Features/Messages Notification

Summary

The current icons-only notification system is generally ineffective to fully communicate different kind of system events. This feature provides a set of extensions to the current system to display simple text messages.

This feature will be use for special events and communications, it is not intended to replace the current logging system and Log activity viewer.

Owner

Name: Martin Abente, Ajay Garg (internet-links in notifications)
Email: <tch AT sugarlabs DOT org>, <ajay@activitycentral.com>

Current status

Targeted release: (0.9x)
Percentage of completion: 25% (Design - prototyping)

Detailed Description

Extends our support for the fd.o Desktop Notifications protocol

This feature requires a some re-factoring of jarabe.frame.notification(NotificationIcon, NotificationWindow) widgets.

Also, requires minimal extensions to jarabe.frame.frame(Frame) to extract the notification text message details.

Plus, since the corner notifications icons can't be seen for long periods of time (to avoid visual spam), a new tray bar can be added to the left side of the bottom frame window. This tray will contain current session's notifications.

Benefit to Sugar

Messages notification capabilities, useful in many different scenarios.

Scope

sugar/src/jarabe/frame/frame.py

sugar/src/jarabe/frame/notification.py

sugar/src/jarabe/frame/notificationstray.py (new file)

sugar/src/jarabe/frame/Makefile.am

UI Design

Notification icons show up as usual, when clicking on icons a palette will show up with summary and body information. A new horizontal tray is added in the left side of the bottom frame, this works as a historical registry of current session notifications.

How To Test

Running this python script should work (provided by Gonzalo Odiard):

import dbus
BUS_NAME = 'org.freedesktop.Notifications'
OBJ_PATH = '/org/freedesktop/Notifications'
IFACE_NAME = 'org.freedesktop.Notifications'
bus = dbus.SessionBus()
notify_obj = bus.get_object(BUS_NAME,OBJ_PATH)
notifications = dbus.Interface(notify_obj,IFACE_NAME)
notifications.Notify("HelloWorld",0,'',"Summary","Body",[],{},-1)

Internet-Links in Notifications

This would help in navigating to any internet-link, by simply clicking on the link.

There are two cases possible ::
- No instance of "Browse" is open. In this case, following sequence of steps happen ::
  - User clicks on the link in the notification.
  - "Browse" opens (in a new window, obviously) and the URL is loaded.
- There is an instance of "Browse" already open. In this case,
  - User clicks on the link.
  - The window gets switched to the "Browse" window (if not already).
  - The URL is loaded.

Code changes required at the client-side ::
- If the link needs to be added, with a particular text for the hyerlink, the following code needs to be written :

   frame.add_message(body='Description', summary='First Title', link='http://www.linuxquestions.org', link_text='Click here to get answers to all your Linux questions')

- If no special text needs to be present for the link, we can skip the "link_text" attribute :

frame.add_message(body='Description',summary='Second Title',link='http://www.wikipedia.org')

Notifications

User clicks on a link.

"Browse" opens, and URL is loaded.

User switches to Neighborhood-View.

User clicks another link.

The view changes to "Browse" window (without opening a new window), and the URL is loaded.

User Experience

1. User notice the notification pulsing icon.

2. User click on the icon to read its message.

3. After a few seconds corner notifications icon will disappear.

4. Notification icons can still be seen at the notifications tray. (they could disappear also, after a extended period of time)

Dependencies

None

Contingency Plan

Work harder.

Documentation