GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 658954
connectivity lost?
Last modified: 2011-09-16 17:58:28 UTC
Created attachment 196400 [details] screenshot Soon after an install I noticed I kept getting "Connectivity Lost" messages. Which were really annoying especially since I hadn't yet signed into my wireless router.
Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been reported into our bug tracking system, but please feel free to report any further bugs you find. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 658049 ***
This isn't a dup because the other bug is different. What is the point of these notifications? We didn't show these by default in GNOME 2 either. If you are in chat I think it makes sense to show that you have gone offline directly there. If you can't load a webpage it makes sense to show it and offer a solution there. If the user status changes as a result it may make sense to show "..." reconnecting in either the network indicator or the user status indicator or both. If the credentials are incorrect I think it makes sense to show that as a message and offer to go to the Online accounts settings on click. As implemented right now I think this is just annoying.
I think it can be useful if 1) You expect IM contacts to be able to talk to you, or you're waiting for somebody to contact you. 2) You want to get notified about new mail. 3) You're downloading a torrent in the background (or anything using the net). In those cases, you might not be using the relevant applications when the network disconnects, but it might still be interesting to know that you're disconnected. Else, you might miss an important mail you're waiting for while writing a paper.
(In reply to comment #2) > We didn't show these by default in GNOME 2 either. I may be wrong, but I think we did (with a "Do not show this again" or something button to shut them off).
I don't think any of those reasons are good enough to pester the user about what they very likely already know. Also, I don't think notifications like this that don't have anything you can do about them are particularly interesting. When do you go offline? I think most of the time you are probably moving around. I expect the system to either reconnect on its own or not. If some app requires network and it doesn't have it then that app should notify you if it is important enough. If not then it should just quietly wait for the network to reappear. I consider it really odd to notify me using a popup that I've removed the wire from my computer or I've moved location. The moved location and only unknown but strong wifi access points are available is a separate design problem that needs a more sophisticated and useful prompt. This one is just annoying and doesn't help me solve the problem whatsoever.
Do you expect a desktop-like system to notify you this way when you unplug it? No. Do you expect a mobile device to popup like this when you move around? No. Is there any prior art for this outside of GNOME?
(In reply to comment #6) > Is there any prior art for this outside of GNOME? I wouldn't be surprised if KDE did something like that as well /me ducks
Created attachment 196628 [details] [review] network: Don't notify on connection lost The design is for applications to do this, basically. Web browsers, Evolution, Empathy already display something on network status change. Note though we need an application API in GIO to monitor network state; see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=620932
Looks fine to me.
Review of attachment 196628 [details] [review]: Looks good.
Attachment 196628 [details] pushed as f65826b - network: Don't notify on connection lost