"Evolution Mail" shouldn't appear in indicator-applet when the user has selected a different email application in System>Preferences>Preferred Applications

another solution to this would be to allow the user to select which applications show up in the indicator-applet

This is bigger that evolution.

On a multi-user system, there may be several different mail clients, instant messaging clients, microblogging clients, and other things running. Surely the indicator applet shouldn't show every single option, but instead only show the things the user is actually using?

This may factor into another major usability concern:

I for one was VERY confused about why the mail indicator never told me I had any mail. It seems that it only actually tells you anything if your mail client is open. I assumed that the mail indicator would tell me whether or not I needed to open my mail client.

As such, people have started referring to the menu options in the indicator applet as "Launchers", because they open their applications. This seems entirely backwards to me. My understanding is that the indicator applet was designed to solve the "systray clutter" problem, where every application running can have an icon in the tray.

The indicator should show options only for applications that are *running*, otherwise it falsely gives the impression that those applications *are* running, and that no additional effort is required to keep connected with the world.

Please don't assign this to me. In bug 410220 Mark Shuttleworth was quite clear that the configuration for whether an application appears in the menu should be within that application and nowhere else, and that by default, Evolution should appear in the menu regardless of whether you ever use it.

  affects indicator-messages
  status wontfix

  affects ubuntu/indicator-messages
  status wontfix

No offense, but marking this as won't fix doesn't address the larger usability issue. The issue that your users expect an application to work a certain way because of the way you presented the interface to them, and it doesn't work that way.

There is no point in choosing a Preferred Application, if things like indicator-applet don't respect that decision. If I click on indicator-applet and select 'compose new message' it should ABSOLUTELY launch my default mail client that I chose in the gnome-preferred-applications-properties window. The indicator-applet is application agnostic. If not, don't you think the package should be renamed evolution-indicator-applet?

The new design distinguishes between default applications, and should remove Evolution as the default if it has been changed.

In case you need to override manually

$ sudo rm /usr/share/indicators/messages/applications/evolution
$ sudo bash -c "echo /usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop > /usr/share/indicators/messages/applications/thunderbird"

see bug #540953 comments for how to add the compose/contacts menu items to the thunderbird group

since my bug was marked as a duplicate of this one, i'm requesting here that desktop-webmail get a package, or be modified as such that it can provide the same menu functionality as evolution (but only for compose, since that's all desktop-webmail does)

otherwise i still think it should respect Preferred Applications (and from digging around, i don't see why it doesn't already, as long as the .desktop for the app has the right sections, only thing missing is the listing in /usr/share/indicators/messages/applications/)

couldn't an extra [Desktop Entry] like Type, or X-SomethingSomething that marks it as a messaging menu item be added instead of having the extra indirection?

Why can't the indicator use as "Mail" the preferred mail reading application, "Chat" the preferred IM client, and so on?
People don't care which applications has the distribution selected as default - they rather care about what is default to them.
So, what is the point in not letting a preferred non-default application take the place of an unused, default application?

Nice! thank you!

Hmm, I just did a update and got indicator-messages 0.4.93. I still see Evolution in the messaging menu even though I have Claws selected as my email client. Or did this fix only work for Thunderbird?

The current version only listed the applications that have been used, it lists none by default, closing the bug.

(note that you might some applications, that you used in the past, listed, you can "gsettings reset com.canonical.indicator.messages applications" if that's the case)