Firefox does not use Ubuntu Notifications

[theghost]

Binary package hint: firefox

On Natty default install, Firefox displays a notification when a download is finished. Unfortunately it uses it's own notfication system instead of the Ubuntu Notification System.

On Maverick you could use xul-ext-notfiy for notifications via notify-osd but in Natty this package is not available anymore.

Please provide a way to use Ubuntu's nice notifications with Firefox 4 in Natty and make it as default install too, because of consistency.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

We don't support third party extensions, so you need to talk to the developers of xul-ext-notify if you want it to work in Firefox 4. In any case, Firefox already supports libnotify notifications, but it falls back to its own XUL notifications on Ubuntu because notify-osd doesn't support actions. Overriding this would provide an even more sub-optimal experience ("download finished" notifications with no obvious way to access those downloads are completely useless), so it's totally the wrong thing to do.

What should happen is that download progress should be integrated with the launcher in Unity, but that's not for the natty timeframe.

[Danillo (danillo)]

I think that this could be reconsidered.

Ok, xul-ext-notify is a third party extension, but it brought a small but very interesting way to further integrate Firefox with Ubuntu. Since this project looks abandoned, wouldn't it be important for the Ubuntu team to try to bring this functionality back by some other way, without depending on a third party?

And I have to disagree that a non-interactive notification is useless. This is merely an opinion. I usually have several simultaneous downloads and I don't look at their files until much later, so I never click at the "download finished" native notification. This interactivity is useless for me. A simple notify-OSD would be much more pleasant and less distracting for me.

[zpletan (zpletan)]

I also desire to see this integration. The default XUL notification does not fit in with Ubuntu's general polish. Perhaps this doesn't fit in with the Natty (now Oneiric) timeline, but it seems like @chrisccoulson has noted that something does need to happen. Can we rework this bug to fit what needs to happen, or is there another bug already describing it? Thunderbird, I understand, has received some love in this regard, but Firefox needs a little bit of help too.

I would agree that a non-interactive notification without a way to get to the file downloaded is generally useless in some general-user contexts (though not in others, such as @danillo's use, or mine for that matter). Still, messaging menu integration—I assume this would be the proper place to put the other half of what is needed—cannot be that hard, can it? Someone made Thunderbird do it.

In addition, the issue here is not third-party plugins, but functionality. OP didn't ask specifically for xul-ext-notify, but for integration with Ubuntu's mechanisms for displaying notifications to the user. This could very easily, I think (in my ignorance of how it all works), be simply put into Ubuntu's xul-ext-ubufox plugin, or added as another if desired. Again, I understand that similar work has been done on Thunderbird.

I'm changing the status from Invalid to Confirmed, since this is a) past Natty, as mentioned by @chrisccoulson; and b) more or less confirmed, as I understand Launchpad bug tracking, by both @danillo and now I. Apologies in advance if this is not the right thing to do.

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad (joerlend.schinstad-deactivatedaccount)]

I don't think Chris Coulsons comment is valid anymore. In Precise, we now display downloads in the dash first page. So a non-actionable notification would do just fine. When you see the "download complete" notification bubble, you'll just press super and you'll see it there. It's no longer important that the notification itself must be clickable.

It might be nice if the number of completed downloads were also added to the message menu, but that's not as important, I think.

[Danillo (danillo)]

Jo-Erlend has a very good point. Unity's latest improvements made interactive notifications redundant.

Well, since in http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/xul-ext-notify we have the package's source code, I guess all we need is to find someone who can update it. Any volunteers? =)

By the way, yesterday I got a Notify-OSD notification instead of the default Firefox one. I thought it was integrated with the update to Firefox 11, but today I'm getting the regular notifications again. I have absolutely no clue what happened.

[Danillo (danillo)]

I just got the Notify-OSD bubble again, now with Firefox 12.0! This time I was able to print the screen. See in attached.