The first that I noticed that orange icon in the bottom right corner is too bright, and users always will focus on it and clicking "Mark All As Read" will become commonplace action. For example, I am not so interested in news but I don't want to see such bright element.
So you (just) propose to have a less orange-ish icon, correct?
Another thing, I prefer to separate categories: Updates/Marketplace/Planet. Updates category is the most interesting for users. They will see something like "EGit new release", or "JDT new functionality available" in the menu. And after clicking on it, the additional dialog will be opened with details about update and magic button "Install Update“.
I’m not quite sure we have the same understanding of the News Feeds feature. It’s basically an RSS news feed reader specialized to display entries inside the Eclipse IDE.
However, I can imagine to look for some predefined tags in an RSS article like eclipse-plugin-update. Every news entry then could be displayed in a separate category as well.
Would that match your expectation?
I like your idea about notification popup with new updates, but it should be implemented carefully. The dialog should contain such buttons as "Skip", "Install", "Remind Later“.
I think you expect more than I have in mind. Especially the Install button is something I never had in mind. The popup only occurs when a new *article* is available in an RSS feed. There is no such thing like install, remind me handlers etc. for an rss item.
I’m also not sure whether I like the notification popup. It’s an experiment...
The interval between updates notifications (not news) shouldn't be less than 1-2 days. And if user skips some update, he shouldn't see it again.
Each feed has a polling interval configured:
Every extension point contribution can decide itself how often it should be polled.
