1328120 - macOS: notifications do not always display enough text that you know what they're saying

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: OS Integration, defect)

Description

[Jonathon Love]

Attachment: unreadable notification

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.12; rv:50.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/50.0
Build ID: 20161208153507

Steps to reproduce:

i just have thunderbird open


Actual results:

the screenshot says it all


Expected results:

i should be able to read the notification

Comment 1

[Javi Rueda :javirid]

Alerts texts in macOS should be limited to a maximum of 2 lines. In Thunderbird for macOS we are using the Notification Center API. Alert size are of fixed size and text size cannot be changed, neither. The operating system tries to show as many text as possible.

Furthermore, from the official Human Interface Guidelines[1] for Apple products, it is stated that:

> Don’t use Notification Center to display error messages. Although users can launch your app from Notification Center, notifications don't provide a way for users to resolve a problem. If you need to display an error message or a message requiring some action, use an application-driven alert dialog. For example, if users need to be connected to the Internet in order to complete a task, you could inform users through an alert dialog with an action button labeled Turn WiFi On.

The screenshot provided by the reporter means he was doing some action which then triggered the problem. He was actively using the application, or at least, with a Thunderbird owned window being used. He could be creating a new mail message which was Thunderbird tried to save into the Drafts folder; he could be trying to delete all messages in that folder. Whatever the case was, a direct interaction with the application caused the alert to be triggered.

Take Firefox or any other browser, for example. Some times connectivity is off or some other times there is an unresponsive server. Browsers don't show a notification. They show an error page, instead.

I am not a module owner neither a peer, so I suggest taking following actions:

1. Close this bug as WONTFIX
2. When such kind of problems appear, show a sheet or some other application owned UI.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/NotificationCenter.html

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

see comment 1

Comment 3

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

The macOS system notifications have only a limited size. Unfortunately we don't have macOS developer which could help to show a sheet.