Friends offers no way to change notification settings

[Keith Drummond]

Ubuntu 13.04

There does not seem to be a way to change the notifications settings in friends. Normally there would be a panel drop down list to go into preferences in the previous Gwibber package. This seems to be gone now

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
Package: friends 0.1.3daily13.04.05-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-16.26-generic 3.8.5
Uname: Linux 3.8.0-16-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.9.2-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Apr 5 21:00:32 2013
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-03-10 (26 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Alpha amd64 (20130309)
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: friends
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Robert Bruce Park (robru)]

Yes, the UI for this is missing in the new app. There is a workaround though, if you want to turn off notifications you can run this command in the terminal:

gsettings set com.canonical.friends notifications none

[Keith Drummond (kd353)]

Like I have said on other bugs related to this application, Friends is for a UI not even considered for release just yet. This update to Gwibber should have been held until at least post-raring. Messed up a perfectly fine application.

[Robert Bruce Park (robru)]

I'm not sure what you mean by "not even considered for release just yet". If it wasn't released, Friends couldn't even run. The UI toolkit has landed in raring and we are strongly encouraging app developers to use it to make new apps for Ubuntu. It may have some rough edges, but non-LTS releases are specifically intended for testing these kinds of new things, so that we can get them into good shape for the next LTS release, which will be 14.04. We appreciate that you've identified these issues for us, but it's not helpful to say that this is premature or should have been held back: 13.04 and 13.10 are specifically for testing these things and getting the feedback. As I mentioned on the other bug, if you don't want to participate in testing things that may not be perfect, you should be using the most recent LTS instead.

Yes, the new Friends app is missing some features that old Gwibber had. They will be reimplemented sooner or later (definitely before the next LTS).

[Keith Drummond (kd353)]

To clarify, there is no release date for Ubuntu Touch. It is currently just a developer preview. I appreciate that development has begun and that the interim releases are for this purpose (and all I have used since coming to Ubuntu in '07), however the Friends App has replaced Gwibber at the Beta2 stage and some time after the feature freeze. Friends is not Gwibber, not in terms of functionality or even usage. To that end Gwibber should not have been removed for an early development release of a new app being built for a UI that is itself still only in early development. I am sure devs are being encouraged to embrace the new UI, but I think this is jumping the gun. Friends offers no benefits over Gwibber right now, I do not expect perfect, Gwibber never was but I found it very useful tool. If it was even the intent to bring Friends up to the Gwibber level of usability before the Raring release day then I would have no issue. But from the comments I can see that we will be lucky to reach that in 12 months time.

Friends could have been held back for the alpha phase of the next Ubuntu release and had a full cycle. Now we end up with this app in its current state for maybe the next 9 months that Raring is supported for no benefit for the user.

[Kai Mast (kai-mast)]

Should these settings even be offered by the friends app? Friends is a system wide service. Maybe move something like this to system settings?

[Robert Bruce Park (robru)]

Friends isn't a system service, it runs in the user session and it depends heavily on the accounts the user created in Ubuntu Online Accounts (eg, per-user configuration).