Notifications are shown during full screen flash videos

[Alex Launi]

Binary package hint: notify-osd

Watching full screen videos on hulu or other should prevent non-urgent notifications from being shown like other full screen apps do.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: notify-osd 0.9.11-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/usr/bin/zsh
SourcePackage: notify-osd
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic x86_64

[Mirco Müller (macslow)]

I can't test this with www.hulu.com because I'm not based in the US and don't know the needed proxy-server magic to make hulu.com believe I'm US-based.

What flash-plugin do you use? If you are using the non-free one (from Adobe) we're out of luck, because we can't make the needed changes to it - since we don't have access to its source-code, to make it advertise to notify-osd a "do not disturb"-state. With a free one, e.g. the swfdec-based browser-plugin, this would be possible.

BTW, some notifications (critical ones) are meant to be shown anyway. For example you would like to know that your laptop-battery is about to be fully depleted.

[Roger Binns (ubuntu-rogerbinns)]

This happens with any Flash video. Go to youtube and start playing any video and select full screen. Then press your volume keys and note how the video jumps out of full screen. All notifications do this (new email, IM changes etc) which is very highly annoying.

Under the hood (ie at the X level) I believe what is happening is that the notify window is stealing focus from the fullscreen window. It shouldn't do this unless what it is showing is so important that my choice to have a fullscreen window with focus must be ignored and overridden. Flash being proprietary has nothing to do with this.

Incidentally Windows does not have this problem. My friend who I converted to Ubuntu insisted on having a Windows partition just to watch Hulu and similar Flash video because this behaviour annoyed her so much!

[Roger Binns (ubuntu-rogerbinns)]

Can be repeated with Youtube, Google Video or any other similar video site.

[Mirco Müller (macslow)]

There's nothing we can do about the "unfullscreen-ing" of the Adobe's flash-plugin. In notify-osd trunk I'm using...

gtk_window_set_focus_on_map (GTK_WINDOW (window), FALSE);
gtk_window_set_accept_focus (GTK_WINDOW (window), FALSE);

... to make sure a notification-bubble is really not focused when opening (not that this would make any sense anyway due to the click-through feature :). Other (OpenSource) applications, like e.g. totem, which stick to FDO-specs, correctly stay in fullscreen-state even though I trigger notifications with notify-osd (e.g. using Volume-Up/Down on a multimedia-keyboard).

On the related issue of surpressing some notifications depending on the system-state (screensaver on, fullscreen-ed apps etc.), I can report that we're actively working on this for Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10).

[Vadim Peretokin (vperetokin)]

Wouldn't hurt to lodge a report w/ Adobe. Are there docs that they can be
referred to for implementing compliancy?

[Travis Watkins (amaranth)]

I believe flash only exits fullscreen when compiz is being used, can someone test that (not home right now)? That seems to be the main complaint about this bug.

In any case, it'd be the only part of the bug that we could actually fix.

[Roger Binns (ubuntu-rogerbinns)]

It exits when compiz is not used. I run regular Gnome/metacity on my machines and it exits fullscreen on them too. Video cards are Intel and Nvidia in case anyone wonders if that makes a difference.

[Martin Albisetti (beuno)]

Thank you for bringing this bug to our attention. Unfortunately a paper cut should be a small usability issue that affects many people and is quick and easy to fix. I'm afraid this bug can't be addressed as part of this project.
A paper cut is a minor usability annoyance that an average user would encounter on his/her first day of using a new installation of Ubuntu 9.10.

[DrKay (dr-jameskay)]

@Martin:

I'm sure this affects A LOT of people in the US, because a lot of people use their computers to watch Hulu and/or YouTube, so they would very likely encounter this on "... his/her first day of using a new installation of Ubuntu 9.10.". It is a very basic necessity to be able to adjust the volume or screen brightness while playing a video on the web without the computer kicking you out of full screen mode so that it can display it's notification that you are doing so.

This needn't involve Adobe. All that needs to happen is that the notification be suppressed when flash is in full-screen mode.

[Steve Dodier-Lazaro (sidi)]

Removing the notifications during fullscreen apps has been discussed a lot
in Ayatana, and in the end we agreed that it wasn't such a good practice,
and instead proposed that the FUSA's statuses can be used to determine
whether notifications should appear or not.

Concerning Flash videos, this is one of the most annoying bugs, indeed, but,
it's TYPICALLY the kind of things that happen with proprietary applications
: they don't fix bugs and we can't do it for them.

If you want to ping the Adobe guys so that they fix this damnn bug, feel
free to do so here : https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-1387

[Mirco Müller (macslow)]

BTW, my view on such issues in general (proprietary/closed-source software making live hard for FOSS): Don't add workarounds to FOSS to fix bugs in closed-source programs. They want to be on our playground, so they should play by our rules not vice versa.

[Vish (vish)]

@Neil J. Patel :
You'v set this as triaged , are you planning on not showing the notifications during fullscreen videos? or to use the FUSA state ?

Pls dont remove notifications during fullscreen videos!

[Roger Binns (ubuntu-rogerbinns)]

There is no issue with some notifications being shown, but a larger problem that flash drops out of fullscreen mode when they are.

[Steve Dodier-Lazaro (sidi)]

@Roger
Notifications do not make Flash quit Fullscreen. Flash actually quits
Fullscreen when you use any XF86 key, which is a wrong behaviour.

[Neil J. Patel (njpatel)]

@mac_v: I managed to mark this and a couple of others as triaged by accident, sorry for the bug spam.

[Michael Rooney (mrooney)]

The flash issue is bug 224475, so please vote for the linked Adobe issue there (https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-902). The bug sidi linked appears to be a dupe of that one.

[Mirco Müller (macslow)]

From the gathered information sofar, this is clearly not a bug of notify-osd, but the Adobe flash-plugin. Therefore I'm marking this as invalid (in regards to notify-osd).

[tibike (eusunttibi)]

This is garbage! I'm promoting GNU/Linux to folks and it's really embarrassing when stuff like this comes up and we have nothing to do about. Should we not use Flash because it takes more than 11 months to address a simple bug?

[Riel (riel-notermans)]

I was looking for some comments on this 'bug'. I do see the reasons why you choose to keep it this way, since the problem lies with adobe.

But when I play FLV files from youtube in my /tmp/ dir with Totem, it all works fine. Can't it by default use Totem to play flashvideo's? It would make that 'first time experience' better without playing by adobe's rules...