Humane.js 2.1 released - simple modern notification system | Hacker News Reader

Humane.js 2.1 released - simple modern notification system

wavded.github.com

113 pointswavded28 comments

It looks cool but why are you popping up a giant box in front of my face?

That HAS to violate some sort of User Experience. If it doesn't I am going to say it violates mine.

I remember implementing the precursor to this idea by Aza Raskin (http://code.google.com/p/humanmsg/), and users hated it. "Get that giant box out of my face" was by far the top complaint.

Thanks for your implementation, served me many projects! Yeah I wonder what Aza had to say about that complaint, seems to be similar here :)

Sorry, my statement was misleading. I didn't implement that library, but rather integrated it into an existing project of mine.

That's only one of the possible themes. Try the libnotify one. It's just a small box in the corner.

I would suggest making the libnotify one the default theme on demo page, just because the current one seems intrusive and anyone glancing at this would think this library is less useful than it is.

Also, I noticed that only one notification is visible at a time. It would be nice to be able to chain notifications to have more than just one visible notification.

"If it's good enough for iOS, it's good enough for me"?

I'm sure that this is a really well implemented piece of code. However, just as a personal preference (this is not a flame or attack, just some feedback), I think a site using this would be a site I'd stop using. I find the dialog really annoying because the effect of blocking user input in order to display some sort of message seems really inhumane to me. There are better ways to do notifications without pushing a big dialog, with some text, in the face of the user.

That's a theme, try the libnotify one instead.

You could argue though that first impressions matter, so the first example they have set up shouldn't be one that people find so distasteful.

Out of 12 comments on here, 2 are already about disliking the initial "big text box" example.

They should make lib notify the first one, and try to get some additional themes that showcase it. The 3 that are there are pretty simple and two are big annoying textboxes.

Ahh, thanks. Libnotify works really well on mobile Safari. The notification stays pinned to the top right of the browser, even as I pinch-zoom in and out.

Another one: gritter.js

http://boedesign.com/demos/gritter/

this actually stacks notifications too

I think you should change the default template to libnotify, so much nicer.

Also, the notifications behave strange when hovering over them with the mouse... they shrink onhover, then on the next hover they dismiss.

This is on Chromium 15.

You probably just timed it right to get that behavior, bigbox for example, shrinks on hover, other themes will fade or whatever. If you are 'hovered' it will continue the animation at whatever point you were at when it goes to close the notification.

I think notifications must stack to be usable.

My experience with websites that queue up notifications (the old thesixtyone.com) is that you sort of pause, sit there, and wait for them to finish up so you see what they say. A better experience is for them to stack up in the corner so you can read them, then click them away once you're done.

I had one more thought on this @danneu, I believe Growl stacks? I'm not a Mac user so I'm not sure if that is true. On Linux, Ubuntu libnotify does not, nor does Gnome Shell's notifications, two leading desktop environments for Linux and I've used both without having that desire for them to stack. Not saying stacking is not better, but I think its usable, and has its pros. E.g. how many should stack reasonably without being an issue, having a bunch stacked can crowd a portion of the screen. This lib may be able handle that in the future, but one of its strengths is that its easy for users to create vastly different themes partly because it doesn't stack. A relevant point of discussion however.

The idea of humane messages is that they require no user input to close. I do like stacking idea, maybe a future release. For now, setting the timeout to be shorter, or forcing new messages provides a workaround.

I find messages that close themselves very inhumane; I can easily miss them if I look away or switch tabs, or they can disappear while I'm trying to understand them, with no way to bring them back.

My top feature request would be a 'stays up until dismissed or navigated away from' option.

I gotta admit I'm confused why these things are popular on hacker news. I've written several "growl" notification tools, usually I just re-write it on top of whatever ui toolkit the project is using rather than try to use a library. It takes less than 20 minutes to write one sufficient for whatever your use case is, and it works exactly how you need it to.

Not saying this or any other implementation is bad and you shouldn't use it, but why does hacker news get so excited every time one of these shows up?

Because hackers are lazy. Some say all inventors are.

Does it support stacking?

Not to be inflammatory in anyway but how is this any better than some of the existing libraries, such as jGrowl etc?

I'm looking for some 'arguments' to seriously consider something like this - Thank you ;-)

This one doesn't have a dependency on jQuery if that's a selling point for you. There is also an option to wait for mouse / keyboard input before dismissing, which is kind of nice as well.

Otherwise it seems similar to most of the others.

I would also add mobile webkit support, and ability to create themes with Stylus (which renders IE gradient fallbacks, easy vendor prefixing, etc). I'm not sure if the landscape has changed much but I haven't seen many that support CSS transitions. At the end of the day its just a fun experiment that some people may like and other may not :)

"A simple, modern, framework-independent, well-tested, unobtrusive, notification system."

Design wise, the default is pretty obtrusive.

Nice library though. Thanks.

Thanks, yeah the big box apparently isn't a big hit as something more subtle like libnotify, I hope more designers come in and share their ideas, I like the jackedup that was submitted. The idea of humane message (which wasn't mine) was somewhat like the bigbox, which I liked, I think the unobtrusive part comes in that the user doesn't have to click to remove it, and getting out of the way when you want to see what's behind it. Thanks for the comment.

Another library that has notifications, alerts, prompts without dependency on jQuery: http://ssssnakes.com/smoke/

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