GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 88060
Flash the application icon like the applet
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
Here's a thought that could help some; when a message comes in, flash the main window's icon between the normal thing, and the icon for whatever the incoming message is. Right now, the main window's title gets changed to "GnomeICU: Msgs" instead of just "GnomeICU", but with a cramped task-list, that's really not visible. Flashing the icon would make it leap out pretty quickly.
that would be neat.. except that I dont know if/how I can do it...
I might be being naive, but it seems like it'd be pretty simple: Something needs to know what should be blinking, which the code should already exist for (know that we've got a blinking text message, a blinking chat, nothing blinking, etc) Then, in addition to whatever gets called to flop between the "normal" picture and the "incoming thingy" picture, you just add in calls that alternate between set_window_icon(window, "gnomeicu-chat.png") and set_window_icon(window, "gnome-gnomeicu.xpm")
Created attachment 10280 [details] [review] Patch to demonstrate concept
There's a patch that shows a rough implimentation. It's definitely fugly, and slightly broken, but it shows how it can be done. If someone else wants to clean it up & make it production-worthy, be my guest. If not, I'll try & get around to REALLY implimenting this sucker when I get a chance.
Okay, I've cleaned up my patch so it should be production quality. Lemme add that to here
Created attachment 10288 [details] [review] Real patch to blink window icon
David: yesterday, I committed a patch that makes the icon in the notification area flash. So I don't think it's useful to flash the main window icon. What do you think ?
I'd be inclined to say that it's still useful; it's more feedback when something's happening, plus it'll be a while yet till everyone uses the notification area. It's in RH8, but other than that, I don't know how long it'll be till Average Joe User has that running. Using the gnomeicu applet would give you something that gives feedback instead, but that still seems a bit unstable (prone to snarfing all cpu, losing (or never obtaining in the first place) contact with the main window, etc), so I can't blame anyone (or myself) for not running that. In that case, having the feedback would be nice, and having a little extra feedback in general wouldn't hurt either. Likewise (but different enough I should probably file another bug), flashing the icon seems like it might be a good way to draw attention to obscured message windows when they receive new events (until there's an officially condoned way in gnome for a window to wave its hands and shout "look at me!") So I think the answer is yes; despite the notification area being more robust, I think the app icon should still flash.
The proper way to call attention to a window is to set its urgency hint. Doing this should cause something (historically, the window manager) to present to the user some indication that the window wants attention. IceWM will flash the window's window list button, or so I'm told. Unfortunately, there's no API for this right now other than Xlib, and the GNOME window list doesn't recognize the hint. I don't know whether bug reports have been filed for this.
I've added dependencies on bugs for the urgency hint 61853 for GTK+ 99679 for libwnck (pager, tasklist) 99681 for metacity
bug 99681 is for sawfish, not metacity ;)
bug 99679 now a dup of bug 120439, added bug 120439 to dependency list
I implemented setting/unsetting the urgency hint when the icons are blinking.. We now just have to wait for HP to fix metacity and/or wnck to have it used by gnome.. Flashing the window icon is just not a good idea.. the tray can help you for that.. or bitch havoc on bugs 120439 and 61853...