Re: [Evolution] suggestion for evolution

[Matthew Barnes <mbarnes redhat com>]

On Tue, 2009-09-01 at 17:59 -0700, Jeff Barnes wrote:
> Since Linux may become more popular in the future to where nongeeks use
>  it I would like to suggest a slight improvement to Evolution email.
>
>  When the send/receive button gets greyed out it seems like there might
>  be a bug in the software when in reality it got switched to "work
>  offline" which is buried in the menu.
>
>  It would be a lot better if instead of greying out the "send/receive"
>  button if it switched to saying "work online"

The solution I have in mind for this is to display a highly noticeable
colored banner directly in the main window whenever Evolution starts in
or is placed in offline mode.  Something like:

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Evolution is currently working offline.      [Work Online] [Dismiss] |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+

Obviously we would use a different message if NetworkManager reports a
network outage.

I plan to use these banners to improve the way we report errors, much
like other several GNOME applications already do (GEdit, Evince, etc.).

I'm still thinking through the logistics and corner cases, but the
offline issue seems like an easy case to use for a proof of concept.

This is version 2.30 material at the earliest.

Matthew Barnes