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Bug 744880 - What does the new notifications dot mean?
What does the new notifications dot mean?
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: gnome-shell
Classification: Core
Component: message-tray
unspecified
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: gnome-shell-maint
gnome-shell-maint
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2015-02-21 02:20 UTC by Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail)
Modified: 2015-02-21 09:32 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
dateMenu: Update message indicator on queue changes (3.31 KB, patch)
2015-02-21 09:32 UTC, Florian Müllner
none Details | Review

Description Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2015-02-21 02:20:33 UTC
I can't figure out what the new notifications dot is supposed to signify.

Run libnotify/tests/test-basic, and I see:

 * The first notification comes up and has a dot. I'm typing on IRC and it goes away.
 * A second notification comes up. The dot disappears.
 * A third notification comes up, and the dot still isn't there.

What does the dot mean? If it means "you have notifications waiting in the calendar", then I'm not sure why it survives after I keep typing on all three notifications.

If it means "there are notifications after this currently showing one", why does it go away after the second one?
Comment 1 Matthias Clasen 2015-02-21 05:59:59 UTC
Read about it here: https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/OS/Notifications/Redux

"When the queue contains three notifications, new notifications cannot be added to the queue. Instead, they are displayed in the notifications list, and a small visual cue (this is a dot in the mockups) indicates that there are more notifications ready in the list."

So the dot means roughly: "there are unread notifications in the list that haven't been shown individually because too many arrived at the same time"
Comment 2 Matthias Clasen 2015-02-21 06:01:42 UTC
or maybe it just means "unread notifications", which would explain why it appears for a moment while the queued notifications are displayed one-by-one, and then goes away when they have all been shown.
Comment 3 Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) 2015-02-21 06:44:30 UTC
But if you try it, neither of those are the actual behavior.

test-basic sends three notifications. The dot only shows while the first one is showing.
Comment 4 Florian Müllner 2015-02-21 09:32:10 UTC
The following fix has been pushed:
880b240 dateMenu: Update message indicator on queue changes
Comment 5 Florian Müllner 2015-02-21 09:32:17 UTC
Created attachment 297483 [details] [review]
dateMenu: Update message indicator on queue changes

The message indicator conveys that the message list contains unseen
messages that will not be shown as banner. So its visibility depends
on two factors: the number of unseen messages, and the number of
messages waiting in the queue to be shown as banner. As we currently
only update the visibility on changes to the former, the indicator is
not always accurate - for instance sources notify count changes before
passing on a notification to the message tray for display.
To fix, add a signal to the message tray to notify when the queue
changes and use it to update the indicator's visibility.