Re: Guidelines for System Tray icons

There has recently been some discussion within KDE about this very issue, see:

http://lists.kde.org/?t=104414525400003&r=1&w=2

One of the points made in that thread is that the system tray serves two 
purposes:
1) to communicate status
2) to provide quick access to functionality

Now, the name "Notification Area" suggests that the original goal within GNOME 
was limited to 1). Below it is suggested that for 2) people should use 
"custom applets". But such custom applet should be shown somewhere as well, 
shouldn't it? Does this mean there is a second area reserved for custom 
applets?

The purposes 1) and 2) can be strongly related. Take for an example an instant 
messaging client. Here there is a desire to communicate status information 
such as "connected to the IM network" and "have new messages" to the user. At 
the same time there is a need to provide the user with quick access to 
functionality such as sending a new message.

Cheers,
Waldo

On Thursday 13 March 2003 02:59, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> 	From reading the KDE guidelines, one difference in opinion that is
> obvious is that in GNOME we're tending towards the idea that an
> application should always quit once you've closed all windows - it
> should never remain "loaded" in the systray as this overloads the
> meaning of the close window button and leads to a confusion over what
> the button does.

[Snip]

>   Some cases which don't:
>
> 	+ An application adds an icon to the tray when it starts. The
> 	  only "status" the icon shows is that the application is
> 	  currently running and the main purpose of the icon is
> 	  essentially to provide a shortcut to various application
> 	  operations without switching back to the application
> 	  itself.
>
> 	+ Some particularily large applications that take a long time
> 	  to load may not actually quit when all its windows are
> 	  closed and the Notification Area essentially provides a way
> 	  for these applications to remain "loaded". The icon would
> 	  not display any status other than that the application is
> 	  running and you can make the application quit by removing
> 	  the icon. The popup menu may also provide shortcuts to
> 	  application level operations e.g. "New Document".
>
> 	Both of these sound like cases where custom applets would be
> more suitable. However, both of these cases seem to be recommended by
> the KDE guidelines[2].
>
> 	+ A daemon or background process which performs some function.
> 	  The icon may or may not actually display some "status"
> 	  related to the daemon other than the fact that the daemon is
> 	  running.  Clicking on the icon provides a dialog by which
> 	  the daemon's behaviour can be configured.



-- 
[email protected] -=|[ SuSE, The Linux Desktop Experts ]|=- [email protected]