146259 - provide alternative, outlook express like compose window

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Composition, enhancement)

Description

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

provide outlook express like compose window.

the main difference is the addressing widget.

other mailers have a text field for to, cc, etc, instead of our listbox picker 
approach.

Comment 1

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

future enhancement, not sure we'd even want this yet.

Comment 2

[Boris 'pi' Piwinger]

Since you are asking ... I like our way better. So we can easily change from To
to CC or vice versa and more.

pi

Comment 3

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

the work for this has been done by blake ross.  I'll be moving it over to
mozilla/mail (note, not mozilla/mailnews) soon.

Comment 4

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

blake's code has landed in mozilla/mail (note, not mozilla/mailnews).

Before it becomes ready for primetime, these issues need to be resolved:

1) skin changes (modern and classic, new icons if necessary)
2) reconsider UI decisions we made.  (example, do we want a
"send later" toolbar button? the "more" button?)
3) add back in some UI we removed (menu items, etc.)
4) integrate the code changes (abCommon.js, autocomplete.xml) back into
the trunk properly.)
5) add back in support for news. (Reply to,  Newsgroup and Followup)
6) play nice with security (we don't support S/MIME)
7) play nice with the spell checker button
8) do we want multiple line address fields (like in jennifer's original spec?)
9) do we want the addressing UI to follow the sidebar UI for discoverablity?
10) play nice with multiple identities

there are probably other ones.

Comment 5

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

Attachment: partial patch

for this to land on the trunk, we'll need this change (not reviewed) for
autocomplete.xml

Comment 6

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

Attachment: compose window patch

another partial patch.

this hacks up the compose window, but keeps offline and the identity picker.
(what's in mozilla/mail doesn't have that.)

what's missing is the new addressing UI, but I'm leaving that for later.

Comment 7

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

Attachment: still a work in progress

Comment 8

[Pham]

Change OS to ALL
Change hardware to ALL

Comment 9

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

Doin' the changes, proposed in comment 8.

Comment 10

[Scott MacGregor]

I'm in the process of converting this patch into mozilla thunderbird right now. 

Comment 11

[Scott MacGregor]

Attachment: thunderbird based work in progress

Just wanted to post a patch of this work that is compatible with thunderbird.
Still needs a lot of work. This also includes a hack to try to add a drop down
list to the 'To:' label text where you could presumably change the value of
that field.

This solution really isn't practical unless you have a text box which can grow
in height though.

Comment 12

[Scott MacGregor]

Attachment: updated patch for thunderbird

Comment 13

[David Fraser]

Would it be possible to have the style set in a preference for those who like
the old way?

Comment 14

[Vidar Haarr (not reading bugmail)]

Scott: Could you do a screenshot of this ? Just to tease us a little =)

Comment 15

[rich cowan]

I addressed the issue of the composition window about
2 months ago.  Basically, my concern was not about making
the product look like Outlook (why would you want to
do that; among other things outlook makes it difficult
to send a "bcc" email and thus novice users can't find
the "bcc" option).

The bug I reported is here:

Font for Entering Email Addresses is Too Small bug 214766

To sum up, my email focuses on some accessibility
concerns; and also a "power user" concern.  The work
that I do involves teaching nonprofits how to send out
email to large lists, and the Thunderbird user interface
now uses too much screen real estate with the separate
"reply-to" address, and is kind of cumbersome if you
want to put in large numbers of email addresses in the "cc"
or "bcc" line.

Perhaps the two bugs should be merged and the title should
be renamed "Mail Compose Window Needs a Facelift" or something
like that.

-rich

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Post bug 136897, is there anything further that might address this, that you would even want to do? Unfortunately I don't know what on OE Express compose window looks like.

Comment 17

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

This can be closed.