Xfce Forum

GaryAitken

Member

Registered: 2012-05-29

Posts: 15

What is "Startup Notification Support"?

I'd like a better understanding (well, *any* understanding) of what
"Startup Notification Support" is.

Can someone explain to me what enabling this option does,
what happens if some components have it enabled and others don't,
and what behavior is present / missing if it is disabled all over?

Thanks!

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: What is "Startup Notification Support"?

Startup notification is that spinning cursor that you see after you've clicked a launcher but before the application appears on the desktop. Note that the application itself has to support this notification for the spinning cursor to appear. You'll notice that in the properties dialog of all launcher items and available as an option in .desktop files, you can specify startup notification.

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MountainDewManiac

Member

From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: What is "Startup Notification Support"?

So it doesn't actually do anything useful, then? Just provides the linux equivilant of the Microsoft hurry-up-and-wait hourglass so that the user knows that whatever app hasn't appeared on the screen yet... hasn't appeared on the display yet?

Regards,
MDM

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Sideburns

Member

From: Trinidad, CO

Registered: 2011-03-30

Posts: 467

Website

Re: What is "Startup Notification Support"?

No, it does do something: it tells you that the application is running, even though there's nothing visible on the screen yet.

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BensonBear

Member

Registered: 2014-03-26

Posts: 14

Re: What is "Startup Notification Support"?

No, its an ABOMINATION that must have an option to be disabled.  It is worse than useless.  I know how to launch an application, so I know it should be coming up.  Automatically putting up a different cursor that runs for an arbitrary length of time unrelated to whether or not the application has reached a useful state is not helpful and is usually very very VERY distracting.  It persists long into the activity that one would like to continue doing. 

There has to be a way to disable this thing, PLEASE! 

I have been trying for six hours now to disable it.  In KDE it is simple,  you just set something in system-settings.  But that does not affect kde apps in xfce when they call other apps.  Those other apps have the rotating cursor for thirty full seconds although they are up and running, or even DONE, well before that!  This is AWFUL!  If the thing stopped when the app was ready to accept user interaction, maybe okay, but persisting for 30 seconds (I timed it).  PLEASE!!!

"So it doesn't actually do anything useful, then?"  Absolutely correct.

"I'd like a better understanding (well, *any* understanding) of what
"Startup Notification Support" is.".  Indeed, such a thing is utterly lacking.

"what behavior is present / missing if it is disabled all over?"  Sane, calm, behavior on
the part of users who dont have a thirty second rotating ball every time they launch
even the simplest application from a kde application within xfce.

I know its probably kde's fault.  Somehow or other.  Even though I have set
the "startup notification" to NO WAY DONT DO IT in kde's system settings.
But surely xfce can easy squash this immoral inconsiderate bad design
pscyhologically unmotivated behavior on the part of kde.

Just allow users  to say NO to all "startup notification" attempts.

phoenix_rizzen

Member

Registered: 2014-04-23

Posts: 2

Re: What is "Startup Notification Support"?

Actually, startup notifications are EXTREMELY useful, and something that's missing in XFCE4!

Not everyone is running a 16-core beast of a computer with multiple SSDs in a RAID that can make applications appear onscreen before you've finished clicking the desktop icon.  Some of us run diskless workstations (added latency to application startup), in schools (ADD/OCD anyone?), where clicking multiple times on an icon because nothing is happening onscreen leads to having multiple instances of every application open instead of just one.

It would be really nice if there was a global option to enable startup notifications for *ALL* applications, whether they actually support it or not, with a configurable timeout.  Kind of like KDE3 had almost a decade ago.