urgent notification not timing out

Submitted by Marcus Moeller

Assigned to Nick Schermer

Link to original bug (#9571)

Description

When an application requests urgent notification, the window button starts to blink until it has been clicked. It would be great if the blinking times out after a while (e.g. 15sec) without the need of clicking the button.

Version: 4.10.0

added 5. Window Buttons / Tasklist label

haarp said:

the timeout should definitely be a configuration option! Endlessly blinking buttons are annoying and an usability nightmare.

Also see http://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=7989

haarp submitted a patch:

I have had a look at the panel code. There already is a system to limit the number of blinks, but it is set to G_MAXUINT. For all intents and purposes, it might aswell be infinite.

I changed that value to 8, resulting in 4 blinks. However, it seems random whether it stops in a highlighted state (preferred) or not. It also should be a configuration option rather than hardcoded.

Patch 5152, "Limit blinks":
tasklist-limit-blink.patch

haarp said:

Uneven values make it stop in a highlighted state :)

Johan said:

\o/ Thanks! \o/

Roman P. said:

Is it ever to be included officially?

Alan Ott said:

It seems like other desktops will blink the button some fixed number of times and then stick highlighted until clicked. I don't think we need a config item in the GUI for the number of blinks. Something like the current patch (but using an odd number, to make it stick highlighted) would be perfect, or at least less annoying than the current blink-forever behavior.

The current blink-forever behavior becomes an issue when you're using IM or IRC and get a notification when you're in the middle of a task you don't want to interrupt.

Simon Steinbeiß @ochosi closed a related bug:

*** Bug 8221 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

John Peterson said:

Any chance the blink limiting could be added to the next release of XFCE? I know it takes time to develop a GUI option to set the number of blinks, but couldn't we just have it set a sensible default for now? Somewhere between 3 to 5 blinks seems tolerable.

Igor Kushnir said:

MAX_BLINKING_COUNT was originally defined as (16) in 2010-2011. Then "fixed" to (G_MAXUINT) because of the "regression" in bug #7583.

In bug #7746 (enhancement) Nick Schermer wrote: "We can do this with style properties". I don't know what he referred to, but he resolved the enhancement as WONTFIX.

I am willing to implement GUI options in Window Buttons settings window to configure this value if Xfce4-panel maintainers don't mind reviewing and eventually merging such a feature. For example, there could be a GtkCheckButton "Limit the number of button blinks", a GtkSpinButton "Maximum button blink count" and another GtkCheckButton "Keep button highlighted after blinking timeout". Alternatively, the GtkSpinButton and the second GtkCheckButton could be merged into one GtkSpinButton with a tooltip explaining how odd/even values affect the final highlighted state. A minimal UI could be a single GtkSpinButton populated by default with the default max blink count (G_MAXUINT).

See !10 (merged), it restores the previous blinking limit and leaves the button highlighted until its windows is focused.

Other options are:

• Add an checkbox in preferences to either limit blinking or leave it unlimited (as Igor proposed)
• Instead of blinking draw an emblem (e.g. red exclamation mark) on the button corner, similar the grouped windows counter

cc @ochosi

Thank you @andreldm for fixing this long-standing issue! I think it can be closed now.

closed

mentioned in issue #154

changed milestone to %4.15.5

assigned to @andreldm

marked this issue as related to #101 (closed)

mentioned in merge request !98 (closed)