Reduce number of notifications

[isidorn]

Hi VS Code dev here 👋

Open a Python file, notice the Python Interpreeter notification poping up immediatly:
I find this behavior obtrusive because:

• do we have to notify the user about the interpreter right away? Is there a smarter time to show this notification. Suggestion: only show this when the user cares about interpreting code (running a task, or starting debugging)
• there is already a status bar item for this, can we make the status bar more clear as to what it does so the notification is not needed. Suggestion: use hover message to clarify what it does (hopefully this can be contributed)
• the notification just keeps coming back until I click "Got It". Suggestion: if the user ever clicks on the status bar or changes the interpeter stop showing the notification

Idealy this notificaiton would not be shown at all, however if you disagree I believe that my suggestions from above can help with the bad user experience. Thanks

I would also suggest that you go through all your usages of notifications and try to minimize them, as they should usually be used as a last resort if there is no other way to convey a message to the user.

fyi @DonJayamanne @qubitron

[isidorn]

I started debugging for the first time and I got this notification:

I suggest to reduce the spam to users. Get users for surveys using twitter or just talke to them on GitHub do not use notifications.
If you have to use notifications please only ask after I have done at least 10 debugging seassons, this way my first experience is ruined.

[isidorn]

Also this should be shown when the user opens the test viewlet, not on startup
The test viewlet is empty and has enough space for spam like this

What happens on startup for me (I do not have everything configured but still):

[luabud]

Hey there again :) we're re-designing the notification prompts to reduce the amount of them being displayed, and this will be addressed there. Closing in favour of #7700.

[isidorn]

I still believe that this issue holds additional ideas and approaches compared to #7700.
#7700 feels like a subset and only talks about not showing multiple notifications at once.
This issue is more about reducing the overal number of notificats. While solving #7700 would help here, it would definenetly not solve all the issues.

[DonJayamanne]

I agree, we might want to list each notification and possible suggestions for each, to ensure we do not miss/lose the suggestions.
We could move this discussion into that dup issue.

E.g. Suggestions for status bar prompts, testing can be copied over, else we could lose these valuable suggestions.

[luabud]

Sorry @isidorn, I didn't mean that we wouldn't consider your input in this issue - on the contrary, we always try to look into the related closed issues to make sure we're not missing anything. But Don made a good point that it's better to add the discussion to the other issue to make sure we won't overlook anything, so I've copied all of your comments there.

[isidorn]

Great, thanks a lot!