GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 244655
Pointless auto-raised error messages should not exist
Last modified: 2006-01-26 00:46:26 UTC
Description of Problem: With a flaky internet connection, there are often intermittent TCP/IP errors -- "Connection reset by peer" etc. Evolution reports these errors by a dialog box with the error message and "ok", and raises the window to the front-middle of the current workspace. If the user is currently typing away at something the dialog box might pop up for a quarter of a second then be dismissed by the user happening to hit "space" so he/she misses the message completely. If not, the user is treated to a fairly meaningless error message in an ugly top-level dialog that doesn't need to be there. Steps to reproduce the problem: 1. Acquire a flaky internet connection. 2. Tell Evolution to automatically check for new mail ever X minutes 3. Wait Actual Results: Nasty error messages. Expected Results: 1. Important error messages are not automatically raised to the top-front of the current workspace -- they stay with evolution and another means of getting attention is used. 2. Less important, transient error messages are maybe temporarily recorded as part of the Evolution UI, but they don't affect normal operation of the program -- in this case, if the "connection is reset by peer", Evolution should handle that gracefully, then try to reconnect. How often does this happen? For me, 10+ times a day, but that would depend on how awful your 'net connection is. Additional Information: For better UI examples, refer to OS X's handling of application's error messages. The dock flashes, but nothing will interrupt the user if he/she is currently typing in another application.
its your window manager raising the errors, my window manager just pops them up quietly. but fwiw we plan to change the way errors are presented/logged.
99% of the time these mesages appear, it is the result of the main interface going down (the other 1% or less from bad server responses). I can't think of a reason I would want to use my MUA to monitor my net connection. This is especially irritating on my laptop, since these messages *always* appear when it comes out of suspend. Futhermore, multiple messages per mail server are thrown. Personally, I use two. I know people who sync mail from up to ten mail servers at a time. Popping 30 dialog boxes for an error condition that is inevitable under normal conditions is dumb. There should be an option to supress, or demote to strings in the notification area, these messages when the user activates periodic POP or IMAP transactions. Or better yet, just pop one message when it can't connect after several scheduled attempts ("I haven't been able to connect to the following mail servers in a while: XXXXX.") Once one such dialog is up, no more should be displayed.
Should be part of a plan to make error reporting much better
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 247373 ***