Refining the battery status menu

As I explained on Wednesday, we’re replacing Ubuntu’s notification area with a consistent set of menus. As part of that transition, we need to adapt system components that have previously been using the notification area.

One of the simplest of these belongs to Gnome Power Manager, and displays the charge status for the batteries in devices connected to your computer — the computer itself, any wireless mouse, phone, and so on.

In Ubuntu 10.04, Gnome Power Manager has already been patched to use a custom status menu (“application indicator”). So, probably, not much will change when it shuffles over to the system area. But we’re still interested in feedback on the design and any improvements we can make.

Once you’ve checked out the full battery status menu specification, we’d be glad to have your comments either here or on the Ayatana mailing list.