GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 224288
I want a different error dialog for connection/download failures
Last modified: 2006-01-09 01:26:30 UTC
Users on the users@ximian.com mailing list have complained about the following behavior: When left unattended to check mail every N minutes, Evolution will occasionally fail to connect due to some temporary timeout issue. Rather than trying again N minutes later, Evolution pops up a dialog and stops checkign altogether. They would prefer some way for it to try again later, since the problem is almost always temporary. Options: a) Evolution tries some number of times before displaying an error message b) Evolution displays an error message, but OK's it after some period of user non-response c) Evolution displays the message in the status bar d) Evolution displays the dialog box, but keeps checking later anyway (note: it should NOT create multiple dialog boxes for multiple failures; I think that the current behavior is a response to users complaining about having a hundred "Failed to connect" dialog boxes when they woke up in the morning).
Please look at Eudora's status and error handling. A tabbed display is provided for status messages. One tab displays server communication, and the other displays error messages. I believe this is an excellent way to provide a log of transactions and errors.
Another user (Glenn English) wrote in with: A modestly proposed option e) Evolution considers the loss of a network connection to be a legit change of state rather than an error, and simply tries for a while to re-establish the connection. The message display is not changed on loss of connection; it is updated after re-connect; and the display is cleared and Evo pops up the error dialog box if the re-connect fails.
See pages 165-167 of the Eudora users manual for pictures and an explanation of the task status window. User Manual (PDF, 4,306,793 bytes) http://www.eudora.com/download/eudora/windows/5.1/full_elec/Manual51.pdf
I'll let anna decide on the UI.
so evolution *does* keep trying over and over and over again. If the dialog of the error is up from a previous failure, it won't pop up a new dialog. so changing this bug report to read "I want a different error dialog for connection/download failures"
we are frozen for 1.2 so this ain't gonna happen this time around. maybe next time.
Jeff: How hard would a minimal dialog (eudora-style) as suggested above be? It seems to me to be the most simple, accurate, usable proposal mentioned. I don't even think we'd need the tabs mentioned above; it seems like one small window, with a running list of server messages (in black type) and error messages (in red type) would be both informative and unobtrusive. So if you think that is reasonably simple for you to implement, then that gets my vote. -A
still missing in evolution1.5-1.5.90.0.200407090432-0.snap.ximian.8.1 - this would be great since all those error messages (sometimes i get three pop-up windows by evolution) would get into one. i remember discussions about this on evo-hackers mailing list.
the proposal isn't really possible. lots of technical reasons why it isn't. i'd prefer the one in yam. all error messages go into one window which can be viewed like a log rather than popping up all the time. this is also technically easy to implement.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 247373 ***