll throw this out there:

If you have the notification area in the bottom panel like I do, and you have the panel set to auto-hide like I do (basically to give a similar look and feel for that UI element between Ubuntu and my iBook), there's a bizarre little misalignment that happens when the bubble pops up. This is due in its entirety to the fact that the panel is hidden.

(Possible) Suggested Solution: When displaying a system notification bubble, raise the panel.

Although thinking through that, this would totally break the bubb-tacular Rhythmbox, wouldn't it? That'd be annoying as hell.

Is there a way to raise the panel *only in instances of a (post-)update notification*? That'd be ideal, and it's fine that it's a little disruptive -- those messages post-update are very important.

[Paul Dufresne (paulduf)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at [WWW] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage . I have classified this bug as a bug in gnome-panel.

Do you estimate this is still a problem in recent versions?

[Chuck Smith (smith.chuck)]

Hi Paul -- There is still an issue at hand, but there is not the problem as exhibited in Dapper with the more recent Feisty. Allow me to explain...

In Dapper, the bubble pop-ups were in cartoon-dialogue style. As a result, the bottom of the box came to a point, which from a UX perspective, one expects to point to the item which is requesting attention or providing output to the user. This did not happen in the old version.

The new versions of these notifications use rounded rectangles. The advantage is that such messages don't imply directionality as far as the icon which is providing output. However, the hidden panel still rises behind the bubble notification. It seems that in almost every situation, this is not the expected ordering, especially given the "always-on-top" nature of panels relative to non full-screen windows.

This is obviously a low-priority bug, and there may be nothing for Ubuntu to do with it at this point. However, I do still feel the interaction between the notification and a panel with auto-hide is less than desirable.

I won't be offended if this is resolved as won't fix -- but I wanted to at least bring it to the attention of devs.

Thanks for the follow-up, and thanks for your work, as well!

[Paul Dufresne (paulduf)]

Changing status from Incomplete to Confimed.
Unassigning me from the bug, as I was working as a bug triager on this bug.

Now let's wait for an Ubuntu Desktop Team member to kick in.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Thanks in advance.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to 'New'. Thanks again!