Hello all, I sent a little proposal to the Ayatana mailing list.
While I’m waiting for feedback from them, I thought I could just copy-paste it here and know what you think about it.
I had an idea for notifications which require interaction.
I’ve read about morphing windows on the Wiki but I think that they would undermine consistency a bit. I’m attaching a mockup to this mail, but I’m so bad at using Gimp that much of what I’m proposing will be left to your ability of understanding me. 
Currently notifications disappear on mouse hover. Morphing window, if I understood correctly, expand on mouse hover. Also, the notifications are a few pixel far from the edge of the screen.
Since I’d leave non interactive notifications untouched, what I’ll talk from now on, is only about interactive notifications/morphing windows.
My proposal is to let the notifications that allow for user interaction to be actually attached to the edge of the screen. The gap from such edge will be filled by a colored stripe. (see the attachment).
On mouse hover, the notification will disappear as usual. Only the colored stripe will remain visible (should also display a slightly lighter color to subtly indicate to the user it’s an interactive element).
If the user clicks on the stripe, the notification window will appear, expanded, showing full markup and interactive controls. It will also probably cover near notifications (not an issue).
While the stripe is very thin (by design), it’s attached to the edge of the screen, making it very easy to click (it’s the same principle adopted by gnome panel’s trash bin, for example).
The notification should disappear on loss of focus (user click on another window) or if the stripe is clicked again.
Also notice the stripe is thin enough to only half cover the close button of any window near to the screen edge. That would make it at least possible to ignore the notification and and close a window under it.
Case edge: the user has multiple screens (or uses synergy). In that case clicking the stripe would not be that easy, but probably easier than going to the indicator applet.
The interaction stripe may be colored differently to indicate urgency (green, red, etc) and substitute the green point some people were talking about.
What do you think ?
I thought the main notify-osd idea is to remove all interaction from notifications.
Your proposal is essentially “make it the way it used to be.”
Way to go!
@all: is no secret that notifications are controversial and the indicator applet makes thing convoluted.
From a @G perspective, also, should the the morphing windows be seen as “make it the way it used to be.” ??
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotificationDesignGuidelines
My proposal brings consistency to the whole, avoiding different look, feel and behaviour between interactive and non interactive notifications.
It brings an easy and intuitive way to interact with a notification that the indicator applet fails to obtain.
It lessens a lot the risk of accidental clicks. Is much less intrusive than morphing windows as well.
If you’re creating something different, do that to obtain something, not because it’s just different.
No, thanks. We had interactive notifications before. Too much stress when you couldn’t click that button in time.
@dim: would you elaborate ?
That idea was kicked to death when notify-osd first came out, its been decided (whether true or not) that notifications should not be disruptive and therefore have no actions. Personally I prefer it
@Nick HS: I made the proposal because my interpretation of ‘lack of disruptiveness’ was to still allow the click-through.
Clearly, if the notion is “knowing you won’t *ever* be able to do anything with those black things” then that’s another thing.
But, then, what’s the point of having morphing windows ?
Since I thought the screen edge principle had not been considered, I tried to propose it.
That said, to be honest, I don’t even expect a reply from the team, but I think the matter is worth trying.
The idea is that notifications shouldn’t have any features other than to send a short message that is ignorable by the user, but might be helpful. Another system may be developed to deal with situations where you do need interaction from the user, but we’ve decided that notifications should not try to fill that need.
i really like the way the new notifications currently work in jaunty and see no need for them to change
… I really think this, or something like it, would be much more intuitive. My tendency with notifications is to put my mouse over them when I’m reading them, which (jarringly) makes them disappear (rather than keeping them longer), and I often want to click them to raise the origin application.
I’m not sure I like the coloured strip idea; I think the title text or icon could remain instead, but, whatever works.
Also, @Prior, as a hobbyist developer I would love to know about a notification system which allows interactions while letting the user ignore them too. (Then I would make a script which worked off a two-column file pairing messages with shell commands, a sort of to do list, randomly displaying one every half-hour, launching the task if I click.) Is there such a system?
I will go google alternative notification systems I guess.