Toast notifications need improving. Next time you get a text, instead of clicking the toast notification, just follow the normal path to go your inbox and that conversation. If you do it in a reasonable amount of time, you'll still see the notification at the top of the screen notifying you about the conversation you're currently reading! You can even click the notification at the top and the screen will do an animation and take you to the exact same page!
Obviously going to the conversation (in any way) should dismiss the notification.
Poor programming.
Agreed. Although I don't think that dismissing a toast should change the live tile. A lot of times, I'll dismiss a toast from the lock screen and forget about it, only to be reminded by the live tile that there's something there.
Anyway, here's my idea of how toasts should work:
1. Toast arrives, pops up as usual. The background opacity is 100% and is the color of the tiles, just as it is now. This lasts for 5 sec.
2. After 5 sec, the opacity drops to a fraction, say 50% or lower, so that the battery meter, etc. can be seen. However, the toast persists and is mostly legible.
3. Touching the toast in this "dormant" state reactivates it, making opacity 100% and allowing it to be read. This reactivated state again last for 5 sec until it becomes dormant again.
4. At any time (including the dormant state) a swipe dismisses the toast. The OS obviously can differentiate between a touch and a swipe, so touching a dormant toast reactivates it, swiping dismisses it immediately. However, dormant toasts can persist indefinitely without user dismissal.
5. Locking and unlocking the phone with a dormant toast in view reactivates it, so the toast is 100% opacity upon unlocking and the cycle starts again.
6. Multiple unread toasts are all handled the same way, with each swipe going to the next toast in the queue.
Thoughts? I think this would be a unique, elegant way to handle notifications and is completely keeping in character of the OS.
-R