Application Indicators
At Openismus I am currently supporting Canonical to implement Application Indicators for Ubuntu Lucid.
Application indicators are simple menus so it is easier and more consistent to interact with them than with the current notification area icons, where each icon behaves differently. Some are showing different popup menus on left and right click, others are showing or hiding some dialog/window on left click.
I started to add support for Application Indicators to gnome-power-manager, IBus and gnome-settings-daemon last week. Patches for upstream are also available (1, 2).
There are 10 Comments to "Application Indicators"
They eat too much space… look at your panel
Yes, there is too much padding currently, that should be improved.
It’s not the padding that is the issue. The padding is fine, it’s the amount of icons that makes the panel look cluttered.
While I understand the need, let us hope that devs won’t overuse it.
Will this replace GtkStatusIcon?
Good job!
Yes, app indicators don’t address the cluttering problem. I thought they were going to some kind of grouping into a menu, like the messaging menu
Is it planned to get some of them down to the panel/dock? (as context menus).
Then up there would only be status icons, like battery and ethernet, but everything app specific (like Skype and Tomboy) would be in the right place.
I must admit, Windows 7 does a good Job here.
The advantage of Indicator Application is that you can manipulate the icons a lot more. Icons have a category and there are two types of statuses for visible icons. They could be grouped using those variables.
Like mentioned before the padding can also be adapted, and this doesn’t require all applications to be adapted.
Separate icons for the tray can be used to give it a more unified and less cluttered look.
On top of that, if you’re not happy with the way it is displayed now, you can just write a new applet that listens in to the DBus menus sent by libappindicator and write your own systray, without having to port all applications.
Indicator Application isn’t done yet, it has just started. I’m sure its development will lead to some interesting features.
(By the way, it is encouraged in the design specification of Indicator Applications to include an option for users to disable the tray icon. If you don’t want the icon you can then just remove it.)
I hope this will work well with gnome-shell, and e.g. allow to “swallow” the indicator menu in the application’s launcher icon. It would be strange to duplicate that functionality.
with that much spacing bettewn the indicators soon you will need a panel just for them
I have not tested gnome-shell yet. But it should be possible to integrate it in gnome-shell by supporting the D-Bus interfaces which are used for application indicators.
I see the problem of inconsistent ways of interaction and I like the idea of simplifying the notification area. Especially switching between two or more icon menus without clicking is great!
On the other hand there are some features that I will be missing. In particular to change the volume level by scrolling with the mouse above the audio symbol. Now I had to click on the symbol first, then moving the mouse down and after that I can scroll. For me is that a big step backwards
. It is the same intricate way like in Windows. Already losing the double click on the audio symbol (muting) from Jaunty to Karmic was a pity, but now…
For me it will be much easier to take the hand from the mouse and do the change of the volume by keyboard, than using the symbol in the notification area. Really!
Especially the combination of Rhythmbox symbol (left click: show/hide, third button click: play/pause, scrolling forward/backward) and audio symbol (scrolling: increase/decrease volume, formerly double click, better third button click: mute/unmute) was the perfect combination for me.
Perhaps there is a way to have both: functionality and easy to use menus. I will think about it, trying to find a solution.