Standard Notifications

By default KDE’s notifications pop up from the “Notifications” widget, which is found in the panel next to the system tray. Whenever a system or application event occurs, the notification will briefly appear in a Plasma popup over this area. Once the popup disappears, you can click the icon at any time to see past notifications.

Notification Widget Settings

The notification widget has a few settings that can change the way it displays notifications for you. To reach the settings, right click on the widget icon and click “Notification Settings”. The first section labeled “Pop Up Notices” allows you to select some basic notification categories: “Application notifications” and “File transfers and other jobs”. The last setting labeled “Automatically hide” determines if notifications disappear after a short time.

Notification Configuration

More extensive KDE notifications are available in System Settings in the “Application and System Notifications” section. The first pane called “Manage Notifications” allows you to configure system and application notifications.

“Event source” refers to the system or application that will send the notification. The “State” column tells you which types of notifications are enabled for a particular event. KDE gives you five options for this:

1. Play a sound – Choose any supported audio file you want.
2. Show a message in a popup – the standard method
3. Log to a file – useful if you want to keep track of how often an event occurs
4. Mark taskbar entry – The taskbar will change colors to alert you of the event
5. Run command – With this you can enable more advanced responses to notifications. When a certain event finishes, it can spawn a program that starts another.

As an example, suppose you want to change the way KTorrent notifies you when a torrent has finished downloading to automatically start your video player. By default, it will only show a popup and possibly play a sound if the KDE sound system is enabled. To change this, do the following:

1. Click the dropdown menu next to “event source” and choose KTorrent
2. Choose the last event in the list “Torrent has finished downloading”
3. Check the “Run command” box
4. Type in the command /usr/bin/dragon (or whichever video player you use).

To change the way KDE plays system sounds, click the next tab labeled “Player Settings”. This allows you to adjust the volume, use an external player (such as “play” or “mplayer”), or disable audio output completely.

Other Notifications

One of the more annoying features that I have always disabled in KDE is the bouncing “busy cursor”. If you share my disdain for it, you can disable it by clicking the “Launch Feedback” button and choosing “No Busy Cursor” from the dropdown menu. In order to still get some type of notification when a program is launched or demands attention, leave “enable taskbar notification” enabled. The “startup indication timeout” option determines how long the notification stays in the taskbar even after a program fails to start.

KDE’s notification system can make use of the accessibility system bell to provide better notification for people who are not easily alerted by the standard notifications. Click the “System Bell” button and check “use system bell instead of system notification” to enable this feature.

Ultimate Flexibility

KDE now has the ability to interpret GTK notifications, resulting in better integration of KDE and non-KDE apps. The KDE nofitication system can be as active or as passive as you want. You can even detach a notification popup and move it to a different location. It provides the ultimate flexibility for all types of users.

Disable Default Notifications

Firstly, in order to avoid conflicting notifications it is prudent to disable Android’s default notifications.

To do this launch the Messaging app, click Menu > Settings and uncheck “Notification”. This will disable all SMS notifications, so you must re-enable this if you would like the default Messaging app to handle all your notifications.

Configuring SMS Popup

After launching SMS Popup, ensure that the “Enable SMS Popup” box is checked. This will ensure that whenever you receive a new SMS, a pop-up notification (customised to your liking) will appear.

Next, you can head into “Notification Settings” to customise the look and feel of the SMS pop-up box. These can be done for each individual contact or for all incoming messages. There are a number of options you can change here including the notification sound, the notification icon, vibration settings, LED settings, and whether or not you want a reminder of the notification.

You can further customise SMS Popup by clicking on “Additional Settings“. Here you can customise a number of options including:

• Button Configuration: This modifies the buttons that appear on the SMS pop-up box. You can choose to display a variety of buttons (max of 3) with different functions, including: close, delete (with or without confirmation), reply, quick reply, display inbox or text-to-speech (which has the phone read the message back to you).

• Quick Reply Options: This enables the quick reply function, allowing you to quickly enter preset messages immediately after you see a new message.

• Screen Control: This controls what happens to the screen when a new message is received. You can have the screen turn on for a new message or dim the pop-up screen (to save battery).

• Privacy Options: Here you can disable the pop-up from displaying certain information, to protect your privacy.

• Other Miscellaneous Options: This section has the option to mark messages as “read” when you close the message.

Finally, you can configure Preset Messages to appear in the quick reply list.

Message Display

Once you have completed setting up SMS Popup, new incoming SMS messages will pop-up a notification:

Here you have the option to “Close“, “Delete“, or “Reply” to the message. If you “Close” the message, it will also be marked as “read”. Deleting the message will permanently remove it from your phone and if you chose to reply to the message you will be presented with a number of other options.

Firstly, you can simply input your message into the text box. Secondly, you can reply to the message by using your voice (click on the mic icon). Thirdly, you can use your predefined messaging presets which you configured earlier (see above). Finally, once you are satisfied with your message, select “Send“.

These buttons are all configurable from the “Additional Settings” menu.

Conclusion

The beauty of SMS Popup is that it can be used solely for notification purposes, while at the same time you can use your default messaging app to reply to new messages. Simply ensure that your standard text messaging app has notifications enabled and SMS Popup does not mark messages as read or delete them. This app is a great example of what makes the Android platform so versatile; it fills a very small gap created by a lack of functionality in the Android’s default Messaging app.

Free: AppBrain | Market

Donation ($1.99): AppBrain | Market

Popup itself is not a annoying; it is how you use it that causes annoyance. If you control the frequency of the popup and show it only when you have an important message to tell your readers, then popup itself will be a useful tool.

I have been a strong believer in popup window as it has helped me to boost my sales, increase my subscriber base for countless time. However, when I look around WordPress plugin repository for popup plugin, there are only a limited few. So here I have created a popup plugin that is highly versatile and fully customizable – WordPress Popup Scheduler.

What it does?

This popup plugin is fully customizable and can be used for all kind of situation. As its name implies, this plugin allows you to schedule your popup to show as and when you like.

You can use it:

1. to thank your new visitor for reading your blog.
2. to welcome back your returned readers and invite them to subscribe to your feed
3. to make new announcement to your readers
4. to use during campaign to boost results

Scheduling of Popup

You can choose to display a popup:

• at all time
• when a new visitor visited your blog
• when your readers returned to your blog for the second, third of fourth time
• or for a specified period of time.

In addition, you can set it to show:

• on the home page only
• on visitor landing page
• or specify your own page

Customizable

You can also customize it to suit your blog theme. Things that you can customize include:

• Width of the popup
• background color
• popup headline
• popup message (with the ability to insert image)
• the animation effect of the popup

Popup effect

If you think that popup is too annoying for your readers, you can choose to display the popup as a message before (or after) your first post. Else, you can choose a the following animation effect:

• simple popup
• drop down
• fade in

Download the WordPress Popup Scheduler Plugin here.

The demo here

Current version: 1.2.5.2

Please check out the plugin support page for more detail
(Note: this plugin requires cookie and javascript to be enabled on your visitors browser.)