Laptop power status notification is uninformative

Kindly add .png/.jpg screenshots. of the icon on both switch.

Also this seems to be a bug in your install, the switch from AC to battery must show a icon and with a lowered brightness level.
Or you must have edited the brightness level of the battery state to 100% also.

And the solution you are proposing cannot be done as you mention, since there are specifications, kindly read the https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD and its guidelines.

A paper cut is a minor usability annoyance that an average user would encounter on his/her first day of using a new installation of Ubuntu 9.10.

For further info about papercuts criteria , pls read > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut

Attached are screen shots of the notification icon going from both power states.

The only difference between the 2 is the glow effect the shows when moving to AC power, but this effect lasts for less that 1 second, and does not take into account the background, or a maximised window, which can mask out the effect.

If this is a bug with my install or some obscure hardware incompatibility, can someone point me towards a screen shot of what SHOULD be on my screen.

I have looked through the notification guidelines and specifications, but cannot understand why my suggestion cannot be implemented. All I am suggesting, "IF" this is a common issue is to improve the quality of the notification. The guidelines in place specify what events warrant a notification and which don't. My suggestion adheres to these and even use code utilised in other notifications, such as the low power warning to display the remaining power % and usability time.

ac to battery.png > shows the display has reduced brightness the bar is in the center
battery to ac.png > shows that the brightness is not set to full...
There is no confusion between those notifications. they are clear.

But your request is for adding more information within the same bubble, which cannot be done.

It needs to be provided using a second bubble. That way this could be feasible.[I'm editing the description to reflect this]

When looking at screenshots they do seem quite clear, (and It did take several tries to even capture the notification properly), but you need to remember, this notification is on screen for no more than 2 seconds, so:

1.) it can be easily missed
2.) the effect can be masked by the background wallpaper or a martially maximised window.
3.) screen birghtness can be an issue
4.) ambient lighting where the user is working also has an impact.

Creating 2 almost identical notifications for opposite messages can only create confusion.

Looking back at my original recommendation, I recognise it might be more straightforward to replace the monitor graphic with a battery or AC symbol (as the case may be) leaving out the remaining power % etc for the sake of giving the notification immediate impact.

These graphics already exist and are used in other power warning notifications.

Assigned it to gnome-power-manager , so that they could send a second simultaneous notification about the battery status / ac state.
Scott Howard is already working on something similar , Icons this are done > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manager/+bug/399492

thanks for bringing this up - could you try a liveCD of Karmic and see if those icons are better?

@ Scott Howard :
I'm running Karmic ,
By "icons are done" i meant , the icons SiDi and myself have done for the notify-osd bubbles, the ones he has used in the presentation.
you can find them here... https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg00173.html

Or did you mean something else?
If you want a different icon set, let me know about your ideas.

Actually this is a tweaked version,
the youtube presentation was from a previous set, this design was directed by the Ayatana discussions.

Also, Icons are done in greyscale to reinforce the non-interactive nature of the bubbles.
The design team is not in favor of color icons in the bubbles for the default.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I was checking to make sure that it had not changed behavior in Karmic (I'm away from my laptop for a bit).

I believe Ubuntu is currently blocking the exact bubble you are requesting since they think it is redundant (the icon should change in gnome-panel).
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~gnome-power-manager-team/gnome-power/trunk/annotate/head%3A/debian/patches/03-remove-discharging-notify.patch

Once we finish cleaning up the strings we can revist whether the bubble is redundant.

(the patch removes the ac>battery notification which is part of upstream's GPM code. I don't think upstream GPM has a battery>AC notification, so we might have to add it)

Yeah , that was because the old Notification had no _useful_ information...

But Since we are now *adding the info about battery status* , this notification will be meaningful.[hence there was the interest in Ayatana]

For the battery>AC notification, you are right there was no notification earlier...

Also, the battery icons need to be corrected, The battery icons must be displayed vertically ,
Steve had lost interest on this, so i had not worked on them , *But do let me know if the patches you are working-on are accepted* .

The new upstream bubble now has time remaining and percentage in the bubble. We can drop the patch when the next version gets into ubuntu.
http://git.gnome.org/cgit/gnome-power-manager/commit/?id=0bfe44b903dc12512c7e99579c35bbd62a331d28

All the other strings got accepted (you can see at the above link).

We still have to work on icons though.

Scott Howard wrote :
> We still have to work on icons though.

The icons are done , the design team has seen the icons and apart from a few minor details [just trying to do something more innovative] , icons are also complete. :-)

Oh, I meant work on an Ubuntu patch for getting the icons into GPM so notify
osd can use them. The icons look great! Good job with them.

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 9:00 AM, mac_v <email address hidden> wrote:

> Scott Howard wrote :
> > We still have to work on icons though.
>
> The icons are done , the design team has seen the icons and apart from a
> few minor details [just trying to do something more innovative] , icons
> are also complete. :-)
>
> --
> Laptop power status notification is uninformative
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/404525
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts: Triaged
> Status in “gnome-power-manager” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> The icon displayed in the new notification area in 9.04 when a laptops
> power source is changed from AC to battery is just plain uninformative.
>
> All that is displayed is a generic computer screen icon with a horizontal
> bar beside it... No text, no battery or plug icon to inform the user as to
> what is going on.
>
> Recommendation:
> Pop-up a second bubble which includes battery/AC icon to inform the user as
> to their current power source.
> Also, include a remaining power % and estimated usage time when switching
> to battery power, if the hardware in question supports it.
>

This bug was fixed a long time ago.
gnome-power-manager (2.27.91-0ubuntu2) UNRELEASED; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/03-remove-discharging-notify.patch:
    - Removed because of new notify OSD spec (LP: #419858)
      Upstream accepted our change so the notification matches Ubuntu's spec

 -- Scott Howard <email address hidden> Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:37:29 -0400