[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Messages notification

[Gary Martin]

Hi Martin,

On 5 Nov 2010, at 21:02, Martin Abente wrote:

> Hello amigos,
> 
> Recently I encountered many situations where a system-wide notification-messages system is required as a basis for many bug fixes or enhancements. I am not talking about the messages that are related to an specific activity or its context, in many of those cases the current alert widgets are effective and proper methods. Currently, Sugar does not have a mechanism to communicate to users different kind of information about sugar itself. For example:
> 
> 1. Important system events (automatic backup running, new update available, journal being almost full,etc)
> 2. Connectivity status changes or errors (connecting to a wifi network or 3G)
> 3. Critical sugar errors, right now most of those errors are invisible to users (this make testing process very difficult)
> 4. I am sure others can imagine more use cases.
> 
> So I would like to list two extensions to the current notification system. Basically what we need is:
> 
> 1. Simple text messages display.
> 2. Messages manager, this would help the user to see what messages have been delivered in the current session, so they could react to those events (for example, reporting bugs).
> 
> I believe this feature could be a huge plus to dextrose and and sugar mainstream, therefore I invite everyone to share their ideas on how this feature could work and look.

Not sure if you've seen these design mockups from Eben, just wanted to point you towards them:

	http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Designs/Frame#12
	http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Designs/Frame#13
	http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Designs/Frame#14

Note in #12 that each corner is used for notifications related to the associated frame edge. Top left for notifications from activities (perhaps Sugar shell as well if needed), top right for notifications of user arrival/departure, bottom right for device related notifications, bottom left for new clippings.

Examples in use: The bottom left notification for clippings has been around as long as I can remember, just copy something to trigger it. The top left notification is used for private activity invitation notification, and the Journal 'send to --> friend' notification. The top right notification can be used by activities, currently I'm only aware of it being used by IRC to indicate (when IRC is not the active activity) you have been explicitly named in a message.

Hovering over the notification icon, or an icon it adds to it's frame (only currently used by top right corner Journal 'send to' and activity private invitations) is when you are shown more details of the notification, or provided some UI for taking action.

Note: the Sugar HIG is out of date regarding notifications as it describes the intention of the old frame layout UI, where the bottom frame acted as the activity launcher.

Hope that's of some help.

Regards,
--Gary

> Saludos
> Martin (tch) Abente
> _______________________________________________
> Sugar-devel mailing list
> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel