Comment 3 for bug 763266

Hi Raoul, in relation to your first comment, I don't think changing your status to go online should also bring up your Contact List. Going online is something you do to make yourself Contactable but it doesn't necessarily mean you want to Contact somebody. I think they should be two different options.

I also think that the Change Status options should be both visible and enabled even when Empathy is not running. Currently, when I boot Ubuntu the options are visible but disabled. Now, I know that I must launch Empathy to get those working, but as a new user (l've been using Ubuntu for just a year) I had no idea that Empathy was in any way related to those options in the Me Menu and no idea how to enable them.

To sum up, I do agree with you when you say go online should trigger Empathy to start if it hasn't been started already, but I think it should start in the background and not show the Contact List.

The Change Status issue has been discussed and thought out on in detail in an old Bug Report 452067, but that report has been, in my opinion, incorrectly marked as a duplicate of a different bug which has already been fixed in Natty. It has therefore been forgotten. so I've commented on it to get it revived but I have had no luck yet. Please also comment on that bug if you have the time and you agree! :)

As for your second comment, I had no idea that there was a Chat option in the MessagingMenu! :D I don't use an email client so I had never thought to look there, but yes I agree with you and it doesn't make much sense that the Chat Statuses and the Chat option are in separate menus! Since this "Chat" option actually launches the the Contact List, it somewhat diminishes the importance of my bug report [it is now a minor usability issue which would take a big redesign to really fix]