update-manager shakes + wobbles in Unity Launcher before being ready

[Paul Sladen]

Binary package hint: update-manager

From time to time as it desires the Update Manager will automatically Launcher itself to provide the user with guidance that updates are available.

When this happens under Unity with the Launcher hidden, the icon with wobble+bounce at the edge of the screen to catch their focus. If the user then responds to the call-to-action and quickly opens the Launcher and clicks the icon, a greyed-out window will appear and the "Updating database…" progress bar will appear for a number of seconds.

Ideally the user should only see the wobbling "call-to-attention" when update-manager has finished computing and the user is able to interact with Update-Manager.

This is likely a case of either/both:

  Unity Launcher being overly-excited about a new program appearing
  Update-Manager requesting attention too soon

[Sam Spilsbury (smspillaz)]

I believe what's happening here is that the update manager window is
being denied focus because it requests not to be focussed on map
initially (in fact, I think it requests to be started minimized too)
and because it was initially denied focus we set the
_NET_WM_STATE_DEMANDS_ATTENTION state on _NET_WM_STATE. That's wrong
and I need to fix that. Good find Paul.

On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 2:23 PM, Paul Sladen <email address hidden> wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> Binary package hint: update-manager
>
> >From time to time as it desires the Update Manager will automatically
> Launcher itself to provide the user with guidance that updates are
> available.
>
> When this happens under Unity with the Launcher hidden, the icon with
> wobble+bounce at the edge of the screen to catch their focus.  If the
> user then responds to the call-to-action and quickly opens the Launcher
> and clicks the icon, a greyed-out window will appear and the "Updating
> database…" progress bar will appear for a number of seconds.
>
> Ideally the user should only see the wobbling "call-to-attention" when
> update-manager has finished computing and the user is able to interact
> with Update-Manager.
>
> This is likely either a case of:
>
>  Unity Launcher being over-excited about a new program appearing
>  Update-Manager requesting attention
>
> ** Affects: unity
>     Importance: Undecided
>         Status: New
>
> ** Affects: update-manager (Ubuntu)
>     Importance: Undecided
>         Status: New
>
> ** Also affects: unity
>   Importance: Undecided
>       Status: New
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Unity
> Bugs, which is subscribed to unity.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/797040
>
> Title:
>  update-manager shakes + wobbles in Unity Launcher before being ready
>
> Status in Unity:
>  New
> Status in “update-manager” package in Ubuntu:
>  New
>
> Bug description:
>  Binary package hint: update-manager
>
>  From time to time as it desires the Update Manager will automatically
>  Launcher itself to provide the user with guidance that updates are
>  available.
>
>  When this happens under Unity with the Launcher hidden, the icon with
>  wobble+bounce at the edge of the screen to catch their focus.  If the
>  user then responds to the call-to-action and quickly opens the
>  Launcher and clicks the icon, a greyed-out window will appear and the
>  "Updating database…" progress bar will appear for a number of seconds.
>
>  Ideally the user should only see the wobbling "call-to-attention" when
>  update-manager has finished computing and the user is able to interact
>  with Update-Manager.
>
>  This is likely either a case of:
>
>    Unity Launcher being over-excited about a new program appearing
>    Update-Manager requesting attention
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/797040/+subscriptions
>

--
Sam Spilsbury

[Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan)]

Not sure if I entirely know what I'm talking about here, but update-manager has an option called --no-focus-on-map which is not used by default, which I take to mean that it does focus on map normally.

---
Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

[Sam Spilsbury (smspillaz)]

Right, when running update-manager normally (eg update-manager &) it does do XMapRaised and not set the "no focus" hint. However, the cron job that spawns update-manager runs it with --no-focus-on-map

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.