(FWIW, the word "iconify" is going to cause problems very soon, since it's what the official X documentation calls what everyone these days calls "minimisation". The name wasn't as widely known in 1984. I don't have any better suggestions at present, though.)
I still don't see what the difference is, from the user's point of view. I agree that it is in fact true that Pidgin's buddy list, and Rhythmbox's main window, can both be minimised (while remaining on the notification area) and sent to the notification area (but not minimised). But statements about how apps currently behave miss the point. Rather, I don't see what, to the user, is the useful difference between an icon in the taskbar and an icon in the notification area, other than that you can at present have useful additional menu options on the context menu on the icon in the notification area (which could easily be added to the taskbar as well). Consider for a moment whether it would make any difference at all if every program could only vanish away to the notification area, and then if every program could only vanish away to the taskbar. I can't see you'd lose any significant functionality. But as I said, my opinion on this carries no more weight than anyone else's; the HIG people are the people who can make the call. It may shed a little light on the matter if I point out that this use of the notification area is not what it was designed for, and is a recent development: I think the idea spilled over from the system tray on MS Windows. The notification area in GNOME is there to provide notifications, such as the package manager telling you there are new updates you should look at, or the battery monitor telling you you've lost AC power, or the printer daemon telling you your job's printed. See: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/desktop-notification-area.html http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/draft_hig_new/desktop-notification-area.html for the details. Programs that *live* in the notification area are what used to be implemented as applets, and according to the official rules still should be. That said, I'm not saying that changes to this idea are bad; systems of ideas grow and develop. They are, however, out of step with the HIG, and perhaps the HIG people need to be consulted and discuss the implications for themselves. As evolutionary developments, they have also, as I said earlier in this comment, not been thought through in as consistent fashion as the older, documented ideas, and they could do with some careful discussion. -- Shrinking to notification area should have its own title bar button https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/124326 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
