476696 - Activity Manager: Poptarts

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[David Ascher (:davida)]

We need something like the poptarts that the Weave add-on uses to indicate activity-manager type events that require user interaction.

Comment 1

[David Ascher (:davida)]

I'm looking at this.

Comment 2

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Calendar would benefit from this too: If a calendar has N items that failed to parse, then the user might might want to know this. Adding N failure messages to the activity manager is not a good idea, so maybe poptarts can solve this problem.

Comment 3

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Just to clarify.  poptarts are designed to only be used for errors that require user input.  Alert style errors are meant to go into the Activity Manager.  Password required is an example of a poptart because it requires the user to enter their password in order to continue but we want to avoid the modal dialog that prevents other actions.  Errors that could be from multiple causes aren't good candidates for poptarts as you're just requiring the user to acknowledge that a failure occurred, something that they'll have to do anyway.

In the Activity Manager you can use a single process for calendar sync that has multiple calendars being sync'd within it.  This is exactly how the IMAP process works in the Activity Manager with multiple folders running inside an account process.  Then when all calendars fail because of a network error you have a single place to restart them.  Likewise if a single calendar failed it's error would remain until it fixed itself.

Comment 4

[David :Bienvenu]

Hmm, I think there are a class of errors that are too severe to hide in the activity manager, unless we have some way of opening it by default - if I press get new mail, and the server fails for some reason, I think we need to do more than add a line to the activity manager. Maybe poptarts aren't the answer here, but I think for things the user initiated, we should give more feedback than the activity manager.

Comment 5

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Attachment: Probably out-of-date, very incomplete WIP patch

Comment 6

[David Ascher (:davida)]

We've decided to not make poptarts per-se blocking TB3, but instead to focus on specific interactions, for which pop-tarts may become a way to solve them, but not necessarily.

Comment 8

[Rimas Kudelis [use needinfo to ping]]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Hmm, I think there are a class of errors that are too severe to hide in the
> activity manager, unless we have some way of opening it by default - if I press
> get new mail, and the server fails for some reason, I think we need to do more
> than add a line to the activity manager. Maybe poptarts aren't the answer here,
> but I think for things the user initiated, we should give more feedback than
> the activity manager.

I fully agree David. If user has pressed a Check mail button, for example, and a password is required to fullfill this action, a modal dialog is OK here I think.

But for automatic stuff I'd would suggest to use a bar like notification bar in IE and Firefox (like here: http://www.melez.com/mykzilla/uploaded_images/save-password-bar-734207.png). I don't think I would notice a password request in the status bar at all...

Comment 9

[Rimas Kudelis [use needinfo to ping]]

Attachment: mockup

Here's what I meant by comment #8. It could at least be implemented until poptarts are implemented.

Comment 10

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Created an attachment (id=379674) [details]
> An example
> 
> Here's what I meant by comment #8. It could at least be implemented until
> poptarts are implemented.

IMO Doing the work for that would equate to about the same amount of work as for poptarts.

Comment 11

[David Ascher (:davida)]

"if I press get new mail, and the server fails for some reason, I think we need to do more than add a line to the activity manager."

One idea that bryan and i were talking about was to indicate something being wrong w/ the account both in the folder pane, and in the folder summary view (still to land).

Comment 12

[Rimas Kudelis [use needinfo to ping]]

(In reply to comment #10)
> (In reply to comment #9)
> > Created an attachment (id=379674) [details] [details]
> > An example
> > 
> > Here's what I meant by comment #8. It could at least be implemented until
> > poptarts are implemented.
> 
> IMO Doing the work for that would equate to about the same amount of work as
> for poptarts.

It could be reduced to just the message and login/dismiss buttons, if that would make things easier to implement.

It could also be moved to the message list pane (not sure if that's the same as folder summary view or not), if that's easier to implement and some indication would be present in the folder pane too.

Comment 13

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to comment #12)
> It could be reduced to just the message and login/dismiss buttons, if that
> would make things easier to implement.

Sorry, I should be more explicit. There are two parts to this work:

1) Implement a new UI for entering passwords - relatively simple once a UI is agreed.
2) Allow password prompts (and potentially others) to be async - this is the complex bit as our current backends rely on the modal dialogs to make them "wait" whilst we get input from the user.

Comment 14

[JJM]

Don't forget to add a function to have a button that does: "reconnect and download messages from server which just refused connections". :)