Google__ The Missing Manual - Kevin Purdy [34]
NOTE
As this book went to press, Google announced they were changing the Google toolbar, so don’t be alarmed if it looks different on your screen than in these pages. To learn about the new design, watch the video here: http://tinyurl.com/googtoolbar
A panel drops down, showing your nine most recent Google+ notifications (or fewer, if you haven’t received many yet). If you have new notifications, they show up at the top and have a white background, while notifications you’ve seen before have a bluish-gray background. People’s profile pictures are on the left side of the panel, the notification messages are in the middle, and icons indicating the type of notification are on the right: a circle icon means someone added you to a circle, three list-like dots mean the notification relates to a post, and so on. There’s a “View all >>” link at the bottom of the panel, which takes you to your Notifications stream. But you know what’s even better? Click one of the notifications in the panel.
When you click, the panel changes to display detailed info about whatever it is you’re being notified about. Clicking a notification about being added to a circle, for example, displays slightly bigger profile pictures and “Add to circles” buttons so you can click someone’s name to view his profile or click the Add button to put him in one of your circles, no matter which Google page you’re looking at. (Clicking the Ignore link dismisses that notification so you won’t see this person the next time you click this box.) The Newer and Older links at the top-right of the panel let you advance through all your notifications, so you can skip from an added-to-circle one, over to one letting you know you’ve been tagged in a photo (Tagging Photos), and then to one about a +1 on your post. (The “Back to Notifications” link takes you back to the list you saw when you first opened this panel.) Pretty nifty, huh?
TIP
When you have the notifications panel open, you can navigate it using the same keyboard shortcuts that work in Google+. Tap J and K to move up and down the list of notifications (a tiny arrow on the left indicates which item you’ve selected), then hit O (that’s the letter o, not the number zero) or your space bar to display the details of that notification (think “O for open”). When you’re looking at a notification, J and K work just like the Newer and Older links, respectively, and pressing U brings you back to the main list of notifications.
When you view the details of a notification, the panel includes some reminders of how circles work—noting that you don’t have to add people to your circles even if they’ve put you in theirs, that they’ll only see stuff you share with them (meaning your public posts, posts where you specifically mention that person, and posts you share with them), and that people you’ve already added to your circles can now see items you post to “Your circles” or the circle you placed them in.
But wait, there’s more! When you get a notification about a comment or +1, you can interact with the post right in the notifications panel, no matter what Google page you’re on. You see the post that got a comment or +1, along with the comment or +1 itself. Click the “# comments” section to see all the comments, or click the number of +1s (“+4,” for example) to see who else +1’d the post. You can even comment on the post or mute it—even if just happened to be searching Google or checking your email when you clicked that little red or gray box.
The Notifications Stream
The Notifications stream is similar to the notifications panel, so it should look pretty familiar. You can get to this stream in several different ways.