Comment 92 for bug 332945

Revision history for this message
Vincenzo Ciancia (vincenzo-ml) wrote : Re: [Bug 332945] Re: [Jaunty] Removal of Update Notifier is WRONG

On 30/03/2009 Michael Rooney wrote:
> > > But the windows itself could be minimised. Let's explore that. I
> > > think it may be too late for Jaunty but I'll see what we can do.
> > >
>
> That is a really wonderful idea! I think this would solve a lot of the
> usability issues and also eliminate any bugs regarding z-ordering /
> focus
> issues.
>

I tought about this today; while minimised windows are better, they will
get in the way of alt+tab. That's desired, because the idea here is to
"interact with the user immediately". But that's wrong with users:
suppose I am revising a paper, I constantly alt+tab between the comments
that I am writing in plain text, and the pdf of the paper. If a window
gets in the middle of the process it distracts me. Now I am tolerant to
computers :) But an employee in a non-techie company will inevitably say
"who is the System and why does He think that he can ask for my
_immediate_ attention???".

Now that gives me one more argument to adopt the "instant messaging"
interaction pattern: users deal with IM every day. When they don't want
to be disturbed they set their status to "busy". We have support for
this in the FUSA applet which is on the default desktop. A polite
interlocutor will not disturb you while you are busy, unless it's really
urgent.

A polite System, like ubuntu is expected to be, would in this case
postpone the notification. A really urgent notification such as "the
system is about to burn, turn it off please" would go trough instead.

Vincenzo