Notifications on top of buttons

Design
#1

By notifications I mean the light-blue messages for example about background processes that sometimes pop up on the top and stay there for a couple of seconds. Might be called something else. The problem is that many buttons are also on top (for example going one directory up or down in the file browser), so you can not use those buttons until the notification goes away by itself.

There should be a better solution? Ideally, the whole window shrinks a bit as long as the notification is there, but I understand this is difficult to implement. Or maybe put the notification on the bottom or the side? Or put a small X-button on the notification that closes them?

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#2

You can swipe the notifications left or right to remove them.

I also had a discussion regarding a pause mechanisms in the community meeting end of september resulting in this: pausing notifications · Issue #73 · nemomobile-ux/lipstick · GitHub

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#3

Great I didn’t know that. Maybe not 100% satisfactory but definitely workable. Thanks for the quick reply!

#4

This problem is accentuated as the phone seems to poll the email server when it is “woken up”. This means that many times when you access the phone (open the cover and trigger the hall effect sensor) you are greeted by the notification banner advising of x emails and blocking access to functions or buttons.

The swiping to remove is if some use but if there were a way to avoid this altogether, by say resizing the screen, it would be much better.

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#5

Have you really thought that through? Resize the screen dynamically so that notifications go outside apps, or what do you mean? …thereby making buttons move instead. Or statically, leaving lots of unused space?

What bad apps have buttons up there anyway? Android ones? Terrible usability…

#6

No need to be anti Android.

It’s pure Sailfish functionality that I’m referring to.

The notifications block the pulley menu and the area that shows the battery charge state, Bluetooth, GPS WiFi and Cellular icons. Very often I’m just checking to see what the battery state is or what the cellular or WiFi coverage is like. Along comes a notification and I cannot see what I want to look at.

I agree, it is terrible usability.

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#7

In patchmanager I use a patch called “Position notifications below status bar” which does exactly what it says and one called “Glass popups” which makes them slightly transparent. Probably not a solution for everyone but I thought it would be useful to mention.

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#8

does this also affect the thin, almost black (with transparency) un-tappable notifications that sometimes cover the status bar?

#9

I tested by adding a repo in storeman. It does not seem to affect those.

#10

As AlanBreen says, it’s not an Android problem. For example, the Jolla-native file browser or contacts managements have buttons on top.

#11

Could you give an example please? So far I have been able to swipe all notifications away. It does require a bit of practice to swipe such a small box away…

#12

I’d still say it a mostly-Android problem (that it is a high-traffic area).
There is no place that really has any less buttons in reasonably designed native apps. Usually it is just the navigation header, tabs or somesuch which are not supposed to be tapped. So where do you mean that it should go instead?

Hiding the status bar is a more real problem - but except for the scenario above, you will often have seen what you need from there already. Moving notifications to just below it would be good too - but i really cannot see anywhere drastically different making sense.

#13

You can actually tap those to make them go away.

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#14

They’re tiny, and my fingers are fat! It never occured to me, but I’ll try it next time.

1 Like