GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 701213
Classic: Notification icon should not count permanent systray entries
Last modified: 2015-02-23 23:02:49 UTC
One of the really nice aspects of the Classic mode is that it adds a visible indication of unread notifications, including a count. However, one unfortunate side-effect of dumping classic "systray" icons into the message tray is that each of these permanent, non-dismissable icons increments the message count icon. It would be preferable if we could differentiate these and start the count at zero if there are persistent systray icons in there. That way the counter would clearly describe those notifications that have not yet been dismissed.
Mmmh. The icon's original purpose was to provide a way to access the message tray (as we disabled the dwell-timeout to trigger it - we still do when pointer barriers are unavailable) ... Let's get designer comments.
When the count is zero, it could be nice to have the icon be a close color match with the main menu bar, so as to not draw the eye unless it's nonzero.
Wait, you are seeing the icon when there are no notifications in the tray? That's a bug then, the icon is supposed to not show at all in that case.
I'm talking about notifications vs. systray entries. Systray entries are "counted" as notifications, despite never being dismissable. I'm asking for those "permanent" icons not to count, since they aren't actually notifications, they're just items in the message tray. Since we would still need them to be accessible even when there were no real notifications visible, in that situation I would think that the badged notification icon on the tray should be showing a gray "zero", so we can still access the tray if we need to interact with the systray. I hope that is clearer.
(In reply to comment #4) > I hope that is clearer. Ah, it is. Not sure it makes much sense, as notifications may be permanent as well (and systray icons commonly have a "quit" action in their context menu) ...
Well, once a message has been viewed, it should probably not appear in the count, regardless of its permanence. This way we could at least keep the badge useful (only informing users when something new is available for their attention).
I'm linking this bug to 701216. In that bug, I recommend that the "topicons" extension[1] be incorporated into the standard GNOME Classic set, as it provides an experience closer to that of GNOME 2. With this extension in place, systray applications will be placed in the top bar on the main interface and will not use up a space in the message tray (and artificially increment the notification counter). [1] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/495/topicons/
The bottom tray is gone, and so is any interaction with it from the window-list extension ...