Why no unified ​Notificatio​ns app in Windows 8

No idea so far on the Windows 8 API but is there such an isolation across apps that one app cannot capture the notifications of other apps ?

I can make an wild guess here that after seeing many live tiles changing so rapidly, it could get a bit distracting. A single notifications app makes a lot of sense. A simple notification list and launch the app..... API doesn't allow for this ?

You want just 1 tile?

I must not understand...

Well, a unified notifications tile could be the first tile and I am assuming i can size it to my liking.

I visited the pop-up store at the mall over the weekend. One thing I didn't understand is, if a live tile is getting updated, does it mean I need to open it and then the animation stops ( when I go back to the main screen) ? 

What if the tile that is getting a new notification is outside of the initial screen ? if I never scroll down (or don't scroll down often ) then I miss a notification ?

A way to review app notification history from all apps would be a nice addition to Windows 8. Especially as when I'm in desktop mode, I don't always notice the notifications. Would be nice to be able to click a list to see what I've missed.

@Michael Butler:

++

I've always wondered why with Android and iOS having such nice notification histories why Microsoft didn't just embrace and extend. The notification popups are short-lived; I agree it would be nice to see a summary of what was missed without having to scan my sea of tiles in the start screen. Seems to me it could also improve battery life if you could suspend the animated notifications in the start menu (i.e. as your battery gets low) and simply have them available in a list. Two birds with one stone...

@Srikanth_t: Notifications pop up in the upper right of the screen no matter where you are.

Are you talking about Live Tile updates? If the user wants to see them, the tile needs to be in view. I think you just need some time with the tiles. It can look a bit busy at first.

15 minutes ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

I've always wondered why with Android and iOS having such nice notification histories why Microsoft didn't just embrace and extend. The notification popups are short-lived; I agree it would be nice to see a summary of what was missed without having to scan my sea of tiles in the start screen. Seems to me it could also improve battery life if you could suspend the animated notifications in the start menu (i.e. as your battery gets low) and simply have them available in a list. Two birds with one stone...

Well, hey, is NOTIFICATION HISTORY patented by Apple? It would explain why there's none.

It'd be listed in their lawsuits against Android... (which they think is a complete rip-off of iPhone.)

I agree that would be a nice feature.

1 hour ago, Srikanth_t wrote

No idea so far on the Windows 8 API but is there such an isolation across apps that one app cannot capture the notifications of other apps ?

I can make an wild guess here that after seeing many live tiles changing so rapidly, it could get a bit distracting. A single notifications app makes a lot of sense. A simple notification list and launch the app..... API doesn't allow for this ?

No, apps can't communicate directly with each other. After all, there's only ever one app actually running. I'm not sure why you asked that question, though, as it doesn't seem related to your other question?

I don't believe things have changed radically with WP8 here, but in WP7 very few tiles (all owned by core phone apps, not third party apps) are actually animated. So things don't become distracting because of "many live tiles changing so rapidly". What a 3rd party app can do with thier tile is display a count and do limited changes to displayed text, provide a background image, and optionally provide some text to display on the back of tile (in which case the OS flips the tile periodically). None of this is distracting in practice.

The start screen *is* your "single notifications app". It's a list (albiet not just a vertical list) that allows you to click and launch the app. Everything you've asked for.

As for a history, I don't think that's really necessary. Apps can provide their own history, when it makes sense to do so. I don't need a history that shows me 3 mails arrived a minute ago, 5 arrived a half hour ago, and 10 arrived 45 minutes ago. I just need to know how many emails have arrived since the last time I opened the mail application.

Updates to the live tiles use no more battery than updates to the various notification lists/widgets in other devices. Sorry, you can't kill two birds with one stone, because there's not even a single bird that needs killing.

Just wait unit you have 200+ apps installed, each with notifications. The start screen will really start to look alive, and kind of crazy, then.

-Josh

1 hour ago, wkempf wrote

*snip*

The start screen *is* your "single notifications app". It's a list (albiet not just a vertical list) that allows you to click and launch the app. Everything you've asked for.

What JossRoss said... Plus very inefficient

As for a history, I don't think that's really necessary. Apps can provide their own history, when it makes sense to do so. I don't need a history that shows me 3 mails arrived a minute ago, 5 arrived a half hour ago, and 10 arrived 45 minutes ago. I just need to know how many emails have arrived since the last time I opened the mail application.

I don't want to hunt through each of my apps that provides notification to find out what calendar alerts, IMs, tweets to me, high priority emails, and any other time sensitive data I missed when I momentarily left to take a piss. I'd rather have a flat list or alerts sorted in reverse time order than have to sift through a sea of tiles to find what I missed.

Don't get me wrong: I like the alerts and the tile notifications but I also think a notification history app/screen/widget would be useful.

@JohnAskew:

I don't know what the patent situation is (but who does?), but the notification center was in Android well before Apple adopted it.

15 hours ago, JoshRoss wrote

Just wait unit you have 200+ apps installed, each with notifications. The start screen will really start to look alive, and kind of crazy, then.

-Josh

Just realized we're talking Windows 8. Thought we were talking Windows Phone 8. Haven't used it enough to know if there's a major difference. There could be, because there's a whole lot more tiles displayed at a single time on the larger screen, but I have plenty of apps on my phone and it's never seemed crazy to me. The glance-and-go nature of the tiles is actually why I love my WP7, and I suspect it will work out that way on Windows 8 as well. However, a notificaction system on Windows 8 makes a lot more sense then it does on the phone, if for no other reason than supporting desktop applications.

@wkempf: I found the live tiles on Windows 8 do work well for me ultimately, but took a while for me to get used to unlike on the phone where they made sense immediately.

20 minutes ago, blowdart wrote

*snip*

Well then you turn off the live tiles on the ones you don't actually need.

That doesn't defeat the scrolling issue. For me anyway I find that the apps I want notifications for aren't necessarily the apps I want to access the most frequently. If I position my most frequently used apps at the start of the start menu for quick access (you know the heat map stuff) I loose ease of visibility of tiles I'd want a quick glance of notifications for. I guess I could always go out and buy a gigantic monitor...