Read this if your package includes a status notifier / system tray icon

[drago01]

On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 11:44 PM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
> Matthias Clasen wrote:
>> Of course, you can also just stop using status icons and instead inform
>> the user with notifications when something requires his immediate
>> attention. That will work under any desktop.
>
> I should also warn that while notifications (Galago spec [1]) will *work* on
> most desktop environments, where "work" is defined as "display *something*",
> the result is not necessarily what you expect. Implementations of the
> notification spec vary widely between the desktop environments, both in
> terms of features and in terms of look&feel. In particular:
>
> 1. Many features are optional:
> http://www.galago-project.org/specs/notification/0.9/x408.html#command-get-capabilities
> and not supported by all implementations. In particular, some
> implementations (e.g. Plasma) allow action buttons/links on notifications,
> others (like, AFAIK, GNOME Shell and Unity) don't. So if you rely on actions
> on the notification, be warned that your program will not work properly
> everywhere. [...]

Not sure about Unity but they work fine in GNOME.

But anyway the "D-Bus-based status notifier protocol" does not mandate
anything about how things should be presented to the user at all,
so if you want "the exact same user experience" you can't recommend them either.

If I recall correctly this vague spec was the primary reason for lack
of adoption in GNOME not because it is "buggy".