Comment 59 for bug 438536

Here's a question, which I've yet to see a good answer for:

What are the synchronous notifications doing in that corner in the first place?

The rationale for putting asynchronous notifications (what the NotifyOSD spec calls "notification bubbles") in a corner is obvious, and clearly stated in the rationale in the spec: they contain information which is not directly related to what the user is doing right now, and therefore should be presented in the most unobtrusive way possible.

But the synchronous "confirmation bubbles" for e.g. volume and brightness do not fit this definition at all. When they appear, what the user is doing right now is changing the volume or brightness. Lots of systems display the confirmation for this right in the middle of the screen. Why not do the same? Or perhaps if that's a little too intrusive, in the middle at the bottom. I just don't see the justification for them competing for space in the corner at all, let alone pushing out other things.