Unread messages icon in indicator applet too discreet

[Michael]

Binary package hint: empathy

I've been reporting this all over the place, trying to find out where it fits best :( I have a problem with empathy and indicator applet that I often miss new messages for some time (and until I had trained myself to look for the black indicator applet icon I was missing them altogether). This is partly because I work with sound turned off to avoid disturbing other people. I think that the black icon is too discreet on its own for an incoming instant message, which is normally something one wants to respond to straight away, and the floating notification containing the content of the incoming message is nice, but easy to miss.

I suggest that empathy keeps a floating "Unread instant messages" notification or something similar visible as long as there are unread messages (and no other notifications are currently being shown). I know that the user should not be distracted by floating messages too much, but if the user is using instant messaging at all, presumably they want to see incoming messages as fast as possible, and the additional distraction of the notification is a price they accept.

[Michael (michaeljt)]

I previously filed bug #450398 against indicator-applet. The floating "Unread instant messages" that I mentioned above would probably have to be done in empathy. And I think it might make more sense there anyway - while more visible notifications make sense for an IM client, they don't necessarily make sense for other clients that indicator-applet might handle, like e-mail for instance. So I suggest that this bug be marked against empathy, and if you really don't like it just close it as "won't fix".

[Michael (michaeljt)]

Actually, a solution to upstream bug https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=585914 would also solve this for me.