Jeff Key

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¡ding!

At least once a day I hear a random “ding!” and I have no idea what's doing it or if it's important.  This isn't very useful to me.  It really makes me appreciate unobtrusive, yet informative notification methods like the little balloons in the notification area that everyone seems to hate.  Like them or not, they're a heck of a lot better than modal dialogs or background “ding!”s.  If you write an app that dings, please stop what you're doing right now and throw a balloon in the notification area.  It won't take that long and you'll sleep better tonight.  Thank you.

(This is also the inaugural post in my “beef” category.  I could bitch all day about computer things, but I've never had an appropriate slot for it.  Are you feeling lucky, punk?  Well, are ya?!)

Posted: Apr 25 2004, 10:05 PM by jeffreykey | with 8 comment(s)
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Comments

dru said:

Any comments on how us punks can capitalize on the XP balloons?
# April 26, 2004 12:37 PM

ajc said:

I had mentioned my growing dislike of <a href="http://blog.andrewcarlson.org/archive/2004/04/16/188.aspx">pop up notifications</a> a week or so ago, but this puts me in a tough spot. I suppose I would prefer to see a pop up notification instead of hearing a ding, but I would ideally just prefer to have the taskbar flash for any app with really important news. For less important news, I prefer a pop up notification which I can easily turn off. Dings are right out, as are sounds in general-- was that a new AIM message, a new e-mail message notification from Windows Messenger, a new Windows Messenger IM, a new Dell Support Alert, iTunes telling me it's done ripping a CD, or some new trojan that likes to make noise? I can never keep them straight.
# April 26, 2004 1:01 PM

ajc said:

I guess HTML is not allowed in the comments. Oops!
# April 26, 2004 1:02 PM

Thomas Williams said:

G'day Jeff - I too hear the random "ding!", but I reckon I would definitely, absolutely turn off a balloon notification (I could handle a taskbar button flashing). Please don't let an app steal focus for a ding!

I don't know about you, but most of the time for me it's SQL Enterprise Manager dinging letting me know my results have been discarded to save memory.
# April 26, 2004 7:29 PM

Jeff Key said:

Andy, Thomas: I agree that pointless or overused balloons, toast, etc. are annoying. It's the responsibility of the developers to realize that their app isn't the most important thing in the world and that people may want to turn these things off. BUT I'll take these over a modal dialog any day.

As for the taskbar blinking: I think of that as the program telling me "Hey, I need your attention", whereas the balloons, toast, etc. are the apps saying "Hey, I thought you'd like to know this".

Dru: I can write up a .NET example if you'd like one.
# April 26, 2004 8:42 PM

Adam Kinney said:

I'll second the .NET example request :)

I like toast/popups. I think they fit the purpose perfectly as long they do not display too long and have a close button.

+1 to hearing Enterprise Manager dinging - "The results set has changed. Do you want to kee…"
# April 27, 2004 12:41 AM

michael said:

How about balloons that get increasingly bigger, the longer you ignore them?

Annoying? Yes. Better than the *dings*? Hell yeah!
# April 28, 2004 7:42 PM

Spamboy said:


Sure, dings suck, but the worst are web pages with music or sound when inappropriate. Very embarassing at work when some sort of music pops up or someone says anything. Only once did I open a page, and a banner talked to me. How evil that was. I hope we're not going to have that everywhere for the rest of the existence of the internet. I'd just stop surfing.
# August 10, 2004 2:14 AM