One of the most dreaded UI elements in my point of view is the annoying balloon notification that shows up in the system tray. The problem is not the UI solution by itself: it is actually useful and much better than throwing a popup window in your face. After all, who has never hitted enter by mistake in a popup window that had shown up a split second before, without even knowing what it said?
The balloon notification is much less intrusive. This 'quality', however, ends up causing it to be extremely overused. I recently got an Eee PC with Windows XP preinstalled. And I found what is the most useless balloon notification I ever seen. In the Eee PC 1000he, whenever I plug a headphone, I get the notification above. As if I needed the computer to tell me what I just did!
Balloon notifications are distractions. Just like those tiny IM or email notifications that scroll up from the system tray. As a developer, you should avoid those distractions as much as possible. Remember that the user may be doing other stuff in the computer. The purpose of your software is to help get things done, and not get in the way of the user's work.
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3 comentários:
its not all that bad I think :). You must just have been frustrated.
I think that balloon tips are made for the average user-- one who wouldnt know when or what he/she did
"there are unused icons on your desktop" hehehe...
These icons are definitely distracting. Worse, non-techie users sometimes mistake them for error messages.
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