GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 775190
Notification buttons aren't accessible in message tray, so they're useless after the popup auto-hides
Last modified: 2016-11-28 11:17:38 UTC
Created attachment 340855 [details] test case If we send a notification with buttons to carry out actions, these buttons are only ever shown in the popup, by hovering over it and waiting for a revealer to pop down at the bottom. As an aside, I'd say hovering and a revealer is suboptimal for discoverability, albeit good for saving space I suppose. Anyway, said popup can time out and disappear quite quickly. After this, the buttons and hence actions become unavailable. Clicking on the notification in the message tray just fires the default action. Thus, there seems to be no way to reopen the notification and get at the other buttons/actions originally set on it. This seems far from ideal, as it means actions become (contextually and possibly completely) unreachable after the popup hides itself, which is bad for UX and especially application accessibility. I'd suggest adding an equivalent revealer in the message tray copy of the notification, on hover or right click or some other defined way of getting the buttons back. (Or perhaps simply a way to get the original notification to pop up again, and get to the buttons that way.) A test case is attached. Thanks!
I would like to second this. I always felt this was missing from the notification system. Right now the user gets "punished" if they decide to act upon the notification later, as they are taken away the convenience of using the notification button/form and are force to open a (sometimes new, if it's a background app) window, which disrupts workflow and concentration. In the case the window is already opened there's a big chance it's on a different workspace, which just adds to the confusion. When the user has several windows open on one workspace this gets even worse, as they are forced to either move it to another workspace or click through the windows to get the layout they had before. Another use case is when the user has a lot of missed notifications, with this they can easily sort through them, a lot of times without even needing to close the notification tray. I would like to add the Android heavily uses this approach, and I'm quite a fan of it there. I think hover to show the buttons is a good approach, providing they hide on unhover, as it allows the user to quickly scan through the list. Of course when the entry gets focus this behaviour should pause. Example: If I get a message from Polari but I want to reply later and just ignore it for the time being because I am concentrated at something else, I would love to just open the notification tray later and reply from there and go immediately back to my work, keeping everything as I left it.
This is a problem in Empathy as well. Incoming SIP calls are displayed via a notification which include accept and cancels buttons. If you are not quick enough the notification disappears and it is not possible to accept or cancel the call anymore. The phone keeps ringing until the caller hangs up.
(In reply to adsworth from comment #2) > This is a problem in Empathy as well. Incoming SIP calls are displayed via a > notification which include accept and cancels buttons. If you are not quick > enough the notification disappears and it is not possible to accept or > cancel the call anymore. The phone keeps ringing until the caller hangs up. IMHO this kind of notification should be marked as urgent (like the out-of-space notification) and not hide at all, it just doesn't make sense.
Thanks for taking the time to report this. This particular bug has already been reported into our bug tracking system, but please feel free to report any further bugs you find. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 757588 ***
So I presume your rationale for not doing this is the one given by Allan here https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=757588#c11 and still stands as WONTFIX?