"The team tried to build an operating system...with manners, not one that constantly interrupts with bubbles, boxes and warnings that, data showed, people ignored or raced to close.
The Windows groups agreed in principle but old habits often reared up. Many Windows teams still wanted to be able to create alert bubbles for their functions.
"We've probably talked to every team in Windows about, 'No no no no, we don't want you to pop your notifications. Windows is not going to use these notifications to tell users things,'""
Great, getting rid of popup dialogs and notifications sounds like a huge step in the right direction - people are so used to not understanding or caring what they say they just ignore them anyway.
While I agree that users generally ignore notification bubbles in Windows, how should users receive notifications? I mean, sometimes you really do have to tell people stuff. Is it OK to pop up a notification bubble if you only do it every once in a while?
I feel pretty certain that a notification bubble is better than any system that steals focus from another window without responding to a user action.
Is there another accepted way of delivering notifications that I'm not thinking of?
> Is there another accepted way of delivering notifications that I'm not thinking of?
Yes. Designing your software so that it minimizes the need for such notifications. E.g. Dropbox has not once shown me a popup yet it does some very critical file sync operations. Every other app I used before Dropbox kept annoying me with "do you REALLY want to sync this file even though the source is older?" Dropbox silently and smartly handles this (by keeping both copies of the file and naming them accordingly).
I don't have any answers but I hope the Windows 7 team do.
As with you my main gripe is with dialogs that steal focus - especially ones that popup while you're typing, and only show for a split second because the focus is defaulted to a button and as you press the space bar you unwittingly 'OK' the dialog box!
" Is it OK to pop up a notification bubble if you only do it every once in a while?"
No it isn't. For critical or really important messages that require user decisions, yes.
The idea of using pop-ups for notification of important or critical issues is not the problem though, he problem is so many teams within Microsoft and software vendors abused it. For example - "There are unused icons on your desktop."
Worse than that is the abuse by installing an icon in the notification area - have you seen the appalling state of many Windows users' notification area? 20 to 30 icons is not unheard of.
The Windows groups agreed in principle but old habits often reared up. Many Windows teams still wanted to be able to create alert bubbles for their functions.
"We've probably talked to every team in Windows about, 'No no no no, we don't want you to pop your notifications. Windows is not going to use these notifications to tell users things,'""
Great, getting rid of popup dialogs and notifications sounds like a huge step in the right direction - people are so used to not understanding or caring what they say they just ignore them anyway.