Notifications from the system tray

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Hello everyone,

I am writing a web scraper application that connect to a particular website and extracts a couple of fields from certain html tags that is returned. It will do this every minute. These fields need to be displayed to the user if it has changed from the last time it connected to the website.

Now, I am planning to make it an invisible application with just an icon present in the system tray.

The question is, what do you guys think would be the best way to display this information to the user? Balloon tips seem okay, but it looks like most users will have it turned off by default in the registry. Maybe I should implement a text in a transparent window that is removed after displaying for a couple of seconds or maybe a little window that pops up like when someone on your IM comes online/offline?

All suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance!

(In case you are curious, the scraper will connect to the website of a game server and will return the map that is currently being played as well as the number of players currently on the server)

Posted 26-Jul-11 9:17am

Mahadevan Raju

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DaveAuld · Answer 1 · 2011-07-26T10:15:00

Solution 1

I would have a tooltip that would appear when the mouse hovers over the icon in the systray. This would show the very basic information. Map Name and usercount. Simple as the wirelss/network/speaker status is all that is required.

If the user want more stats, then this would open in a full blown form/dialog if icon double clicked.

Keep it simple, and let the user choose when to see the data, nothing worse than something that constantly shoves notifications in your face.

Posted 26-Jul-11 10:15am

DaveAuld

Comments

barneyman 27-Jul-11 2:36am

go with this - change the tray icon if you have something to tell them and let them hover - systray toast is a pain in the butt as a user, so much so win7 actually makes it very difficult to display

Kim Togo 27-Jul-11 2:37am

From OP:

Thank you for your response. Actually, I do want the application to show data by itself without any user interaction.

Having it as a tooltip or double clicking the system tray icon requires user interaction. For example, when the user is watching a movie, he would still like to get a notification when his favorite map is currently active on the server. Of course, there will be options to enable/disable these notifications so that it won't be a "shove a notification in your face" kind of application. :)

barneyman 27-Jul-11 2:50am

then systray toast is your friend

Abhi Lahare · Answer 2 · 2011-07-26T11:33:00

Solution 3

How about displaying alert box like Communicator, The only things which worries me is that if the frequency is too high. The user will be constantly losing focus because of changing values in the alert window.

Posted 26-Jul-11 11:33am

Abhi Lahare