[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Alerting users in case of write errors

[Anish Mangal]

To sum up, these are the possible suggestions we have on the plate
(please add if I missed anything)...

1.  No fancy gimmicks, just the plain old NotifyAlert
2.  A NotifyAlert that is initially Red and then slowly fades to black
over its lifetime
3.  Only turn the border red instead of the full background
4.  Don't use red, use the user's color
5.  Don't make the alert timeout and disappear.
6.  Use icons next to the alert text (see below)

--

In addition, I was thinking that perhaps the Alert dialogs should
display some icons beside the text depending on the alert type. Maybe
we could make do with these with or without the colors.

Cheers,
Anish

P.S. To a relative newbie (like me) [1] makes for very interesting
reading (as does the rest of the HIG)
[1] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Human_Interface_Guidelines/The_Sugar_Interface/Colors

On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 6:34 AM, Michael Stone <michael at laptop.org> wrote:
> Gary wrote:
>>
>> On 13 Jun 2010, at 12:57, Anish Mangal <anishmangal2002 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> An alert like a chat or Activity sharing invitation would be nice, but
>>>> one
>>>> with a more visible signal is needed.
>>>
>>>> We really really really ... need a general notification system. :D
>>>
>>>> Please no popup error dialogue windows if you can avoid it ;) The alert
>>>> strip that displays under the toolbar is a much more friendly
>>>> notification
>>>> for the Sugar UI design.
>>>
>>> Thanks for the insightful responses. I have used a slightly modded
>>> version of NotifyAlert (aptly called NotifyRedAlert). A sample
>>> screen-capture can be found here...
>>>
>>> http://people.sugarlabs.org/~anish/sl1842-journal.gif
>>> Note: The link above is a big animated gif (~1.8M) and some browsers
>>> may struggle to display it.
>>
>> Yea, my iPad chocked half way through :)
>>
>>> If this seems fine, I'll mail the patch for reviewing.
>>
>> Looks nice. The colour fade (red to black over the time-out countdown) is
>> something new and not in the Sugar HIG, but I don't have an objection —
>> makes
>> fair warning UI sense and could be something we adopt elsewhere when
>> needed
>> (if there aren't too many objections).
>
> Anish, Gary,
>
> I like the color fade too but the red hue is, for me, a bit overpowering.
>
> Have you considered any alternatives like, for example, only applying the
> red
> to the border of the alert or using the user's colors instead of red?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Michael
>