186578 - Escape key doesn't close standalone message window

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, enhancement)

Description

[Tony Walker]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130

This is common behaviour in the 4 or 5 other mail readers I have used cross
platform. I am reporting it as a bug as I would have thought you would want to
implement this feature and I am guessing that you have coded for it already,
with the code just not working. Key is used standalone with no accelerator.
Maybe should be an option even if you don't want it to be default. Without it
active, mail reading is so slow - ALT+F4 is awkward to hit and could be seen as
the wrong combination to hit - is the standalone message window a child window?

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Erm, load mail program
2. Open any mail message
3. Press Escape key

Actual Results:  
Standalone message window remains open.

Expected Results:  
Closed the standalone message window

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

Never heard of ctrl-w ? Or alt-f + c ? Windows are never closed with escape.
Dialogs sometimes, but not windows.

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Yozu can close a dialog with ESC but no window.

-> invalid (since we will not convert it to a dialog)

Comment 3

[Tony Walker]

A lot of people coming to Mozilla will be new users - myself incuded for mail
purposes (I've browsed with all Netscape versions), and will be incredibly
frustrated they can't dismiss the standalone message window by pressing Esc.

Can it at least be made an option? I note that the unaccelerated Escape key had
no current assignment.

Comment 4

[Tony Walker]

Maybe this needs transferring to the new features request then now.

Comment 5

[Sander]

When bug 57805 is fixed you'll be able to remap Esc to do this, but Mozilla
should not provide yet another preference for something like this. Standalone
message windows are still windows, not dialogs, and using Ecs to close only
these windows and not others is bad because of inconsistency.

Comment 6

[Tony Walker]

I'm very disappointed in the bury-our-heads-in-the-sand attitude I've
experienced here.

When Joe Public tries using Mozilla and finds an obstacle in the way of using it
are they going to come onto this bug/feature facility. No. They will just go and
delete Mozilla and go back to what will probably be a Microsoft product.

I am absolutely sure I'm not the only one who wants to retain a fast way of
closing a standalone message window. CTRL+W and ALT+F4 aren't consistant across
platforms, where the Esc key is available to the application and is used
consistantly across mail software to close the standalone message window.

You might query why I am not using the preview pane. Typically can't find a
compromise between size of this and having to make the whole mail front-end
window too big. Plus gives spam too much of a chance to make itself heard. Hence
I only use a standalone message window and view those messages I want to.

Comment 7

[laurel]

Made this an enhancement request.

Comment 8

[Henrik Gemal]

just had a lot of former Outlook people complain over this.

Comment 9

[Henrik Gemal]

Attachment: fix - add escape to close window

Comment 10

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

> This is common behaviour in the 4 or 5 other mail readers 
> I have used cross platform.

I see that OE 6 on windows does this, but I'd like to get some input from jglick.

Comment 11

[jglick]

cc'ing Aaron, our accessibility guru.

Only documentation I could find in Windows UI Guidelines:

ALT+F4 = Close 
ESC = Cancel

(Browser uses it for Stop (loading a page) and Mail currently uses it for Stop
also (loading of a message).

Comment 12

[Joey Bowles]

I came over to report that the ESC key does not work and ran across this report.
I find myself getting VERY frustrated that ESC does not close the email window. 

This works in most major email porograms including:
Outlook Express
Outlook
Lotus Notes

I know we are not trying to copy other programs, but if we want to convert
people, we have to make Mozilla easy to use.

Comment 13

[Henrik Gemal]

sspitzer or someone? could we get a SR?

Comment 14

[Henrik Lynggaard Hansen]

nominating for 1.4. We have a partly reviewed patch and this is a higly visible item

Comment 15

[Henrik Lynggaard Hansen]

*** Bug 152332 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 16

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Not a blocker. (do we really want this on linux?) Drivers would consider a
reviewed patch for approval but we're not going to hold the release for this.

Comment 17

[Joey Bowles]

Agreed, this is very visible and 1.4.x is a good target. Regarding putting 
this on Linux... It should be consistent across all platforms.

Comment 18

[Dave Evans]

While as a professional GUI Programmer, I totally understand the desire for
consistency, and that Esc really should be only for dialogs.  

However I am a long time Outlook user, where I have become used to this feature.
While Microsoft does do a lot of stupid things, they do spend a reasonable
amount of time making sure that they are consistent with their own standards.
(while not 100% they follow the guidelines more consistently than just about any
other software package).

My point: guidelines are just that guidelines, occasionally they need to be
broken, and occasionally they don't accurately cover all situations.

I think the instance of a mail message is one of those cases.  I don't advocate
the immediate dismissal of a message with Esc while it is being composed, b/c
that would entail the loss of typed information.  However for the case of
reading messages, there is no actual possibility for loss of information.  As
such the "window" acts as a dialog, b/c there are no input widgets.  This is the
same reason that a use would expect the Esc key to dismiss the "Print Preview"
window.

Also as to the person commenting about "Alt-F4" that should be reserved only for
terminating the whole application ... "Ctrl-F4" should be used for closing a
"view" within the application.

Comment 19

[Henrik Gemal]

David: could you check this on in?

Comment 20

[David :Bienvenu]

yah, sure.

Comment 21

[timeless]

Mozilla/4.79 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U)
Escape doesn't close my mail compose.

Mozilla/3.04 (WinNT; I)
Escape doesn't close my mail compose.

Mozilla/2.02 (WinNT; I)
Escape doesn't close my mail compose.

Outlook Express 5.5
Escape prompts if you put text into the message.

If the current patch results in the window just closing, then that's bad (since
it'd be inconsistent w/ oe)

Comment 22

[David :Bienvenu]

looks like I forgot to check this in. I would have thought the window.close()
stuff would go through the same code as clicking the corner x on the window but
I'll try it.

Comment 23

[David :Bienvenu]

actually, timeless is talking about the compose window and this bug is about the
stand-alone message window so I don't see how his comments are relevant.

Comment 24

[timeless]

whoops.

Comment 25

[David :Bienvenu]

fix checked in

Comment 26

[Olivier]

So, how are we supposed to stop HTML messages from loading all their stuff in
standalone windows now? Esc is still shown as the shortcut for "stop" in the
view menu and there doesn't seem to be another shortcut to simply stop the
loading. I find this most annoying.

Please make the damn thing consistent. Esc stops loading in the 3-pane mode. Esc
stops loading in the browser. Esc should stop loading for standalone message
windows too. Since when is mozilla about mimicking every other app out there? If
I wanted outlook behavior I'd use outlook :(

Comment 27

[Tony Walker]

As it looks like the fix isn't a re-mappable key (due to another bug stopping it
being done this way), and the change is to provide consistency against many mail
programs that users might be replacing with Mozilla. You might want to request a
new feature. That being a big "Stop" button like the browser, on the button bars
in both the standalone window and the main Mail window. I would think the Gurus
could whip that into the mix fairly swiftly.

Apologies for treading on your toes with this change. I myself use the "view as
plain text" option due to all the HTML junk mail that might do goodness knows
what to your system if left unchecked. I find "Simple HTML" a good option when I
 sometimes find I need to view an HTML-based e-mail.

Comment 28

[timeless]

1. you can have a stop button in standalone message view (just enable it for
mail: edit>preferences>mail & newsgroups>[x] stop)
2. view>stop clearly says that escape is bound to stop...