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Thanks for checking into that TheBlackCat. Good to know!

Now that the updated notifications have come down the line on Kubuntu, I was checking it out to see if they addressed the issues in this idea. They're definitely nice (smaller, more compact etc). But they don't touch any of my issues.

They still dissapear part way through a task, confusing new users.
New users still have no way of knowing that the action they started in one apps window / systray item is now run by (and hidden in) a completely different systray item.
Users are still stuck between notifications that are hidden, or take up huge screenspace. Here's what I see in my normal, daily use of Dolphin+Kate:



That's on a 23 inch monitor! What would this look like on a netbook?

All of this could have been one small progressbar, no more obtrusive than the one in Dolphin for showing how full flash drives are. Anyone who wanted to see stuff like this could still click on the systray. The rest of us could ignore it or just glance at the taskbar. Easy.

To anyone who hasn't voted yet: please compare the image above with the one at the start of this thread and ask yourself: which is the better way forward for KDE? Vote accordingly. Thankyou!

First, did you see the down arrow at the top? That will collapse it into a single progress bar.

Second, the progress notifications you see are still early. They just developed the new system tray protocol and it is still under development. It will be at least another release before it is finalized.

Thanks TheBlackCat,

The arrow you're talking about is very useful. It would be even more useful to be "on" by default.

As it stands no though, it still doesn't address points 1 and 2 (disappears partway through and no obvious link between the app and the systray). It does improve point 3 (taking up huge screen real estate) although not as much as this threads idea.

Fortunately, as you say, the spec is still being refined. I'm just hoping that it can be refined to include this idea, which can work nicely together with what's already here. I'd just really love to see something simple and unobtrusive like this as standard, that also let savvy people who know kde click the systray icon for more detailed info.

What's everyone else think?

Might be this could help
[System tray] Filtering/ displaying less info

About it hiding after a period of time, in KDE 4.3 in the system tray settings there is an option "Automatically hide new notifications and jobs after a short delay". It is checked by default, but you can uncheck it.

Yep. Found (and disabled) that, already, thanks!

This is a usability issue though more than a feature issue.

Having jobs hide before finishing by default is causing many people trying out KDE (that I've seen) huge problems. Flash drives are being taken out in the middle of having files written to them regularly and worse. Not a good first impression! Changing any of these options requires knowing they're there, which should be unnecessary for the new / average user. If the "auto-hide notifications" option was off by default though, your screen gets covered by notification windows popping in and out (eg: the photo above). Also not a good first impression!

That's why this idea is important.

With a small, clear progress meter kept out of the way in the task bar, your tasks progress are *always* visible. It's clear what apps have jobs in progress and when they're finished.

Imagine if every time files were added or removed from your flash drive, your screen became partially covered with pop up notifications, showing how empty / full the drive was at that instant. That would be irritating, distracting and needless. That's why we have this information shown by a stylish, clear meter in Dolphin that hides itself automatically when it's not needed. Advanced users can still find more information with right click -> properties on the right folder. This works. Users understand it. This idea takes this already working concept and applies it to active tasks, with more advanced info available with a single click in the systray.

Vote for it if you like it. Thanks!

Hi. Something is wrong. The job notification system display a copy job, but i can't canceled the job? Is this ok? I think no.

How can i configure the job notification?

I use openSUSE 11.1 with KDE Version 4.2.95 (KDE 4.2.95 (KDE 4.3 RC1)) "release 139" from build service.

Best regards

kobelix

kobelix wrote:Hi. Something is wrong. The job notification system display a copy job, but i can't canceled the job? Is this ok? I think no.

How can i configure the job notification?

I use openSUSE 11.1 with KDE Version 4.2.95 (KDE 4.2.95 (KDE 4.3 RC1)) "release 139" from build service.

Best regards

kobelix

?? There is a sqaue button in top right corner to stop the task


However, there are 2 entirely different notifications types:
* About the past - Copying is done, received an IM message
* About the present - Showing the progress bar of the job, like copying files dialog.
And they should be threaded differently. At least *present* tasks should be minimized to one row bar showing progress, but not hidden entirely.


Second point - messages should get ID's. If next message arrives with the same id, it should replace previous one - not to be displayed as different one.

Best example, I had a buggy power cable, and sometimes it starts plugging in/out every 1second, and that continues until I replug it. However, there should be only one message showing connection info, not 20 all over the screen. There could be a change in background, if there era many messages with same ID in order to get proper attention.

Talking about canceling jobs, wouldn't it be neat with stop/pause buttons in the taskbar tooltip?

Lukas wrote:?? There is a sqaue button in top right corner to stop the task
.....
....
...
..

OK, i found it After I click on the title bar of job notifaction window, the two buttons and more information displayed. Nice.

Thanks

kobelix

I think a nice solution would be:
when the user start the copy job, the same notification that appears in the systray would appear in the middle of the dolphin windows or over the mouse. And then it would gradually move to systray indicating that the job continues in there.
when the notification gets to the systray, the systray icon should show an animation indicating a job is being done.
and maybe a last little notification saying the job is over

this would address 1, 2 and 3

1:The notification would appear over the application window so it would be obviously linked

2:The notification is hiding to the systray a nice thing would be to add a minimize effect controlled with kwin to show more accurately it is going to the "i" icon

3:the systray should have an animation to show the job is being done

What do you think?

damipereira wrote:mouse. And then it would gradually move to systray indicating that the job continues in there.
when the notification gets to the systray, the systray icon should show an animation indicating a job is being done.
and maybe a last little notification saying the job is over

Good one

Hello all,

As the person that did most of the work related to progress notifications in the systray, I'd like to adres some of the usability concerns that are mentioned in this topic.

First let me start by saying this idea (jobs in task bar) could be a nice addition to jobs in the systemtray. Both ways of presenting jobs serve different ways of working (application based vs activity based), so having both available would satisfy both groups of people. I for one don't see the need to link a job to an application (I couldn't care less if I have a couple of downloads whether they were started in one of my dolphin windows, konqueror, or ktorrent or whatever), but as long as these task bar progress notifications are non intrusive I don't see a problem with someone implementing this. The dataengine is in place... linking a job to the exact correct window could be tricky, cause I don't think something like that is already in the jobview dbus interface (not sure, I'd have to look that up), but that spec can always be expanded a bit.

Now let me adress some of the issues proposed here. A couple are already fixed in 4.3: autohiding is configurable, when hiding the jobs slide into the systray (with compositing enabled that is), and there's an animated spinner whenever jobs are still running. Finished jobs automatically pop up with a clickable link and no progress bar so it's more obvious when a job has finished. This all should help with people accidently unplugging usb sticks and what not. I'm not a fan of changing the default to auto hide off, since it's just not sensible imo. All you need to know is when a job is started and when it is finished, for the rest it should just get out of the way. But at least people/distro's who don't like that behavior can change it.

Now to one of the most prominent issues: flooding of jobs. First there's the issue of unnesesarry jobs: some applications spawn jobs for prefetching of stuff, downloading temporary files and what not. This is unfortunate, because there is a mechanism to surpress showing progress for these kind of jobs: the KIO::HideProgressInfo flag. Whenever you see an application show job progress about absolutely useless stuff, please report that as a bug to the appriopriate application.
Other point is the growing list of completed jobs. They do time out, but if you're really active it could get quite big. But just like running jobs can be collapsed to a single progress bar with the little icon in the running jobs group, the same can be done for completed jobs. This setting is persistent between plasma sessions, and when collapsed it will almost take up no room. You can even for example drag the entire completed jobs group to your desktop or somewhere else in your panel, and new completed jobs will then spawn there. So the behavior of jobs in the systemtray is already more customizable then most people are aware of.
Then there are still things that will see improvement in 4.4. We have the idea to queue notifications/jobs, maybe add some way to prioritize messages, and limit the maximum number of completed jobs in that group and put the rest away in some sort of log viewer which will be put away behind a button. This will hopefully keep the tray cleaner and less intrusive.
I hope this adresses some of your issues.

What about having the list of jobs be scrollable if it gets too big?

Hmm, I don't really like the idea of having a full blown scrollbar there. I'd like to keep the UI as simple as possible... else it would become a full blown application.