Hello everyone,

I recently saw this discussion on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/9 ... fications/
and this answer:
>KNotifications supports up to three action buttons, which the application must request with the setActions() API. If the application in question does not set required action labels, you could file a bug report for that application.

made me think that maybe notifications even if the applications support no action could sort of work like a "launcher" if the application is running on the background, or minimized/behind other windows and bring it to the front? Could this be done without any sort of support from the application?

2. Another issue with notifications that has been bugging me for some time but haven't done anything about is the placement of the close (x) button on the notification popup. Is there a way to change its position that I am not aware of?

I propose that it should be placed on the left instead of the right. In most setups (including the default) you would have popups appearing at the leftright side of the screen. Placing the close button of the popup on the left, while inconsistent with the default placements of the close button on windows, would make more sense as you would need less movement of the mouse to reach it and dismiss the notification.

Also, I'm quite fond of many of elementary_os_team's visual decisions so I may be a bit biased in suggesting this but their animations for the popup notifications look amazing to me:

https://i.imgur.com/FmPK2f7.mp4

and their popup notification bringing to the front their terminal: https://i.imgur.com/hGwMnMl.mp4 , along with a close button that appears on the top left only when you hover over the animation. Looks a lot cleaner if it appears only on hover.

What do you think?

edit: I setup KMail and I got a notification - clicked on it and it didn't bring up KMail. Is this expected behavior?

chpie wrote:edit: I setup KMail and I got a notification - clicked on it and it didn't bring up KMail. Is this expected behavior?

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=392243
Kai Uwe Broulik 2018-03-26 08:32:16 UTC
There's a setting for that: Settings → Configure KMail → Plugins → Email notification → Show button for opening email

notuxius wrote:

chpie wrote:edit: I setup KMail and I got a notification - clicked on it and it didn't bring up KMail. Is this expected behavior?

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=392243
Kai Uwe Broulik 2018-03-26 08:32:16 UTC
There's a setting for that: Settings → Configure KMail → Plugins → Email notification → Show button for opening email

Not very discoverable. Thanks a lot!!

chpie wrote:made me think that maybe notifications even if the applications support no action could sort of work like a "launcher" if the application is running on the background, or minimized/behind other windows and bring it to the front? Could this be done without any sort of support from the application?

Is this something that happens with all apps you use ? what about KDE apps ?
Right now i'm not entirely sure, but some things ( downloading a pdf --> opening with okular , same with pictures + Gwenview , associations with Konsole ) tend to work as you say ... maybe it's not enabled by default but you can set it to behave as you say even with non KDE apps ? ( not entirely convinced about non-KDE apps anyways ) .

2. Another issue with notifications that has been bugging me for some time but haven't done anything about is the placement of the close (x) button on the notification popup. Is there a way to change its position that I am not aware of?

I propose that it should be placed on the left instead of the right. In most setups (including the default) you would have popups appearing at the leftright side of the screen. Placing the close button of the popup on the left, while inconsistent with the default placements of the close button on windows, would make more sense as you would need less movement of the mouse to reach it and dismiss the notification.

Also, I'm quite fond of many of elementary_os_team's visual decisions so I may be a bit biased in suggesting this but their animations for the popup notifications look amazing to me:


https://i.imgur.com/FmPK2f7.mp4

and their popup notification bringing to the front their terminal: https://i.imgur.com/hGwMnMl.mp4 , along with a close button that appears on the top left only when you hover over the animation. Looks a lot cleaner if it appears only on hover.

What do you think?

This one is a hard sell i'm afraid . It's one thing to customize everything for your personal use and quite a different one to develop something with a massive target ( users worldwide ) in mind ... even if you personally favor a particular workflow you need to toss aside your preferences and empathize with the struggles of many different kinds of users that see things in a way you wouldn't ( been working for the last 8 years with "regular" users with no real interest on computers ... had to adjust my point of view a lot, learned to see things in a different way ... it's quite the experience ) .

One quick example:

I myself have been not simply distro-hopping for the last decade... but also heavily DE / WM-hopping ... using different DEs / WMs each day on a regular basis... i'd say i used almost ( there's always some obscure or newer ones around ) any DE/WM there is.

Elementary is a distro you have to love the moment you put your eye on it... it's beautiful however you look at it, looks clean, simple to use ... so i always went back to it again & again... but precisely the things you & most people love... are the ones that made me go away each & every time, doesn't fit my worklow nor the way i do things .

All this to say that... it'd be nice to have options to do what you suggest and suit your taste... but changing how notifications work right now would be a completely different subject since it'd affect the whole user base ... not exactly a subtle change .

Switching places on the closing button it's a double-edged sword : it's true you'd save a tiny amount of mouse movement... but then you expose KDE to the always dreadful horde of angry reviewers, always eager to scream "inconsistent!!!" , "regression!!!" , "i don't like colors/theme/icons!!!!" ... and there's an increasing number of those ... plus... on top of that... it'd look visually "weird" anyways... out of place... and let's remember that out of this parallel dimension that forums/blogs/YT is ... people on the real world barely change the defaults ( plenty doesn't even change the desktop background... wasn't so convinced myself when i saw those stats... and then watching what "regular" people do showed me that reality ) so you can't simply force it... measuring clicks & mouse distance it's not something most people is obsessed about ( out of computing/linux places around the net that is ) . Still, it'd be nice to have the option to customize it .

Now i think about it :

and their popup notification bringing to the front their terminal: https://i.imgur.com/hGwMnMl.mp4 , along with a close button that appears on the top left only when you hover over the animation. Looks a lot cleaner if it appears only on hover.

Can't you set up a rule for Konsole to behave like this anyways ? you can set rules for apps to behave as you see fit, pop up in the center of your screen for example... and there's several animations to choose from if you'd rather that window app showing in a more subtle way. Can't remember if that exact effect is avaliable, but certainly you can customize a fair number of things through special windows settings / special application settings .

Is this something that happens with all apps you use ? what about KDE apps ?

I am not sure. I think KDE programs have notifications which have buttons with an action attached to them (for example open the archive you downloaded).

This one is a hard sell i'm afraid. [...] it's true you'd save a tiny amount of mouse movement... but then you expose KDE to the always dreadful horde of angry reviewers, always eager to scream "inconsistent!!!" , "regression!!!" , "i don't like colors/theme/icons!!!!" ... and there's an increasing number of those ... plus... on top of that... it'd look visually "weird" anyways... out of place...

I'm not sure about that. Regarding the animations I think those are super slick and would fit right in with the rest of plasma. And about the close (x) button on notifications: since the default is that notifications be on the right it makes sense for the close button to be on the left in case you want to reach it. You could have it appear only when you hover over the notification ala elementary or not, but it makes sense to have it on the left. Yes it would not be consistent with the window's buttons but a popup is not a window. I'm not advocating that it'd fit with my workflow (it would) but that it makes sense.

When Unity moved the buttons on the left it went against the norm and people's expectations. However it made sense. Angry reviewers should not be a factor in making a decision. The only thing, in my opinion, that one should take into consideration is: is this better/does it make more sense to have it this way?

precisely the things you & most people love

I'm not too sure what you mean by that. Ever since I started using KDE I can't really use anything else. What I love about elementary is their icons, the colors they use (mostly) and the nice animations like the one with the notification popups.

Other than that I'd say I'm really into a Unity like layout.

That's all besides the point though. I think that design should strive to make things easier for all users and make it so that any action requires the minimum effort possible.

I definitely think the animation could be slicker. Even if something like the glide or sheet effects were applied to notifications it would look better.,