Prism apps think I'm offline and no way to change it

[Kristoffer Lundén]

Binary package hint: prism

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=8.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=hardy
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu hardy (development branch)"

prism 0.8+svn20071115r8030-0ubuntu1

When using a 3G modem to connect to the internet, Network Manager does not understand what is happening. So apps like Firefox and Prism-based ones think I'm offline. In Firefox this is just a great annoyance, because it's possible to change (each-and-every-damn-time).

But in Prism-based apps, like prism-google-talk, I get this: "This document cannot be displayed while offline. To go online, uncheck Work Offline from the File menu." But there is no File menu...

[Fabien Tassin (fta)]

This is not in prism but in the underlying xulrunner-1.9 talking to network-manager through dbus. So moving to network-manager and marking invalid for prism.

[Brandan E. Lloyd (brandan)]

I think that this should also be fixed in xulrunner. If an error message is displayed that says "To go online, uncheck Work Offline from the File menu" then there should probably be a File menu to perform this action.

Also I can't use Prism Apps because I have disabled NetworkManager and configured my connection manually and now Prism can't find my connection even though I am posting this comment from the same box.

[glrossetti (rossetti-gl)]

This bug is walking his way here in Launchpad (see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/176911 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/147119 ), but a fix in Prism would be appreciated.

[mcrandello (mcrandello+launchpad)]

The error message instructs the user to use the file menu to put the application in "online mode" so that it will do something. In fact there is no file menu whatsoever and no discernible way to change the preferences. An application should never instruct a user to do something which they cannot possibly do, and that _is_ a bug.

Possible solutions:
-Add a button to either the error message or somewhere in the app* that allows them to do what the error message is telling them to do.
-Change the error message to tell the user that they need to contact the NM people to get their package fixed.
-Change the error message to tell the user that they should uninstall the app because it just ain't gonna work for them right now.

This is NOT entirely a problem with network manager, please reconsider. If anything else possibly a problem in Xulrunner.

*There is a context menu available in the otherwise empty window that currently has "select all" as the only enabled option. Perhaps putting a toggle to "online mode" in there would be a good idea since there is currently nothing to select.

[mcrandello (mcrandello+launchpad)]

P.S. for any frustrated users finding this via a web search to completely disable the network manager check (a definite upgrade) then do the following. First make sure that there are no prism windows open.Then edit a file in your home directory called prefs.js located here .prism/<string-of-chars>.default/prefs.js Note that <string-of-chars> will be a random string of characters different to each person.

At the bottom of this file add the following line:

user_pref("toolkit.networkmanager.disable", true);

save the file and then try it out. The only possible downside is that you will get an error if not actually connected. IMO this is preferable to getting one no matter what.

[Anthony T. Brown (brown-anthony-t)]

The easyest way to to completely disable the network manager check. would be torun the prism profile manager...
  $ prism --ProfileManager
Select the profile you what to change(usualy default) and set the url to about:config.
when prism loads search for "networkmanager". Toggle the toolkit.networkmanager.disable option to true and your done.

[Sasha (sasha3465)]

Well, disabling NM in my case wasn't sufficient. Prism still was in offline mode.

The easiest way for me was to run Prism, enter url about:config, and make shortcut on desktop. From there I could open preferences for Prism.

I changed:

toolkit.networkmanager.disable to true

but it was still in offline mode. To change it to online without access to menu I managed to copy setting from Firefox. You have to change (or add if You don't have one):

 browser.offline to false

That's it.