Desktop Notification Spec update request: "progress" and "progress-label" hint

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Jan Jurzitza wrote on 20/11/17 16:25:
>
> Hello all,
> 
> I think there should be a progress hint in the notification spec (as
> in showing a progress bar inside notifications). Progress bars inside
> a notification can be useful in many ways:
> 
> * Show file operation status (copy, upload, download)
> * Show task status (steps until completion, etc)
>…

This would work poorly, because notification and progress feedback are
fundamentally different things. Trying to convey them with the same
element would introduce two problems.

First, a notification is tolerated floating in front of your other
windows only because it is visible for only a few seconds. But even if a
particular task usually takes only a few seconds, it might occasionally
take minutes or hours. And a notification shouldn’t obstruct your
windows for minutes or hours. (A progress dialog, on the other hand, is
happy to be layered behind your other windows once you tire of it.)

Second, when people dismissed a notification that showed progress (for
example, because it was taking minutes or hours), some people would
reasonably expect doing that to cancel the task; other people would
reasonably expect it not to. It would be ambiguous. (This is also why
progress dialogs, like other dialogs, shouldn’t have close buttons. The
only way of closing them should be an explicit “Cancel”/“Stop” button.)

> But you could also have simple progress indicators (represented as bar,
> but not updating) which can display other kinds of information:
> 
> * Background setup wizard step indicator
> * "Hard drive nearly full" notification with current usage
> * Internet quota warning notification with current usage
>…

In addition to the other problems, it is bad design to use a progress
bar as a gauge of anything that isn’t progress. Some people will
(consciously or subconsciously, depending on the context) expect it to
fill up when it’s not necessarily going to. And a well-designed theme,
which reassures people by animating progress bars, becomes distracting
when a developer misuses a progress bar as a gauge.

These are all examples of the general design rule that things that
behave differently should look different.

-- 
mpt