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At the moment, apps can let us see how far through a task they are, such as Dolphin with it's file copy progress bar. The problem is that:

1. There's no obvious link between the different programs and where their progress is shown (in a small, minimised, generic system tray applet marked "i")
   
2. The systray applet either hides that anything is happening if minimised, or covers a pretty large section of screen to show only a small amount of information if maximised.
   
3. Strangely it is currently set to show for the first few seconds and then "dissapear" (minimise to the system tray). More than one user I know has pulled a flash drive still being written to thinking the copy was finished. Even if you understand it you're stuck with point 2 above.

If you're copying in Dolphin or burning a CD in K3B, wouldn't you prefer to have a beautiful looking progress bar that is economical with screen space, needs no big pop up windows, looks great and always gives you feedback, right on the application's taskbar entry?



This mockup is designed to show mainly the TaskBar (although I've included a tooltip in the mockup, too). This is just Dolphins, flash drive capacity bar, scaled and set to 80% opacity. If needed it could be used in addition to the current system. If you're copying three things at once it could show the progress of the combined tasks and still let people click on the "i" only if they want a more detailed breakdown. The bar could just fade in when used, and once finished could fade out once that app is given focus.

NOTE: This idea does *not* get rid of the system tray icon. Advanced users can still click on it to see all tasks together, or tasks started by closed apps. It just gets rid of huge pop ups, not visually linked to any app, having to be open to see progress but closing early and fooling new users into thinking the task is finished / failed.

Kubuntiac wrote:If you're copying in Dolphin or burning a CD in K3B, wouldn't you prefer to have a beautiful looking progress bar that is economical with screen space, needs no big pop up windows, looks great and always gives you feedback, right on the application's taskbar entry?

Agreed and just yesterday I proposed something similar. It's sad to say that, but the current notification system is the worst I ever used in more than 15 years.

My suggestion:

notification-syste ... 43377.html

Thanks.

+1 for this, the notification takes big space...

i like the idea. very elegant and quite intuitional. that way i won't have to "stickify/pin" the notification in order to be able to see the progress of the process!

My vote too.

Just the other day I was using Gwenview over a kioslave connection. I almost threw the machine out of the window. Whenever I advanced through the thumbnail bar, Gwenview would prefetch the next 5 images. That is good. What is not so good is that 5 notifications are displayed, stacked vertically on top of each other, for at least 5 seconds. Not really unobtrusive I can tell you....

XiniX wrote:My vote too.

What is not so good is that 5 notifications are displayed, stacked vertically on top of each other, for at least 5 seconds. Not really unobtrusive I can tell you....

afaik this behaviour will be gone with kde 4.3 as those notifications will be grouped together and display something like "5 processes being processed" or somesuch.

NoobSaibot wrote:afaik this behaviour will be gone with kde 4.3 as those notifications will be grouped together and display something like "5 processes being processed" or somesuch.

...which is a tep in the right direction but does nothing for the main problems:

1. That when, to the new user, it looks like the notification "disappears", they reasonably assume the task is finished when it's disappeared. This would disappear only when the job is finished and the app's window is visible.

2. It's still unclear that the app and the active task are linked. Who thinks to maximise an "i" icon in the system tray to see if the app their using is active? A moving progressbar on the apps taskbar entry is obvious.

Since I posted this just last night, I just talked to my wife and found her trying to upload the same file 5 times simultaneously to the server because she thought it had finished each time it minimised. I've even told her that the notification dissapears partway through a task. Unintuitive things are remembered less. A clear progress bar on the apps task bar entry would have made the upload progress obvious that it was the same task started by Dolphin and still in progress.

Even with grouping, this type of notification still fails IMHO.

Instead of informing you, it' demands your constant attention, the dialogs are always appearing in the top of the windows and, like Kubuntiac said, there is no cause and effect for them, sometimes you have the feeling of "what I did to be notified", "why this is appearing just now", "from what application is this", etc.

It's clear to me that this needs to revised, somehow...

Thank you.

I like the process idea. But it works only on applications what need to be open when process is happening, like CD/DVD burning.

Usually when I move/copy files, I do it from internal HD to external HD. And after I have started copy/move, I close the dolphin because I dont need it anymore and I can see process from systray. That is the great feature what this new idea can not allow.

What happens when user closes the Dolphin window? Does the process get canceled, does there pop-up a warining box that is not wise to do? Does the process bar move to systray?

I think that we need to think more about the process notification. The current impletation is correct way to go. One place where _all_ is shown.

And this really needs a big bar. I dont like to have text on the bar at all. I want them off so only the icons are shown. And I know people who keeps only tasks showed on windows what are minimized, this does not work at all on them.

There is lots of polishing of current way and we need to discuss how to make that better.
One those things is that the notification ! button is very small, even it takes two rows of systray. I think it should be always shown like the "Device notifier" widget. Have two different icons for it, one for processing and one for no-process. And when there is process, show there a 5/5, 3/5 or similar count how many process is left and how many has done. And the count is reseted when user opens/closes the menu again.

Fri13 wrote:Does the process bar move to systray?

This would be the best solution IMO, but should probably be configurable.

Fri13 wrote:I think that we need to think more about the process notification. The current impletation is correct way to go. One place where _all_ is shown.

There is no reason these two are mutually exclusive. A simple checkbox in the system tray settings box could toggle the behavior.

Fri13 wrote:And this really needs a big bar. I dont like to have text on the bar at all. I want them off so only the icons are shown.

There is already work being done on this, but it is a separate issue.

Fri13 wrote:And I know people who keeps only tasks showed on windows what are minimized, this does not work at all on them.

Probably the same thing would happen as when the window is closed. Either it would move to the system tray, would already also be in the system tray (but perhaps just not pop up), or would just disappear, depending on your settings. Much of the system tray notification system and notification system is already highly configurable in trunk.

Simply amazing and completely efficient. Voted good on kde-look.org. :thumbs_up:

Fri13 wrote:I like the process idea. But it works only on applications what need to be open when process is happening, like CD/DVD burning. [...]
What happens when user closes the Dolphin window?

For the rare apps that create tasks running in the background even when later closed, the process continues and could still be checked on from the systray if desired. This is stated in the original idea. It's just clearer that the task is still active, clearly linked to the app, leaving more screenspace that the notifier while the app window *is* open. This means that the large current notifier almost never needs to be seen.

But what about if I have multiple progress bars for a single app? If you have more than one transfer job chugging along in the background, they're not all going to fit nicely together, and you'll have no way of knowing which bar corresponds to which.

clintonthegeek wrote:what about if I have multiple progress bars for a single app?

I'm guessing you mean multiple *tasks*. As stated in the original idea, if you wished, you could still see the current detailed breakdown from the systray. With this you will just *also* get an indication *on the app with running task(s)* that it has something active. I imagine that in the case of one app running 2+ tasks the bar would show an average. Systray (or tooltip) could still show a breakdown of each though.

Everyone's happy.

this has been already implemented in windows 7. i have added this some pics of windows 7 so that the developers can take example form it...