Idea: File Operation Indicator
Disclaimer: I’m not a member of the Ayatana team. I’m not affiliated with Canonical. I cannot guarantee that they’ll ever find this idea interesting enough to implement, or even read this thing.
Indicators are becoming more and more common with each Ubuntu release, as a part of the desktop notification mechanism, and a way to group alike applications running in the background. This is an idea of what I think could make a good generic indicator: file operations.
On today’s desktop, there are many applications doing file transfer in the background. Nautilus already uses an indicator for its file copy operations, but it’s specific to Nautilus. Other applications—web browsers, P2P clients, FTP clients, download managers—usually display progress in their main window, without a way to see the progress without switching to the application.
So, why not have a single menu where applications can add their entries when file operations are in progress? It can include information on the percentage completed, and maybe provide buttons to cancel and (if the application supports it) pause an operation. And an application whose sole purpose is to download files, like transmission or gwget, can live entirely in that indicator without cluttering the notification area with its own custom icon.
You mean this: http://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2010/SalomonSickert_Tasks ?