GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 650460
Evolution should run in background
Last modified: 2011-05-26 10:41:06 UTC
Most of the time, Evolution's main window is only needed when a new email arrives. I think it could be useful to have evolution launch window-less to fetch new emails in the background. Then when a new email arrives, a tray icon should be displayed. Clicking on evolution's launcher or on the tray icon should then display the main window.
There is no tray in GNOME, only a notification area, hence you'd have no place to minimize it. In general running in the background is a task for a Mail Transfer Agent (like Sendmail), but not for a User Agent like Evolution. See also previous requests in this bugtracker.
Well, there might be not "try", but there is a notification area. I don't see why the main window could not be minimized to the notification area. Thunderbird does it optionally, banshee, rhythmbox and empathy do that too. More over, even if you don't want to abuse the notification area for that, a perfectly good solution would be to just minimize the main window instead of closing it.
You can minimize any window in GNOME... If you want to minimize the window to the notification area, see http://live.gnome.org/Evolution/FAQ#Can_I_minimize_the_Evolution_window_to_the_system_tray.3F . And yes, other applications in GNOME abuse that notification area, correct. :)
The problem with minimizing a window is that it still appears is the window list when it should really be out of the way. More over, the minimize button has been removed by default in GNOME 3. You can't remove the minimize button, and then ask normal users to minimize their application using the minimize button... that's a bit of a contradiction.
By the way, the fact that so many apps "abuse" the notification area for exactly the same reason just proves that the GNOME desktop lacks a functionality, or that the notification area should really be a tray.
Can you please re-open this bug? As I said, there is no "minimize" button anymore by default in GNOME3, so there really is no way of getting rid of the window apart from closing it, which would prevent you from receiving new emails.
It will not be implemented as it does not fit to GNOME's Interface Guidelines, hence it is a WONTFIX.
Waow, that's being stubborn! I'm asking for a perfectly harmless feature (already present in many applications), asked for by many other users (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=evolution+tray). I'm even giving perfectly valid arguments for it. I'm asking it in the right place (bugzilla), with the right tone, and I'm not even asking for it to be done, but just for my wish to be acknowledged... and it's just refused. Should I file a bug on "GNOME's Interface Guidelines"???
I'm re-reading my latest message and find it a bit rude. So, first of all, let me apologize for it. Now, for your information, I'm trying to help having some standardization of the way messaging apps work. So I wrote my opinion on bug 467829 about empathy's abuse of the notification area.