Tue 27 Jun 2006
I totaly agree. I once commented that it seems that applications tent to want to let you know they are there when in many instances they would be better doing what they do in silence. I call it the ADD desktop - look at me, I’m doing something. Notification is a double edge sword. It can convey useful information like “your battery is about to die” but also be pretty useless like “your battery is fully charged”. I know I’m going to get flamed for that one but why do I really have to know the instance my battery has a full charge? I can check fairly easily and knowing that my battery is charged doesn’t require or induce imediate action. Don’t take that personally Richard, you do an awsome job with gnome-power-manager. I don’t think it is bad in GNOME yet but it could get there fairly fast. Won’t anybody think of the children?
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June 27th, 2006 at 6:58 am
Solution: implement a “gatekeeper” or “firewall” for notifications. That way people can block subjective annoying messages.
June 27th, 2006 at 7:41 am
Just a thought (or two).
1. What if we asked the user whether to show the message again? Battery full! Dismiss and don’t show me this again.
2. What about a scheme similar to syslog with varying degrees of severity and then giving the user the ability to only see messages of a severity level or higher?
June 27th, 2006 at 8:11 am
Not to play devil’s advocate but….
I’m on site somewhere, with my laptop plugged in, and I need to go somewhere where I don’t have power, I check my battery status (80%), so I continue working on the repport/mail I was doing.
Suddnly, a popup flashes: you’re battery is full, so I unplug my laptop and run to the hartless (or more like cordless) area that requires my (and my laptops) attention….
A bit far fetched I know, but could easily happen.
Also: what harm does a “battery’s full” popup do? is it really that much worse than a “you’ve got mail”?
David.
P.S: you could also add a color coding to the messages (like what distinguished warnings from messages for a while), to allow people to triage what their system sneds them.
P.P.S: Also , why not impliment a filter, so that you can decide what level of messages you find interesting enough to see?
June 27th, 2006 at 8:29 am
Just throwing in a “me too” in regards to the battery is full notification being a little over-kill. And, to be clear, I am also a huge fan of gnome-power-manager.
June 27th, 2006 at 8:42 am
David,
Looking at the icon should be enough feedback without breaking workflow. Only important information should break your workflow. Like if you don’t plug in now you are going to lose your work.
BTW a you’ve got mail popup would drive me crazy. Also we have color coded levels. I think the hurt more than help.
June 27th, 2006 at 10:40 am
Keep in mind, that we are having a discussion about what is useful/functional here. My point is that instantanious popups are not what we want.
If you ARE a laptop user and KNOW you have a battery, you probably EXPECT a popup to show ‘your battery is full/empty’
As with other users, some apps seem to just popup information with no apparent reason why the user should act on it, or it is about a user action wich only requires action for more advanced users.
We need to try to not confuse the majority of users.
June 27th, 2006 at 11:18 am
You can disable the fully charged notification by changing the gconf key /apps/gnome-power-manager/notify_fully_charged as I know this upsets some people.
Otherwise, thanks for the praise guys, appreciated.
I’ve filed a bug about the link on the notification as I think this is a good idea: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=346036
Thanks,
Richard.