On Dec 17, 2010, at 10:58 PM, Christopher Forsythe wrote: > On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 10:35 AM, Peter Hosey <[email protected]> wrote: >> I've just tested it, and: >> >> 1. It still installs Growl without asking for permission. (We knew this >> would happen, since the Dropbox developers have said on multiple times that >> they don't want to ask non-technical users for permission to install >> anything.) >> 2. They have fixed it reinstalling after you uninstall. >> 3. It still installs Growl 1.2, not 1.2.1. >> 4. It installs Growl 1.2 even if you already have Growl 1.2.1. (This is a >> new bug in 1.0, if I remember 0.7's behavior correctly.) >> 5. It is a custom-built Growl 1.2, though I can't tell whether there are any >> Dropbox modifications to it (e.g., disabling other apps by default). The >> “Growl for Dropbox” branding is gone; to the user, it looks the same as our >> release. GrowlHelperApp's size is different, but I couldn't say why. >> > > > I've been in communication with the Dropbox developers. Essentially in > the next version after 1.0, they're going to make us all happy. > They'll stop shipping Growl itself. > > There was a misunderstanding between our two groups (Growl team and > Dropbox team) in that they didn't understand the problem we were > seeing, and interpretted it as another problem. It's not worth going > into this further, just needless to say I think they would have > resolved this for us much sooner if they had understood the problem > how we understood it. > > So the quickest thing they could do with 1.0 and still ship it on time > was to revert their intended changes, and then in the next version to > release without an installing Growl. They're hoping to have that > version out soon. > > This is great news for us, and great news for Dropbox users. Hopefully > very soon we won't have to worry about this anymore.
It's really not great news as described, because now Dropbox notifications will compete with and potentially overlap Growl notifications. Shipping any notification system that isn't Growl and is used if Growl is installed should be considered a bug. Dropbox considers unobtrusive notifications a *must* for their app - this makes sense, as it has no other UI besides the prefs and a menu item. The correct solution for them is therefore to have a simple notification system implemented within their app and to utilize Growl instead if it is installed. They could even use the Growl code directly within their app to provide notifications if Growl isn't installed - a large amount of code for a small problem, perhaps, but one which would require less engineering effort. -Evan -- 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.
