Suggestions for Persistent Notification redesign

[Apostol Apostolov]

Since JuiceDefender introduced a Notification Icon and Bar, I have
found its design to be completely in contrast with Android OS current
design guidelines and how other apps design their own persistent
notifications.

* The Notification contains overwhelming amount of information via
icons that have no explanation whatsoever and this information can be
quickly checked if the user entered the application. Most of the time
it's best to enter the application than to read the meaning of the
icons.

* The Notification is colorful while almost all notifications are
black and white (there are colorful status bar icons but many well
designed apps use black and white, or similar to Yahoo apps, greyscale
and this looks great!), with no design direction behind use of colors,
images and icon design. This looks very messy and confusing and breaks
the simplicity and "zen" of Android.

My suggestions, without trying to dictate how the app should look:

* Please implement an optional, off by default, black and white icon
design. Maybe many of us fans of the app would be willing to help out
with icons in the same way LauncherPro has made its own dock bar icon
design and many designers who use the app help out with icons for
applications, strictly following that design.

* Please implement an optional, off by default if needed but I think
newbie users would greatly benefit if on by default, simple design of
Notification. All needed is - Icon of the application, with the dot on
it (green, yellow, red, even if the remaining of the icons are black
and white, the spark of important color would look awesome), the
current battery life, the battery life modifier (i.e. x2.75) and that
is all. The user can check the turned on or off options within the
app.

I also found no information in the app about those new green, yellow
or red dots. My phone currently shows a yellow dot, what does it mean
and should I be worried? No idea.

[Mark Lowne]

One important thing: the notification pane shows the *current* status
of triggers (the 8 icons on the right, tri-state (currently on/
currently off/disabled)) and exactly what's causing the enabling or
disabling of data and wifi (be it a trigger, an Apps trigger app, a
3rd party app via intents, or the 'toggle mobile data' widget), not
just what's enabled or disabled in JD's configuration. As such, it's
NOT just duplicating information that can be gathered in the main UI -
on the contrary, it's uniquely and extremely useful to understand
what's going on and how to change JD's configuration if it's not
working as expected.

But I agree that without proper documentation (or a much more self-
explanatory design) it's really hard to read (thus its theoretical
usefulness gets close to zero). Now, writing documentation is a PITA,
so I tend to bother doing it only after the relevant feature is stable
and very unlikely to change. In particular the notification (relying
heavily on icons and, yes, color-coded stuff, as it's the only way to
show so much information in such little room) would need a bunch of
explanatory screenshots, but the design is still very much fluid - I
just threw it together quickly without much thought, so it's pretty
much 'alpha stage'.

So, yes, I also agree that the design could really use some
improvement (keeping in mind the aforementioned requirements - or not!
We could discuss that as well). I'm all for detailed suggestions, or,
even better, quick Photoshop mock-ups ;) (and/or icon sets, of
course!)