Binary package hint: empathy
This is probably more of a wishlist item, but I find it to be a big usability bug, personally.
When I am using Empathy at my job, I will sometimes look away from my personal computer for various reasons (attending to customers or to my work computer, etc.) However, any messages I receive while my personal computer is focused on the chat window are not easily noticeable. There is no notification, the messaging icon doesn't turn green, and no sounds are played. This leads to missed messages, and is very bothersome for me. The problem is exacerbated with my power setting set to sleep my display after 1 minute, because then there's no way to tell whether somebody has contacted me unless I wake up my screen. My current workaround is to unfocus the empathy window after each message, but that's a hassle because I have to reach for my sub-par touchpad to do so on my personal computer. There should be an option in the sound preferences pane to enable or disable sounds even when the chat window is focused.
Ubuntu 10.04 x86
Empathy 2.30.1.1
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