GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 656097
Empathy should show an informative text inside the contact list when no contacts are online
Last modified: 2012-08-20 16:05:35 UTC
Currently, when none of your contacts are online, Empathy shows an empty contact list. I can tell from experience that this is somehow confusing to some users, who either don't understand why the contact list is empty or even wonder what is that empty rectangle, since there's no indication that it is a contact list (this happens if none of their contacts are online when they try Empathy for the first time). I think the contact list should display some sort of informative text, telling the user that there are no online contacts at the moment, rather than showing just an empty space. A message should be displayed in the contact list as well if the user haven't configured any account yet or if all of them are deactivated.
Agreed. There are different cases to consider: - online, no online contact but offline contacts - online, no online contact and no offline contacts - offline, no account configured or enabled We should probably add some buttons to display offline contacts or open the accounts dialog as well.
We could display something when all the accounts are connecting as well.
I've added designs to cover all of this to the latest wireframes at : http://nickr.org/linux/wireframes/empathy-video-chat-wireframes.pdf it's pages 21-23 of the 22nd August 2011 version.
We are past UI freeze so that probably won't make it for 3.2.
We're doing something similar in GNOME Contacts. This is the current design: https://github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/raw/master/contacts/png/no-contacts.png This is almost identical to Nick's wireframes. The key thing is to have a button that provides access to the account settings.
http://nickr.org/linux/wireframes/empathy-wireframes.pdf is the latest
(In reply to comment #6) > http://nickr.org/linux/wireframes/empathy-wireframes.pdf is the latest Page 35 does the "loading state" also apply when connecting accounts? There are 2 cases here: - Empathy starts and needs to connect accounts - Empathy starts and accounts are already connected. Unfortunatelly, it still takes a bunch of time to fetch all the contacts.
Created attachment 206643 [details] [review] make code displaying the 'no match found' page more generic
Created attachment 206644 [details] [review] add generic contact icon and account settings button to the message page
Created attachment 206645 [details] [review] display a specific message if no account is configured
Created attachment 206646 [details] [review] display a message if accounts need to be enabled
Those patches implement the first screen from the mockups: no account and no account enabled.
Looks all good, +1
Attachment 206643 [details] pushed as c1adae1 - make code displaying the 'no match found' page more generic Attachment 206644 [details] pushed as 808aab1 - add generic contact icon and account settings button to the message page Attachment 206645 [details] pushed as df8e44c - display a specific message if no account is configured Attachment 206646 [details] pushed as 42993a4 - display a message if accounts need to be enabled
Created attachment 206879 [details] [review] individual-manager: add API to know when contacts have been loaded from folks
Created attachment 206880 [details] [review] Display a spinner while loading contacts from Folks
The loading state should ideally be shown at *any* time that contacts are being loaded (i.e. it's at the bottom of the list and if you have a load of accounts online it'll be off the screen - that's by design).
Attachment 206879 [details] pushed as 6ef0203 - individual-manager: add API to know when contacts have been loaded from folks Attachment 206880 [details] pushed as c2e2697 - Display a spinner while loading contacts from Folks
I opened bug #670044 for the remaining bits.
To fix bug #658858 I tested what happens if I have only offline contacts. Unfortunately the roster is shown empty with no message. That case should have been covered by this bug (or it regressed?).
(In reply to comment #20) > To fix bug #658858 I tested what happens if I have only offline contacts. > Unfortunately the roster is shown empty with no message. > > That case should have been covered by this bug (or it regressed?). fixed with commit 547c7e8d49b1e7a6ce0c77fc2b002c64f02fb1d5
Fantastic, thanks Xavier!