[sylpheed:34995] Re: Request/suggestion: Please change/improve the behaviour of the new mail notification of the Sylpheed tray icon.

[pn361529 at yahoo.com]

Hello,

first of all, as stated in the OP, your comments are appreciated, so
thanks for that :).

Cristian Secară <liste at secarica.ro> wrote:

> The tray icon, as it name says, has to do with _new_ mails, not with
> unread mails. I find stupid to have to click the tray icon every now
> and then to stop it blinking, even if I have taked a look at what new
> mails have comed in.
>
> Usually I never read completely all mails on all the lists I am
> subscribed to, so if the tray icon "display as long on the tray icon
> as there are still unread messages" it will stay red/blink/whatever
> forever (except from time to time when I mark all read in all
> folders).
>
> Cristi

It seems like you misunderstood.

In the OP, i did no suggest to make the tray icon still blink even if
the user has already taken notice of what new mails have arrived.

What i suggested was not make it blink just five times and then stop
blinking.

Blinking just five times (at least on Windows it seems to blink exactly
five times when new messages arrived and then stops) seems to be too
easy to miss/overlook. After that there just stays a pretty small red
letter overlay symbol on the already pretty small tray icon, which also
seems to be too easy to miss/overlook.

So why not at least make the tray icon blink as long as the user has
taken a look at what new mails did arrive, instead of blinking just five
times and stop after that regardless if the user did take a look at
the new messages or not? Thats's what i suggested ;).

Wouldn't that make more sense? Who's going to always notice those five
blinks, it might not be (long/often) enough, if you know what i mean ;).

After the user has taken a look at what mails did arrive, the tray icon
should stop blinking of course. But not before.

That however should not suggest, that every single message would have
to be marked as read to make the tray icon stop blinking.

That's why i wrote:
"as long as the user hasn't clicked the tray icon or hasn't interacted
with the main window after new messages arrived"

and not:
"as long as the user has marked every single message as read"

;D

The use of the tray icon with red letter overlay symbol on it and no
blinking might be another thing though.

The red letter overlay symbol on a solid (not blinking) tray icon could
maybe be used for unread messages. But then again that might be
debatable, because there is a difference between messages which just
arrived and haven't been marked as read, yet, and older messages which
aren't marked as read or have been remarked as unread.

So actually, for me personally, the "make the tray icon not stop
blinking after just five times" part is the more important one.

;D

Well, maybe you (and possibly others as well) do understand better
now ;).

And, apart from that, it seems like what i suggested is the common
way to do it, isn't it?

Take instant messengers for example, many (maybe not all of them, not
sure) do it like this:

1. Instant message arrives
2. Tray icon starts to blink and often even changes appearance into
someting like a letter or something similar
3. Tray icon remains blinking and changed appearance as well
4. User clicks on blinking tray icon to open the window of the new
instant message or instead opens the window of the new instant message
directly
4. Tray icon appearance returns to normal and stops blinking (because
the user was successfully notified)

That's basically the same as what i suggested ;).