(very quickly: i love workrave, use it on all my computers and have convinced
many of my friends to do so as well, congrats!)

i was wondering how you dev's would feel about possilbe adding a less obtrusive
warning that a break is about to take place... i dont like this little blinking
frowny window that pops up because i find it irritating and surprising, so i
have it disabled.  but that means that right now i'm usually in mid sentance on
some important email when the break window just popsup up without warning (in
fact, it just did), which is also less than good.  it occurred to me the other
day that what i'd really love would be a less intrusive 10 second warning that a
break is coming up so that i can finish my current thought and get mentally
ready to take the break.  if i'm not ready for the break, i find myself skipping
them too often so that i can finish my important thought, and hence my arm
starts to hurt towards the end of the day.

so here is my suggestion:

how about you simply blink the little sheep icon on the taskbar (on win) and
give that blinking the same functionality as the little lightbulb popup: if i
stop working the break kicks in, else it keeps blinking until it times out and
forces the break.

thanks again for all your hard work!

Our latest development build offers a taskbar embedable applet: it allows for
the status window to be displayed in your taskbar. The status bar has all sorts
of ways to notify the user of the current break status. For example, instead of
blinking, the micro-break timer would turn orange.

I am wondering if the functionality you are suggesting is really necessary,
provided that the above functionality shall be available in version 1.6.0. Could
you please download a nightly build
(http://workrave.org/download/snapshots/20040317/ is stable) and give this a try?

Also, I think we have to ask ourselves what the purpose of the sheep icon is,
now that the Windows version offers a taskbar embedable applet. I would not be
in favour of extending the functionality of the sheep icon. Perhaps it should
even be removed, in favour of the applet.

Some sheep-purposes I can think of:
- Provide quick access to an aesthetically looking menu (I don't like the applet
menu much)
- Provide a place of last resort: What if I disable both the applet and the
status window?

Though I must admit that during normal usage, the sheep is hidden by XP. Long
live "hide when not in use"

No additional feedback from user. Resolving as WONTFIX, because we really do
believe the taskbar applet obsoletes the need to extend the sheep icon
functionality.

my spam filter must have gotten the previous replies because i never saw them...
anyhow, i agree that the status bar thing would probably work for me... i'll try
out the nightly when I have a chance.  thanks!