What happened to the animated taskbar icons?

Question

I know that there are good reasons to abandon animated icons in a taskbar UI-wise. But good reasons never kept people from doing stupid stuff: So why are there no animated taskbar icons at all anymore? Postboxes that wave when they receive a new mail, IM icons that blink when there's a new message, browsers that show alters when something is happening on a website. The only animation there is - in the windows and os x world I know - is the (green) progress bar.

I'm pretty sure once upon a time there were lots and lots of animated taskbar icons. Does anyone have an explanation? Has someone patented this principle? Is there an historical reason? Or is it just that MS and Apple for example enforce a no-noise policy on system wide app displays (=icons)?

(and yes, I've seen Bringing Icons To Life)

Answer 1

I suppose it is more historically motivated reason, that there are less animated icons, than affected by guidlines or straightforward implications of system developers.

In modern popular systems the level of qualification required to do stuff is higher than it was in first times, and different de-facto standards and market reasons make it harder to make amateur and ugly solutions popular.

But almost every new interface ecosystem goes through "black shadows, blinking and animated icons" stage — for instance, it was much more popular in first Android apps than nowadays, and it is still popular in in-house business software, which is often not designed by UX-specialists (i.e. not affected by culture of development) and is made by rather amateur programmers from the beginning to end.

Answer 2

Animated interfaces still exist, they've just gotten more mature. A few examples:

• When an application in OS X needs your attention, it's icon jumps in the tray.
• An application that needs your attention in Windows will pulse its tray icon yellow (I think, I don't use Windows often).
• When a tab is loading in Firefox, the favicon in the tab turns into an orbiting electron.

Blink still exists, and I'm pretty sure if someone wanted an icon to do something in a taskbar, in their application, they could still program it as such. Apple, Microsoft, can't really stop an independent shop from doing that in their application.

It makes sense on its face, that designers get that people hate dancing icons in taskbars, and some/many/most/all designers dislike such elements themselves, so they stopped doing it. "A professional can make mistakes, they just shouldn't make the same mistake twice," is an apt platitude. New animations are more refined as a result of the trial and error of their work.