musescore / musescore/MuseScore

Replace "No note or rest selected" error dialogs with friendlier and less disruptive messaging UI

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feature request needs design UI
Dominant language
C++
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Description

Your idea

In several circumstances, we show error messages like "No note or rest selected". While they provide useful info/feedback, they are a bit disruptive.
We could solve this by presenting the same information in a more friendlier way. For example, Visual Studio Code presents not-immediately-blocking error messages in a popup in the bottom right corner:
Scherm­afbeelding 2024-11-24 om 15 33 36
I have been told that this design pattern is called a "toast".

We could make the message automatically disappear after 5 seconds unless the user moves their mouse over it, for example.

Additional considerations

  • there are cases where we should just fix the behaviour, besides fixing the message style. For example, it should almost never matter whether the user has created a "list selection" or "range selection".
  • there are cases where there is no feedback at all, for example for frames. In these cases, we should probably also show the same "toast" message.
Problem to be solved

The current dialog-style error messages scare the user and are a bit too disruptive.

Prior art

No response

Additional context

No response

Checklist
  • This request follows the guidelines for reporting issues
  • I have verified that this feature request has not been logged before, by searching the issue tracker for similar requests

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by searching for the exact “No note or rest selected” message and tracing the affected desktop UI paths, including cases with no feedback for frames. Done means replacing disruptive dialogs with a consistent, dismissible toast-style message and addressing the selection-behavior cases identified in the issue.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
design, desktop
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
42/100

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