

Humane.js 2.1 released - simple modern notification system - wavded
http://wavded.github.com/humane-js/

======
jtchang
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_.

~~~
callmevlad
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.

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

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

------
latchkey
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.

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

~~~
krobertson
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.

------
nchuhoai
Another one: gritter.js

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

~~~
giulivo
this actually stacks notifications too

------
sry_not4sale
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.

~~~
wavded
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.

------
danneu
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.

~~~
wavded
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.

~~~
gojomo
I find messages that close themselves very _in_ humane; 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.

------
tedsuo
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?

~~~
jhuckestein
Because hackers are lazy. Some say all inventors are.

------
nevinera
Does it support stacking?

------
krmmalik
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 ;-)

~~~
netghost
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.

~~~
wavded
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 :)

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

Design wise, the default is pretty _obtrusive_.

Nice library though. Thanks.

~~~
wavded
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.

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

