Yes, Peter, you are correct and clear -- I understand the philosophy of Growl and appreciate it as well as its discreetness, together with the user's options on HOW to use Growl.
As mentioned earlier, my app mainly used "balloon notifications" in Windows, as a more discreet method to remind/inform. I am grateful Growl exists for Mac, so I could implement my tool over Xcode without too much hassle. My tool is a calendar reminder, checking for "name-days" and other important celebrations (local/religious). Once you run it, it checks on a 24h basis (if the computer is powered-on that time). I implemented two options, use Growl and/or a plain system alert/ message. I personally find Growl nicer, easier to handle (prefs) and non-obtrusive. So in a way, I select how I want my notifications (again, once per calendar day). This, I believe, is in accordance with the Growl philosophy, but my tool probably should be categorised more like "HardwareGrowler", as it would be nice if the user installed Growl already. Anyway, I am sure you got the idea. Thank you, nevertheless, for your points and taking the time to reply! Konstantinos P.S. I think by rephrasing my question, you made more sense! I hope you won't reply to me, in a possible future questions, with such "rephrases" as did the greek philosopher Plato or Aristotle :-) On Mar 2, 7:32 pm, Peter Hosey <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mar 2, 2011, at 09:20:01, Konstantinos wrote: > > > if ([GrowlApplicationBridge isGrowlInstalled] == NO) > > { > > NSAlert *warnCalendar = [NSAlert alertWithMessageText: > > [[NSRunningApplication currentApplication] localizedName] > > defaultButton: @"Exit" alternateButton: nil otherButton: nil: > > informativeTextWithFormat: @""]; > > [warnCalendar setAlertStyle:NSCriticalAlertStyle]; > > [warnCalendar setInformativeText: @"Growl framework was not found > > on your system! Please install Growl frist fromwww.growl.info!"]; > > You should not show an alert if Growl is not installed. If a notification is > essential for the user to see, use an alert instead of the notification. > > Remember that the user: > > - May not want Growl > - Can turn Growl off > - Can kill the Growl background process > - Can disable your application's notifications > - Can disable any specific notification > - May be using a non-visual display such as Speech, SMS, or MailMe > > Notifications should be optional. The user should be slightly inconvenienced > (by having to find out by other means) for missing a notification, not have > their day/use of your application ruined. > > If what you have to tell the user is something they *need* to know, it should > be in a dialog box or alert, not a notification. > > The only time such an alert might be warranted is if your application exists > solely to send Growl notifications. HardwareGrowler is an example of this. > Even then, I'd say that that information belongs on your product web-page/App > Store listing, not (or at least not just) in an alert. (And no, I don't know > whether such an app would be accepted into the App Store.) > > Also, you should use NSLocalizedString for any string you have in code that > you display to the user. This includes alert messages and button titles. > > > I cannot see it clearly... if Growl was not loaded by the application (as > > per [growlBundle load] code sample in the developers documentation) can it > > still execute [GrowlApplicationBridge isGrowlInstalled] ? > > The answer to your question is revealed by rephrasing it: > > “If I failed to load the Growl framework, can I still use classes in the > Growl framework?” -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Growl Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/growldiscuss?hl=en.
