[Greasemonkey] Changes in CVS

[chris feldmann]

On 11/18/05, Aaron Boodman <zboogs at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/18/05, Johan Sundström <oyasumi at gmail.com> wrote:
> > One question, though: was Anton Berezin's interpretation of
> >
> > > * Put one success alert back on install instead of the
> > > too-hard-to-notice animation message. Now there's one
> > > animation message (loading...) then an alert ("Success!")
> >
> > correct -- that the alert was about every installed GM script?
> >
> > Modal dialogs in user interface design are a little like what
> > exceptions are in programming -- they are really only to be
> > used for exceptional circumstances, that absolutely requires
> > user attention, confirmation or intervention, before moving on.
> > It's a very severe infliction on the user's browsing session, as
> > it will freeze any other actions the user is trying to do, and in
> > all other tabs of the same browser window too, none the less.
>
> I completely agree with your basis here and that's why I put the
> animation in, in the first place. The problem is that users do require
> some acknowledgement that something has happened. In my experience,
> most people didn't even notice the subtle animation, and so it seemed
> like Greasemonkey did absolutely nothing, that it wasn't working.
>
> Ideally, I'd like to put in a little status "toast" animation like
> what windows does: a little panel that slides up in the corner that
> tells you what happened. Or some other sort of subtle-but-noticeable
> feedback.
>
> But none of these things are supported in Firefox. Even getting the
> install bar to show up was a quest of mamoth proportions as it doesn't
> have much of a useable API.
>
> So I'm left with two choices for the immediate term: leave the
> animation (a vast number of users thing Greasemonkey just doesn't
> work), or scale back the current (0.5.3) confirmation dialog -
> downloading dialog - install success dialog procession to a
> downloading animation followed by a success dialog. This annoys some
> number of users, but I think it's mostly developers who are repeatedly
> installing scripts. They should edit the scripts directly to avoid
> this.
>
> So for now I chose the second option, but I will revisit it. If you're
> super passionate about this issue, you could write a patch to not show
> the dialog depending on a preference.
>
> - a

A suggestion: see the gmail notifier extension, sitting down there
next to the monkey for me. When a new message strolls in, what I
assume is a small div does a "toaster" animation, pauses for a second,
then scolls itself back down and away. This seems like an ideal
comprimise: It's not modal, but it's hard to miss.