Limitations of Notifications for Java

Last revised: 11Feb2002 GLG

Limitations Common to All Implementations

CONUNDRUM: There's no way I can think of for a Java app to know whether it's in front or not. Or to detect transitions between in-front and not-in-front. This can make it difficult to know exactly when to rescind a Notification. If you have any ideas on how an app can detect this in pure Java, email me.

Limitations of the Mac OS Classic Implementation

LIMITATION: There is no way to distinguish how modal an alerting Notification will be. You could infer something from "os.version", but eventually I will probably have to add some capability to Notification.getCapabilities().

Limitations of the Mac OS X Implementation

LIMITATION: Mac OS X doesn't do icons or sounds. At all. Period. Even the XNotification class, which has the features, doesn't present the elements. I'm not sure whether this is a shortcoming of the Mac OS X Notification Manager, or whether it's simply that icons and sounds have been eliminated from the Mac OS X user-interaction palette.

To Greg's Home Page
To Greg's Software Page