One of the biggest issues I have with Gnome 3 is the notification tray. I have several applications open (instant message, email, IRC) that "receive" messages from other people throughout the day. I am often not paying attention to my computer when the messages are received, and miss the tiny popup saying I got one. So I have no idea that I've received any messages until either I mouseover the notification tray for some other purpose (hours later) or I get contacted in some other way. Requiring me to actively police my message notifications defeats the purpose of having applications notify me in this manner.

"New message" notifications should *always* be visible, or there should be a configuration option to do so. This cannot be done in the notification bar that covers up other applications, so it must be done some other way.