Bug 451256

Summary: An empty album displays a notification message that the database query returned no result
Product: [Applications] digikam Reporter: Frank Steinmetzger <dev+kde>
Component: Albums-MainViewAssignee: Digikam Developers <digikam-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED    
Severity: normal CC: metzpinguin
Priority: NOR    
Version: 7.5.0   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Arch Linux   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: https://invent.kde.org/graphics/digikam/commit/78b5485255b83085eea86d3fd2d3a515bda53c87 Version Fixed In: 7.7.0
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Frank Steinmetzger 2022-03-07 20:03:08 UTC 
SUMMARY
When the user selects an album from the album tree which has no images, a notification appears at the top of the main view, starting with “The current query from the database returned no results.“ This is bad UI design. It is perfectly normal that an album may be empty, e.g. if it is just the parent for subalbums. A notification is used to get the user’s attention. But an empty album is nothing to be alarmed about. Another problem this creates is that when I select a non-empty album next, the image list is display and then the notification goes away. This causes the images to shift up on the screen.

OBSERVED RESULT
Empty albums show a notification that they are empty. The notification goes away after a few seconds.

EXPECTED RESULT
There should be no notification. If the user has to be told that this album is in fact empty, then the better way would be to use the mainview for that (see Dolphin for an example).

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: Arch Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.2
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.91.0
Qt Version: 5.15.3
Kernel Version: 5.16.12-arch1-1 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 4 × Intel® Core™ i5-4590 CPU @ 3.30GHz
Memory: 31.0 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa DRI Intel® HD Graphics 4600
Comment 1 Maik Qualmann 2022-03-07 20:50:35 UTC 
It was clear to me that there would be a bug report at some point. This message was created at the user's request that a message appear for large searches or albums when the action has ended and no images have actually been returned.

We can of course disable it for physical albums and only enable it for search albums.

Maik
Comment 2 Frank Steinmetzger 2022-03-07 21:22:36 UTC 
Hehe, I see. OK, then let’s see if we can accommodate everyone.

The easiest way would be to display the text inside the main view, as I mentioned with my Dolphin reference. Perhaps not show it in the centre of the screen, but on the topleft, so it can easily be found with the eyes, because photo management screens tend to be large.

This would even allow for a progress message like “Searching …” — but only in case the query takes longer. Otherwise we would risk constantly flickering text when browsing through albums.

So as a step-by-step:
10 user selects album
20 wait for result, but one second maximum (arbitrary value, the actual best-fitting duration should be determined in experiments. It should prevent annoying distraction of the eye when clicking through albums)
30 search result available? → display result or message “This album is empty.” or “The search returned no results.”. End.
40 no result yet? → Display “Searching ...” message and wait for result indefinitely.
50 Result is available, goto 30
Comment 3 Maik Qualmann 2022-03-08 07:14:39 UTC 
Git commit 78b5485255b83085eea86d3fd2d3a515bda53c87 by Maik Qualmann.
Committed on 08/03/2022 at 07:12.
Pushed by mqualmann into branch 'qt5-maintenance'.

show empty album message only with search albums
Related: bug 449078
FIXED-IN: 7.7.0

M  +2    -1    NEWS
M  +1    -1    core/app/views/stack/itemiconview_items.cpp

https://invent.kde.org/graphics/digikam/commit/78b5485255b83085eea86d3fd2d3a515bda53c87