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List: kde-usability
Subject: passive popups
From: Gav Wood <gav () cs ! york ! ac ! uk>
Date: 2003-05-06 15:12:39
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i would like to suggest a significant change concerning active notifications
(popups).
currently, applications such as kmail that do various activities in the
background (e.g. check mail boxes periodically) display a modal (active)
popup window if a recoverable error occurs (such as a connection temporarily
dropping).
fundamentally i believe this may be wrong.
if a job is happenning in the background (i.e. it is a "passive task"), i
believe any (non-terminal) notifications it needs to give to the user
likewise be passive. active notifications, i believe, should only be used
when the application in question can be sure to have the user's attention
anyway, or absolutely needs the users attention before anything else may
continue.
non-terminal active notifications (focus stealing popups) resulting from
passive tasks can only possibly disrupt the users workflow, *requiring* the
user to disengage from their current task and perform a mental "stack push".
i do not believe the user must be *forced* to do this.
changing such popups to (subtly, but noticeably placed) passive notifications
would alleviate this problem.
defining a style rule such that that "any passive task that causes a
recoverable error should provide only a passive notification at most", i
belive, would prevent this problem from happenning in the future.
comments?
gav
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