[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #35210: Add notification area to Customizer

[WordPress Trac]

#35210: Add notification area to Customizer
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 Reporter:  westonruter                          |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement                          |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal                               |   Milestone:  4.7
Component:  Customize                            |     Version:
 Severity:  normal                               |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  needs-patch ui-feedback ux-feedback  |     Focuses:  ui,
                                                 |  javascript
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Comment (by westonruter):

 @melchoyce

 > Putting aside the creepy eye icon and whatever the calendar icon are (I
 had no idea until I read "Snapshots" and "Scheduling UI" what they would
 be, and even now I'm not sure what either of those things means, and in
 any rate neither should be the focus of this ticket)...

 Again, sorry to muddy things here. I should have made these
 mocks/screenshots from a pristine environment. Here's another:

 [[Image(https://core.trac.wordpress.org/raw-attachment/ticket/35210/rough-
 global-notifications-mock.png, width=300)]]

 > How often are you going to receive that many Customizer errors? This
 seems like overkill.

 A few situations where global notifications make sense to me:

 * When the customizer preview fails to refresh due to a network
 connectivity error, a notification should be displayed.
 * When the server returns with a fatal error when refreshing the preview,
 there should be a notification instead of failing silently. See #29932 and
 #31582.
 * When attempting to Save & Publish settings and they are rejected due to
 validation constraints, in addition to there being a notification
 displayed with the control related to the invalid setting, there could be
 a global notification as well to make it clear that there was an error
 overall on saving the changes: “Unable to save due to invalid settings”.

 Again, as @celloexpressions noted, these errors are not necessarily
 related to a specific control and so the notifications aren't suitable to
 be displayed in a control's notifications area.

 > I agree. Using a bubble like that makes it seem like the user is
 receiving a notification. "Oh, maybe if I click this I'll see my recent
 comments on my posts? Oh, nope, that's something I don't understand, let
 me never click this again." This is the wrong metaphor for this kind of
 interface, which adds an extra layer of confusion.

 The red disk with a white number in it seems like a common way to show
 notifications (e.g. Facebook, iOS icon overlays). I'm not sure it would be
 confused with comments because the styling of the post comments count
 (`.post-com-count`) distinctly has a speech bubble “tail”:

 [[Image(https://core.trac.wordpress.org/raw-attachment/ticket/35210/post-
 comments-count.png)]]

 Nevertheless, the Jetpack notifications icon (`#wpnt-notes-unread-count`)
 in the admin bar also looks like a comments count speech bubble icon, and
 yet it includes notifications other than comments (e.g. booming stats,
 number of likes, new followers, etc):

 [[Image(https://core.trac.wordpress.org/raw-attachment/ticket/35210
 /jetpack-unread-notifications-icon.png)]]

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/35210#comment:81>
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