Notifications on Android

by Volker Weber

androidnotifications1

Android, other than the iPhone, lets you run stuff in the background. And these applications need a way to notify you of things happening. New chat messages, new mail etc. For that, Android has a notification area in the upper left corner of the screen. You can then pull down that first line and expose what the notifications are:

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From the notification screen you can then jump directly to the application that has notified you, or you simple delete all notifications if you want to look at the apps later. Here I am jumping directly into GoogleTalk:

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Most applications that use the notifications lets you set what events you want to know about. It's one of the real nice touches in Android.

Comments

As a developer I wish that in the future I would be able to put buttons into the notifications.
E.g.:
"Your friend George W. Bush want's to know your location:
[ Accept ] [ Deny ] [ Fake it: I am in an undisclosed cave ]"

This way you could skip the step to click on the notification to open the app and then answer the actual question from there.

Yes, this might be abused, but let the Android Market take care of apps that do that.

Mariano Kamp, 2009-06-03

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