I do understand Colin Walters very well. I also do hate these “network error” dialogs. Especially since my DSL provider interrupts the connection every 24h hours (due to “technical reasons”, probably because they don’t want people to keep the same IP…)

While i do understand the need to keep people informed about problems, i think we should try not to bother them that much…

One of my most hated network-interruption messages is the one of gaim. Because it not only does steal my focus, it’s not done when i click okay: now the “reconnecting” box will pop into the foreground, taking focus again…

Could we maybe try to have such things stay in the background somehow?

Since the latest version of gaim it does behave MUCH better with respect to normal IM chats: once the window is opened it doesn’t steal the focus any more. The previous versions (differently from earliers) did even switch my desktop to get into focus. That was really annoying. I was typing somewhere and next i’m typing into my chat window. A wonder i never sent someone an IM reply with “ls” in there…

For example workrave manages (at least the two times i tried it) to stay mostly out of your way. A small box which does NOT steal the focus.

Maybe we could use GNotify for such things?

This actually is one application i had wanted to write for a long time: A notification app, which tries to keep out of your way. Maybe like someone sitting next to your screen and just giving you a note to read when you have time to handle it.

What i was imagining was something like a small yellow bar sliding into view at the right hand of the screen. Urgent things may then slide further in, other notices should just stack up there.

I’m pretty sure i’d manage to frequently look for such things - just like i manage to look for my inbox monitor.

The more toy-addicted people may then decide to have some animation there. Maybe like a phone rining in the lower right corner.

Others will prefer an On-screen-display ticker with such messages.

Oh, and we are gonna need some way to recalling messages (when reconnect has succeeded) and a way to handle static but changing messages (3 new mails… 4 new mails…).

(Had to edit this blog entry, using and ampersand in the title still breaks planet…)