GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 682060
No way to tell if a timer or stopwatch is running
Last modified: 2014-08-31 21:00:49 UTC
If I start a timer and then switch to a different view, like "World", there is nothing to indicate that the timer is still running. I wonder if we should change the presentation of the timer button to reflect that it is active? One possibility would be to add an asterisk: "Timer*". That's not all that pretty though. Another option would be to change the coloring of the button fill, such as adding a blue tint to the bottom of the button. This needs a design solution before anyone gets to work coding it. :)
I like the idea of a blue tint at the bottom, but it will be difficult to do so until gtk support either multiple layering for background image or blur radius for box-shadow.
Another idea could be to make the background of the button throb with a blue color...
(In reply to comment #2) > Another idea could be to make the background of the button throb with a blue > color... A patchset to implement this is attached bug #707153 (it requires patches to gtk and adwaita)
and the patch to adwaita, did it go through? taking care so we do not lose it:)
bug #707153 contains patches to gtk, adwaita and clocks. Anyway this will have to wait for 3.12 so we have some time to sort out the exact look
On my phone a hourglass icon is shown in the top bar and a notification is shown in the notification area. This might work to indicate a timer is running while another tab or window is selected.
There's been some back and forth on how to indicate active "tabs". Can you remember what we decided, Jakub?
For measurable items we use a counter (like the number of updates in Software), however the timer doesn't have such property here. I would avoid using animation for this as that gains way more attention than this deserves. I would use a similar prelight as the one I suggested for the tabs — https://raw.github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/theming/experiments/tabs3.png However it does feel a little out of place on rather flat-ish chrome. So another iteration of the design is to use a small rectangle similar to the counter, but sans the number. https://raw.github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/theming/experiments/tabs4.png I'll mock it up as to how that would look for the togglebuttons.
Indicating updated background views with a "dot". https://raw.github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/clocks/clocks-timer-running-in-bg.png
(In reply to comment #9) > Indicating updated background views with a "dot". > > https://raw.github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/clocks/clocks-timer-running-in-bg.png Looks great. Removing the ui-review keyword.
I think it would be nicer if the indicator wa something doable with css...
On the web it might have been doable with the :after pseudo element and content property, but I would be surprised gtk+ supported that.
this is fixed in 3.14