Notifications in Ubuntu 9.04: they’re not that bad …
It’s been a couple of days since I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04 and, aside from the quibbles I mentioned in this post, I’ve had no real problems.
I know that several people have been complaining about the new notifications in Jaunty since it was in alpha and beta testing. And, to be honest, when I upgraded I wasn’t too sure about them either.
But you know what? They’re not so bad. In fact, I think that I prefer them to the old notifications.
At first, the new notifications are a bit of a surprise. They’re a large black box that appears (in my case, in the upper right corner of the screen) out of nowhere. The notifications are rather in your face — they’re larger than the old ones, and really stand out. They take a bit of getting used to.
And you do get used to them. In my case, quite quickly. The main reason is because the notifications fade away after a few seconds. They don’t hang there waiting for you to click a red X to get rid of them.
When I’m working, I notice when a notification pops up and quickly glace over at it. By the time my eyes return to what I was doing, the notification is either gone or is on its way to fading away.
My only beef is that I can’t configure the size of the notification box. I’d like it to be a bit smaller. Maybe in a future version.
What do you think of the new notifications in Jaunty? Feel free to leave a comment.
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May 10th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
I installed it on my installation of Xubuntu 9.04 on my USB drive, which I occasionally use, and I don’t know why, but when I return to my normal computer with the old notificaitons, I do prefer the new one. I suppose it’s mostly because of the black colour which is less distracting than yellow.
May 10th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
I like the new ones too.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:47 am
I just love them.
May 11th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I like the new notifications. As said in this post they fade away quite quickly and are present only long enough for you to see what is going on.
I am using ubuntu on my laptop and while using full-screen applications in ubuntu prior to 9.04 I would not get the message that my battery was getting low, so suddenly the machine shuts itself down. Now with the new notification UI I do get the notification well ahead of shutting-down-time and is able to either plug in or finalize my work.
May 12th, 2009 at 2:40 am
I also really like the new notification system. It’s slick, useful, and *much* less obtrusive than the old system. I’m looking forward to the ability to have associated actions with the notifications…when an email notification pops up, I’d like to be able to click the pop-up to open my mail client, etc.