[gmail] Wrong message without network

[Michi Henning]

I just started the gmail app for the first time. This was after I moved the phone from home to the office, and the phone wasn't yet set up for the office network, so it didn't have a wifi connection.

Starting gmail, it tells me that the service is not available right now, and invites me to "Try Again". That's highly misleading because, without a network, there is zero chance that trying again will make any difference.

Then, after tapping cancel, I got "Account error. Account window could not be opened. You can only create one account at a time; please try again after closing all other account windows."

Again, that's misleading. I don't have an account window yet and, even if I did, there is no point in trying again.

What it really should tell me is that I need to connect to a network first.

[David Barth (dbarth)]

Thanks for the feedback. Indeed, a basic network detection logic would
prevent most of those issues.
Either by complementing apps which are not prepared for network error
scenarios, or for components in the container, like the account one.

Modern webapps should still be able to work offline though. So we can't
just hide the main view whenever the network goes down.

The logic would apply to the startup process (for OA) and when remote URLs
are being requested during that startup phase.

Maybe to cope with purely "online webapps", we could add an option to put
that kind of "we'll-be-back-soon screen?

On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 6:23 AM, Michi Henning <email address hidden>
wrote:

> Public bug reported:
>
> I just started the gmail app for the first time. This was after I moved
> the phone from home to the office, and the phone wasn't yet set up for
> the office network, so it didn't have a wifi connection.
>
> Starting gmail, it tells me that the service is not available right now,
> and invites me to "Try Again". That's highly misleading because, without
> a network, there is zero chance that trying again will make any
> difference.
>
> Then, after tapping cancel, I got "Account error. Account window could
> not be opened. You can only create one account at a time; please try
> again after closing all other account windows."
>
> Again, that's misleading. I don't have an account window yet and, even
> if I did, there is no point in trying again.
>
> What it really should tell me is that I need to connect to a network
> first.
>
> ** Affects: webapps-core
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: New
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of WebApps,
> which is subscribed to The Webapps-core project.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1564723
>
> Title:
> [gmail] Wrong message without network
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/webapps-core/+bug/1564723/+subscriptions
>

[Michi Henning (michihenning)]

It seems there are two distinct failure scenarios here:

- I have networks configured, but none of them are in range, or I am in flight mode. I should get a message to the effect of "Sorry, can't help you right now because there is no available network" or a message "You have flight mode enabled, disable flight mode and try again."

- I have no networks configured at all. In that case, it would be sweet if it would say "You need to configure a network first."

The first one is essential, in my opinion. That's because it alerts the user to the actual real cause of the problem (no network or no network because of flight mode).

The second one would be nice. But, even with only the first one, I think it would work. At least I'd be told that the problem is network related, instead of getting the message about closing the account window.