Feedback:User/Jarak/Taskbar Integration

Whilst quickly switching back and forth between a Firefox window and Guild Wars something caught my attention at the bottom of the screen; the Guild Wars taskbar icon was flashing because it had gained and lost focus very fast. This gave me an idea:

Currently when you recieve a message in Guild Wars while the game is minimised and your speakers are either muted, you are not paying attention, have music playing, or the mute Guild Wars in background option is checked, there is no way to know when you've recieved a whisper in-game.

On Windows 2000 and above, it is possible to make the taskbar icon for a program 'flash' to grab the user's attention, programs like Messenger use this for the same purpose - to get the user's attention when the window is minimised.

My idea is that, if you were to recieve a message whilst the game window was minimised, the taskbar icon could flash. To avoid the flashing becoming irritating, the game window should have to remain minimised for a set amount of time before this feature 'enables' itself; somewhere around 45 seconds would be good. The flashing could also be initiated by another significant in-game action such as:


 * Response to an in-game ticket.
 * Your chracter being attacked.
 * A dynamic event occurring 'around' your character (?)
 * A notification window appearing i.e. Disconnect...

It would be a bonus if the system were customisable so as to allow users to select which actions (if any) they wanted to be notified about; for example if a person is actively bidding on an auction, but also needs to minimise the game window (perhaps to bid on a 'real-life' auction, who knows?), they could set it so that if they are outbid on the in-game auction, the window would flash.

As a minor extra, in Windows 7 it is also possible to display a progress bar on the taskbar, this could be used to display the current completed percentage of an update. (depending on how patching etc. will work.)

It might be possible to include this feature in the current Guild Wars too.

Suggestions / Criticism welcomed :)