Cannot distinguish between temporary messaging-menu highlight and permanent highlight

[Stuart Langridge]

Binary package hint: indicator-messages

When I receive a new email message, the messaging indicator highlights (goes green, in the default Ubuntu 10.04 theme), and stays highlighted. When an instant-messaging friend signs on to IM, the messaging indicator highlights, and then two seconds (approximately) later, unhighlights (goes back to white), and a notification is displayed.

The messaging indicator highlight catches my eye. So, when it goes green, I look at it. However, I don't know whether it's a temporary highlight or a permanent highlight. What this actually means is that every time the messaging indicator goes green, I stop what I'm doing and watch it for two seconds to see if it goes back to white again. If it doesn't, then I bring up the messaging menu and get whatever permanent message (email, IRC, whatever) caused the highlight. Sitting and watching the indicator makes me feel rather like one of Pavlov's dogs. :)

You would think that my brain would think "I got a notification *and* the indicator went green, so it must be a temporary highlight", but that's not my observed behaviour. I believe this is because my brain thinks that someone may have signed on *and* an email may have arrived at the same time, and can't be convinced otherwise. The highlight will draw my eye in any case.

Suggestions for ways this could be resolved:
1. Don't highlight the messaging indicator for temporary things like an IM friend signing on; instead, just rely on the presence of the notification.
2. Highlight the messaging indicator differently for temporary notifications (maybe a little bit of it should go green, but not all of it). (Having another colour for temporary highlights is likely to just be confusing.) This would allow me to glance at the indicator and immediately recognise that the highlight is temporary, and thus ignore it.
3. Something else I'm not clever enough to think of.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: indicator-messages 0.3.6-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-22.36-generic-pae 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-22-generic-pae i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Aug 2 14:46:51 2010
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: indicator-messages

[Vish (vish)]

Current behavior is as mentioned on : https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MessagingMenu/#Empathy

Subscribing mpt to bug.

[Vish (vish)]

Wiki mentions the item to be displayed in the menu, but not able to find anything about the icon changing behavior
"Contacts who have just come online should appear as individual items in the menu (without a time) for 30 seconds, and should then be removed"

[Lars Karlitski (larsu)]

The messaging menu doesn't know the difference between a temporary and a permanent notification. Applications can specifiy which source items should highlight the indicator.

So, if we went with suggestion (1), this is a bug in telepathy-indicator, which should probably only highlight the messaging menu when somebody sends a message directly to you. (Personally, I think "went online" notifications shouldn't be in the messaging menu in the first place.)

I don't understand why suggestion (2) would be an improvement: if you want the highlight to be different for temporary notifications just so that you can ignore them, wouldn't it make more sense to not show the "temporary hightlight" at all?