4 ms·

I completely disagree. Notifications are awesome because I can forget about the event until it occurs. I can send an email to you asking for information, and

I completely disagree. Notifications are awesome because I can forget about the event until it occurs. I can send an email to you asking for information, and then push it from my mind until I get a notification saying that you've responded. Without notifications I'd have to go and check repeatedly to find out if you'd got back to me yet. The important thing is to keep important notifications and unimportant ones separate, so that you're only notified of things you actually care about.

jaysonelliot 15y ago
Yes, and that should be your choice, not the system's choice. If you decide that some notifications are important enough to be displayed, then you should see them. Sometimes, a person doesn't want any notifications at all—for example, when they're working and "in the zone," or watching a movie, or playing a game. Sometimes, you want to be notified about pretty much everything. The decision about when to be notified or not, and what's important vs. unimportant, should be your decision, not your computer's.
- michael_dorfman 15y ago
  The decision about when to be notified or not, and what's important vs. unimportant, should be your decision, not your computer's. But isn't that the status quo? I can't think of any piece of software I use that doesn't give me a fairly easy way to temporarily turn off the notifications. I don't want to get notified by Facebook? No problem, I shut it down. Don't want to be interrupted by my telephone? I put it in silent mode. Etc., etc.
  - cjoh 15y ago
    Google+ notifications on the search page.
    - TeMPOraL 15y ago
      Almost invisible. I notice them only when I'm not focused and start looking around for distractions. I'm a bit angry at that, because a notification that you notice several days after the event it refers to is usually worthless.
  - jaysonelliot 15y ago
    Both MacOS and Windows. The OSX dock bounces when an application thinks it has something important to tell you. Windows grab focus away from the user when a process completes. MS Outlook throws email notifications up at you, even when you're presenting to an audience on a large screen—always fun to see the subject lines of emails showing up while a presenter is trying to talk. On your iPhone, you are forced to dig into the preferences to find and turn off the "Automatically ask to join networks" option if you don't want wi-fi notifications popping up all over the place any time you are on the move. Off should be the default for notifications, not on.
    - icebraining 15y ago
      Frankly, is the default that important? Change it once and it's off. Even if you do that for 40 applications, it's still a very small amount of time in total. Maybe I'm biased, though; exploring the Settings/Options is usually the first thing I do when I run a new application.
      - jaysonelliot 15y ago
        I think you're mistaking "what an advanced user can put up with" for what the best experience should be.
    - freehunter 15y ago
      My god this is so frustrating. I work in information security, and there are a lot of events I need to know about the very minute they happen. So I have my email client notify me in the only way it knows how: popup notifications. Now these on their own are fine, I love them. I can glance at the subject and the sender and know if I need to respond. If I'm busy, it disappears after a few seconds. But damn if it doesn't grab the focus of my screen while it's there. There are a lot of times I'm looking at a piece of paper while typing an email or report, not looking at the screen. If I've gotten a new email since I started typing, everything I typed in the meantime has been triggering shortcuts on the email notification. Some of them have been deleted because I was typing when it popped up, some people have gotten part of my typing as an email response. Lack of attention on my part? Sure. Lack of foresight on Novell's part? You bet your ass.
untog 15y ago
I think the issue here is defaults. When I install Foursquare it started pushing notifications to me every time a contact checked in somewhere- seemingly anywhere within the New York metro area. Absolutely pointless. But notifications in moderation are fantastic.
mithaler 15y ago
In that sense, notifications are actually a good deal better than phone calls, which demand immediate attention (or frustrate the caller by making them think "you never pick up the phone!").
svdad 15y ago
That is actually the one reason I like carrying a pager. I still dislike it for enough other reasons that I would give it up in a second. But, when I'm on call, I know that if anything is important enough that I have to respond to it RIGHT NOW, I'll get paged. And that lets me completely forget about checking any other form of electronic communication until I feel like it -- which, on the weekend, can be a day or more.

jaysonelliot 15y ago

Yes, and that should be your choice, not the system's choice. If you decide that some notifications are important enough to be displayed, then you should see them. Sometimes, a person doesn't want any notifications at all—for example, when they're working and "in the zone," or watching a movie, or playing a game. Sometimes, you want to be notified about pretty much everything. The decision about when to be notified or not, and what's important vs. unimportant, should be your decision, not your computer's.

michael_dorfman 15y ago
The decision about when to be notified or not, and what's important vs. unimportant, should be your decision, not your computer's. But isn't that the status quo? I can't think of any piece of software I use that doesn't give me a fairly easy way to temporarily turn off the notifications. I don't want to get notified by Facebook? No problem, I shut it down. Don't want to be interrupted by my telephone? I put it in silent mode. Etc., etc.
- cjoh 15y ago
  Google+ notifications on the search page.
  - TeMPOraL 15y ago
    Almost invisible. I notice them only when I'm not focused and start looking around for distractions. I'm a bit angry at that, because a notification that you notice several days after the event it refers to is usually worthless.
- jaysonelliot 15y ago
  Both MacOS and Windows. The OSX dock bounces when an application thinks it has something important to tell you. Windows grab focus away from the user when a process completes. MS Outlook throws email notifications up at you, even when you're presenting to an audience on a large screen—always fun to see the subject lines of emails showing up while a presenter is trying to talk. On your iPhone, you are forced to dig into the preferences to find and turn off the "Automatically ask to join networks" option if you don't want wi-fi notifications popping up all over the place any time you are on the move. Off should be the default for notifications, not on.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    Frankly, is the default that important? Change it once and it's off. Even if you do that for 40 applications, it's still a very small amount of time in total. Maybe I'm biased, though; exploring the Settings/Options is usually the first thing I do when I run a new application.
    - jaysonelliot 15y ago
      I think you're mistaking "what an advanced user can put up with" for what the best experience should be.
  - freehunter 15y ago
    My god this is so frustrating. I work in information security, and there are a lot of events I need to know about the very minute they happen. So I have my email client notify me in the only way it knows how: popup notifications. Now these on their own are fine, I love them. I can glance at the subject and the sender and know if I need to respond. If I'm busy, it disappears after a few seconds. But damn if it doesn't grab the focus of my screen while it's there. There are a lot of times I'm looking at a piece of paper while typing an email or report, not looking at the screen. If I've gotten a new email since I started typing, everything I typed in the meantime has been triggering shortcuts on the email notification. Some of them have been deleted because I was typing when it popped up, some people have gotten part of my typing as an email response. Lack of attention on my part? Sure. Lack of foresight on Novell's part? You bet your ass.

untog 15y ago

I think the issue here is defaults. When I install Foursquare it started pushing notifications to me every time a contact checked in somewhere- seemingly anywhere within the New York metro area. Absolutely pointless. But notifications in moderation are fantastic.

mithaler 15y ago

In that sense, notifications are actually a good deal better than phone calls, which demand immediate attention (or frustrate the caller by making them think "you never pick up the phone!").

svdad 15y ago

That is actually the one reason I like carrying a pager. I still dislike it for enough other reasons that I would give it up in a second. But, when I'm on call, I know that if anything is important enough that I have to respond to it RIGHT NOW, I'll get paged. And that lets me completely forget about checking any other form of electronic communication until I feel like it -- which, on the weekend, can be a day or more.