GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 317982
Notification icon redundant when applet is used
Last modified: 2009-05-19 20:05:23 UTC
The notification area icon duplicates the functionality of rhythmbox-applet. There should be some way to disable the icon when the applet is in use (such as by a gconf key), reducing screen clutter.
*** Bug 324783 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Confirming this because of the duplicate.
Perhaps the notification area icon should be scrapped entirely in favor of the applet. The notification area icon is abusing the real purpose of the notification as it it. The majority of the time (entire time?) the icon isn't notifying me of anything, but rather is a convenient way to skip forward and back. This is precisely what a applet is good for. With an applet I can move it to the part of the panel I prefer and it doesn't clutter my notification area in case something actually does want to notify me.
I do perfectly agree with Jon on this. http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~kuliniew/music-applet/
Created attachment 84370 [details] [review] Initial patch to remove tray icon I created an initial patch to eliminate the tray icon. I would appreciate any and all constructive criticism to make this patch better and allow it to be included in the official tree. Due to the use of the notification area vs the panel I hope the music applet is preferred over the the status icon. I believe it fits in better with the GNOME HIG better.
Created attachment 84471 [details] [review] A second try at the patch I did more work on the patch. Since the tray is removed I also took the liberty of removing the notifications and set_visibility stuff. Both those don't seem useful without the tray. I feel the notifications could still be useful, but should be moved to the music-applet, or maybe show up in the corner. Feedback is welcome.
Just a comment: regardless of any applets or whatever it should be possible to disable the notification area icon, ideally from the Preferences but at least from gconf. I don't want it, it's useless, it's wasting my screen space and it contravenes the HIG. For each individual app that has an un-disable-able notification area icon it doesn't seem like a big deal but if you end up running a few of them at once, your desktop starts looking like Windows 98...
I should clarify: it's useless _for me_. Not for everyone, obviously (although an applet is a better way of doing things).
I would also like a gconf key to disable the Rhythmbox icon in the notification area. Even though the applet doesn't seem to be in GNOME anymore, it still wastes space in the notification area (which was specifically said in the HIG not to look like the space-wasting-icon-for-everything Windows system tray). I just like to minimize Rhythmbox. For a precedent, Pidgin now includes an option to disable the system tray icon in their preferences GUI.
I don't think we're going to use this patch. The tray icon is still useful for people who don't want to run the applet (which never was "in GNOME"), or who don't run a GNOME panel. I agree that having some way to disable it (if it was a plugin, for instance) makes sense. Perhaps we could add a dbus method for the applet (or anything else) to hide the tray icon. or something.
I have proposed in bug 470101 to get rid of the notification area in its current form. I think the features should be moved to the gnome task list.
I agree with Jon. The system tray icon should have been implemented as an applet and not as something forced on RB users. Since there is a functional third party applet, it should be possible to hide it at the least. Allowing external apps to hint to RB that they are providing duplicate functionality and that it can disable its tray icon seems like the wrong way to solve this issue. Additionally, providing options in the system tray that are not available in RB preferences seems wrong as well. I looked all over in the preferences to turn off the notifications before thinking of right-clicking on the tray icon. It would seem intuitive to me that the icon should disappear if I disable RB notifications. This would provide more of a "just works" experience. I understand that song navigation is also provided with it but that is not the primary function of a notification tray icon and is something better left to an applet.
As already stated, it should be possible to remove the notification icon permanently. This is not what the notification area is for.
for reference here is the HIG quote : "Warning. The utility of the notification area decreases rapidly when more than about four icons are always present. For this reason, icons that appear only temporarily in response to events are preferable." and also " You should probably write an applet instead of using the notification area if: * clicking your notification area icon does anything other than opening a window directly associated with the icon (e.g. a mail folder window for a new mail icon, or a print queue window for printer notification icon), or * there are icon-specific options on its context menu for doing anything other than that * your application would ever need to display more than one notification icon at the same time" http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/desktop-notification-area.html
The current behavior goes against the HIG. It should go away entirely (by default), not only when the music applet is present.
I don't speak for anyone else, obviously, but when the choice is between following the HIG and having useful functionality, I'm going to take the latter.
Concerning comment #16 : I understand that you like that behaviour, and that other people may like it. Besides, you are the developer... BUT : What if all applications start acting the same way ? Then we can throw away GNOME. GNOME will quickly become unusuable. I guess that's why HIG are there. We can't afford having an exception to it or people will say : "hey, good idea, let's do the same for this other application" etc. Like cancer. (1) Then it will become an awfull mess : "hu! I tried to close this application but it keep on running in systray, how can i close it ?" "I don't understand why this application is running in the systray while this other one appears in windows-list applet" "Bug report : this application shows itself in windows-list instead of in systray : please fix it"... To sum up things, i think that : - Rhythmbox default behaviour should comply with HIG - Rhythmbox should have an option to allow it to behave like you think it's the best ___ (1) copyright S. Ballmer
why not letting the choice through RB options ? (see also Bug 324971 – Use panel icon and not systray)
RE: #16 I'm not sure what the additional functionality is that wouldn't be better served by an applet. The applet would easily go where the user wants and even go away if desired. If an applet existed that the developers considered satisfactory to replace the notification icon, would the lead developers then allow the notification icon to go away?
Jon > This applet already exists. It's called "music applet" and it works great.
(In reply to comment #20) > Jon > This applet already exists. It's called "music applet" and it works > great. > So if I make an proper patch that removes the notification icon from rb, will it be accepted?
i think that having it as a user preference would make everybody happy
just a thought: instead of a preference, what about getting rid of it, and including music applet as part of the rhythmbox package?
Music applet isn't solely a Rhythmbox applet (though it started out that way). It works with most open source music players. http://www.kuliniewicz.org/music-applet/ Therefore, it isn't really something that can be included in the Rhythmbox package, though it could and should certainly be recommended by the Rhythmbox package. Everyone seems to agree that it should be possible to hide the notification area icon. The suggested solutions are: 1. Made the icon a plugin which can be disabled 2. Add a gconf preference (and optionally UI) to disable it 3. Add a DBUS api to allow external apps to disable it @Jonathan, perhaps you can suggest what the best option would be now that you've had time to think it over and Jon could work on a patch for that.
*** Bug 324971 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Just to point the HIG : http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/desktop-notification-area.html "Non-core programs for which a perpetual icon may be useful must default to not perpetually showing the icon. Users may select to enable a perpetual icon for the application as a preference." So according to the HIG (which is really good IMHO), the icon should be disabled by default.
Is there any chance to see this bug solved for 2.26 ? there's a proposed patch, what is needed in order to solve this bug ?
For the record, I've tried today different players for Gnome : Bluemindo, Quodlibet, Exaile, Listen. By *default*, none of those players have a notification icon. (It can be enabled by a preference or a plugin, depending of the player). Banshee is the exception and have the icon enabled by default but it can easily be disabled (it's seen as a plugin). I don't want to talk about those players, it's not the goal. I just want to point out that out of 6 players, 4 don't enable the notification icon by default and RB is the only one with a icon that cannot be disabled.
The proposed patch here simply removes the tray icon, so I rejected it. I'd most likely accept a patch that moved the tray icon code into a plugin, but I'm not particularly interested in working on that myself.
Created attachment 129974 [details] [review] Gconf key to enable/disable tray icon This is a patch that create a new gconf entry to enable/disable the trayicon. What still need to be done : 1) Make a plugin that changes this value. 2) Make it dynamic. Currently only the gconf value is loaded at start. 3) Remove the dontreallyclose plugin and make it a preference of the new Tray plugin If nobody wants to work on that, you might assign the bug to me but it will be slow.
I don't think this is the right way to do it. If there's going to be a tray icon plugin, the plugin should actually contain the tray icon code. It might be difficult to extract the tray icon code from the rb-shell code and whatever else calls it, but that's how it should be done.
*** Bug 575790 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Sometimes I change my mind about what I'm interested in doing. I've converted the tray icon into a plugin, so now people who don't like it don't have to have it.
Thank you very much for that! I will appreciate it a lot.