Alternative names: notification balloon, alert pop-up, notification window, etc.
Notification popup is a small window that pops up when some event is triggered and there is a need to actively attract the user’s attention to it. Depending on the priority of event, the notification may behave and look differently. It is somehow similar to the native notifications at desktop OSes and in mobile devices, but may have specific additional features.
Elements of notification popup
Generally the notification popup contains the following elements:
- Icon that represents the priority or category of notification/alert.
- Title text of alert
- Optional brief description of alert
- Time of alert (absolute or relative)
- Go to the alert details button
- Acknowledge button
Alert visibility
Alert visibility may depend on the priority — for instance, low priority popups may disappear quickly, in several seconds, but the popups for the critical high priority alerts may be visible all the time until the user acknowledges them or the reason of the alert is resolved.
Notification vs toast
The main difference between toasts and notifications is that the first ones are typically a response that is connected to some recent user-triggered action (like the user requests to export the report) without leaving the context, but notifications are not related to user’s requests (or the waiting time between request and result is significant)