Docky

Bug #391056
Comment #27

Comment 27 for bug 391056

Revision history for this message

Till Hartmann (tillux) wrote on 2009-11-30: Re: [Bug 391056] Re: Implement a notification area in Docky

#27

On 30.11.2009 13:56, Cyberkilla wrote:
> Whilst I agree that notification area would be great, I have some
> reservations about the manner in which it would be displayed.
>
> I see a couple of docks using atrocious boxes of blurred notification
> icons, with buggy right-click context menus that sometimes won't even
> close when they lose focus.
>
> What I was thinking was, in the same way that you display the weather
> and calendar, could you /potentially/ do the same for the notification
> icons?
>
> For instance, you'd have a useful - but unintrusive - single docklet icon...
> When you click on the icon, the tray icons would slide in, just as the weather forecast does.
>
>
The weather and calendar way of displaying their information might be a
good solution for some applications; but it might be better to integrate
dock- and trayicons, take rhythmbox as an example: if it's minimized the
icon's status indicator in docky will show up and, with the correct
plugins enabled, you can easily control it via the icons
right-click/contextmenu. If it's minimized to tray, it wont'.
Rhythmbox is one of the best examples (though only possible with a
plugin) of applications that violate the idea of a notification area.
Its idea is not to control applications via a context-menu (at least not
in the most cases) but rather displaying (important) news to the user,
such as available updates, new mail, some alarm etc. .
What I think might be a good idea is to provide a merged dock- and
trayicon for applications that support it AND an area for notifications
directly in the dock, aswell as a single docklet which will display all
tray icons in a weather-docklet manner (and allows interacting?). This
might sound too much, and perhaps this is true, but it might be worth a try.
Another (I think) very important aspect is the possibility to configure
it to one's needs (there should of course be a default configuration
which suits most of the users); (Just look at the windows 7
panel/notification area, which allows different options for different
applications, see #23 by The Fiddler).

On 30.11.2009 13:56, Cyberkilla wrote:
> Whilst I agree that notification area would be great, I have some
> reservations about the manner in which it would be displayed.
>
> I see a couple of docks using atrocious boxes of blurred notification
> icons, with buggy right-click context menus that sometimes won't even
> close when they lose focus.
>
> What I was thinking was, in the same way that you display the weather
> and calendar, could you /potentially/ do the same for the notification
> icons?
>
> For instance, you'd have a useful - but unintrusive - single docklet icon...
> When you click on the icon, the tray icons would slide in, just as the weather forecast does.
>
>    
The weather and calendar way of displaying their information might be a 
good solution for some applications; but it might be better to integrate 
dock- and trayicons, take rhythmbox as an example: if it's minimized the 
icon's status indicator in docky will show up and, with the correct 
plugins enabled, you can easily control it via the icons 
right-click/contextmenu. If it's minimized to tray, it wont'.
Rhythmbox is one of the best examples (though only possible with a 
plugin) of applications that violate the idea of a notification area. 
Its idea is not to control applications via a context-menu (at least not 
in the most cases) but rather displaying (important) news to the user, 
such as available updates, new mail, some alarm etc. .
What I think might be a good idea is to provide a merged dock- and 
trayicon for applications that support it AND an area for notifications 
directly in the dock, aswell as a single docklet which will display all 
tray icons in a weather-docklet manner (and allows interacting?). This 
might sound too much, and perhaps this is true, but it might be worth a try.
Another (I think) very important aspect is the possibility to configure 
it to one's needs (there should of course be a default configuration 
which suits most of the users); (Just look at the windows 7 
panel/notification area, which allows different options for different 
applications, see #23 by The Fiddler).