Here's a design for a Desktop App for the cloud service Projectplace. The app is released and live as we speak. The Desktop App shows notifications, recent used documents, shortcuts, people and the project feeds within the Projectplace service - without the need to open the browser.

 

The Desktop App resides in menu bar and has with semi-transparent alerts when new notifications arrives (see top right corner of the shot).

..and here's the compact mode of the Desktop App (it is responsive and has two states, this beeing the compact one). The vertical Menubar is now Icon only without text labels and the user avatar. The icon size is also smaller. In the list space has been saved by removing the "cards" and spacing that each notofication has in the "normal mode", now it's just a simple divider between the items. 

Side-by-side comparision of the two states.It's the same content in them.

And here's a sample of the "Recent Documents" view within the app.