189543 - Mailviews: View dropdown menu items should be in View:Messages Menu

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[jglick]

For accessibility reasons, the new Views and Customize feature available from
the toolbar View dropdown should be duplicated in the "View: Messages" menu as well.

Related to bug 187990 - mailviews: dropdown out of sync if view set in View|Messages

Comment 1

[jglick]

Mail triage team: nsbeta1+/adt1

Comment 2

[[e-mail]]

Isn't Alt+I, down arrow sufficient?

Comment 3

[jglick]

The View: Messages menu already has some of these items, so consistency between
the two menus is also another reason to do this. Also, in recent usability
testing, when users were asked about this feature, a few expected to find it in
the View: Messages menu.

Comment 4

[[e-mail]]

Unfortunately the two sets of settings are incompatible - using mail views (or
indeed quick search - bug 106712) disables the View/Messages menu.

Comment 5

[jglick]

Yeah, I see in recent builds that using Quick Search or the toolbar View menu
disables the View: Messages menu. 

I'm a little confused since that isn't the behavior originally planned. The
toolbar View menu was supposed to be a quick/accessible (identical) version of
the Message: View menu. Hence, picking View: Messages: Unread would cause the
toolbar View menu to also switch to "Unread". So I'm not quite sure why if I
have a QS visible, the toolbar View menu is enabled, but the View: Messages menu
is disabled.

Comment 6

[[e-mail]]

It's because Mail Views is a cross between Quick Search and Advanced Search,
i.e. the power of Advanced Search, but quickly accessible, plus linking in with
the existing quick search functions. This means that when you use Quick Search
or Mail Views you are actually looking at a search result pane, not a regular
thread pane. And the only way to limit search results to unread messages is to
add that condition to the query. In the case of the "Unread" mail view the query
consists of the unread condition, plus any quick search terms. But it's still a
query. (Have I confused you enough yet?)

Comment 7

[Ninoschka Baca]

The items in the View dropdown menu are different from what the UI Spec
specifies for the approved Option 2.

The View dropdown menu currently shows:
All
Unread

Important
Work
Personal
To Do
Later

People I Know
Recent Mail
Last 5 Days
Not Junk
Has Attachments

Customize

When this bug is fixed will it just take what's present and place it in the
View|Messages menu or will it try to match the spec as well?

Comment 8

[jglick]

Attachment: Correct Image

Sorry, I forgot to updated that image. I'll do that shortly.

Basic format is:

Read
Unread
---------
Labels listed out
----------
Default custom views and user created custom views
-----------
Thread related menu items
-----------
Customize Views...

Comment 9

[jglick]

The problem is Thread related items. Should we show the Thread related items in
the Main View: Messages flyout but not in the View toolbar dropdown menu?
Threads -All and Threads w/Unread are Views, but Ignore is a toggle and only
valid for News. Watched is only valid for News. Collapse/Expand are actions.

Currently, Threading doesn't play well with Views and Quick Search. We
originally planned that when you select a Threaded Mode, any existing QS is
cleared and View toolbar dropdown menu goes back to "All". 

We might want to reconsider Option 1 because of this. Keeping the Views and
Threads separate for now.
http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/views/images/Menu1.gif

Comment 10

[Jan Varga [:janv]]

taking

Comment 11

[Jan Varga [:janv]]

From implementation point of view
http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/views/images/Menu1.gif
looks much easier and cleaner

Comment 12

[Jan Varga [:janv]]

actually I need more time to investigate

Comment 13

[Jan Varga [:janv]]

This really looks incompatible, what about adding "Message views" menuitem ?

Sort By ->
Messages ->
Message Views ->
  Read
  Unread
  ---------
  Labels listed out
  ----------
  Default custom views and user created custom views
  -----------
  Thread related menu items
  -----------
  Customize Views...

Comment 14

[Jan Varga [:janv]]

>  Thread related menu items
I didn't mean to include this one

Comment 15

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

jan, the spec is still in flux on this.  

I'll take this back until jglick and I have figure out a plan.

Comment 16

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

accepting.

Comment 17

[Stewart Gordon]

We don't really need this mess at all.  View -> Messages menu, the Views
dropdown and Quick Search all do basically the same thing - select a set of
messages to be displayed in the thread pane.  It makes little sense to have two
separate, mutually exclusive and incompatible ways of doing the same thing.

Let's have the Views dropdown looking like this:

+-----------------------------+
| All                         |
| Unread                      |
| Threads with Unread         |
| Watched Threads             |
| Watched Threads with Unread |
|-----------------------------|
| Important                   |
| Work                        |
| Personal                    |
| To Do                       |
| Later                       |
|-----------------------------|
| People I Know               |
| Recent Mail                 |
| Last 5 Days                 |
| Not Junk                    |
| Has Attachments             |
|-----------------------------|
| Customize...                |
+-----------------------------+

And View -> Messages would show the same, even if the duplication is really just
for accessibility purposes, with Ignored Threads, Expand/Collapse All fitted in
somewhere/somehow.  The two means of accessing the views feature would behave
identically and be in sync.

Comment 18

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

will work on this in beta.

Comment 19

[parish]

Personally, I agree with Stewart's comment 17, that everything should be on the
View dropdown. It also needs replicating on the View menu because the Searchbar
is hideable. Whether this is implemented as a single sub-menu, or two sub-menus
(comment 13) doesn't matter to me either way.

However, the one thing that *must* be fixed is synchronizing the view. I use
Threads With Unread for NGs and here is a situation I find regularly (several
times a day) and it is a major PITA:

Take 2 NGs, e.g. n.p.m.general and n.p.m.mail-news.
Make sure both are displaying Threads With Unread.
Select n.p.m.mail-news
Select Recent Mail from the View dropdown
Select a (read) message
Select All from the View dropdown - View switches back to Thread With Uread
Switch to n.p.m.general
View is displayed as Threads With Unread
Switch back to n.p.m.mail-news
View has now changed to All.

If you are searching for a read message but can't remember which group it is in,
so search several/all this way, you can easily end up with all groups switched
to All.

Comment 20

[[e-mail]]

That's a problem with Quick Search too.

Comment 21

[Peter Lairo]

We might need to add a menuitem to accomodate the mass of submenuitems from
comment #17 PLUS "ignored", "expand" and "collapse" (takes cover).

View
 ....
 Sort by
 Messages
 Threads     <-- this one
 ...

I would also like to point out related bug 73562 and bug 184231 FYI.

Comment 22

[[e-mail]]

Re comment 19: that's bug 189007.

Comment 23

[parish]

And bug 189007 references bug 187990 which is essentially the same thing. Maybe
these 3 bugs (and possibly others?) should be rolled into one since I would
think that if this bug gets fixed it may well fix the other two as a side
effect, or at least go some way to fixing them, so why not fix the whole lot
together?

Comment 24

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

Attachment: patch, not done yet, just getting the labels working

Comment 25

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

Attachment: screenshot 1

Comment 26

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

Attachment: screenshot 2

Comment 27

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

Attachment: closer, but still a work in progress. more cleanup, code reuse, xxx todo items to do

Comment 28

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

Comment on attachment 121917 [details] [diff] [review]
closer, but still a work in progress.  more cleanup, code reuse, xxx todo items to do

has some problems, regressions, still a work in progress.

Comment 29

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

the deeper I dig, the hard this problem becomes.

a) mail views are quick searches.
b) db views (unread, all, threads with unread, watched threads with unread) are
another beast.
c) sorts (date, subject, and, threaded)

and, we persist b,c per folder, across sessions but we current persist a within
a session (only), but cross folder.

yowsa.

so I'm going to divide and conquer.

for 1.4 beta, I just want this:

1) allow the user to change the message view, from the view menu (working on it)
2) keep the menu and the view picker "in sync"
3) try to keep a,b,c separate (now is not the time for a grand unification)

Comment 30

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

Attachment: screen shot

Comment 31

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

Attachment: patch

here's where I'm heading, for 1.4 beta (still some xxx todo items)

includes fix for bug #190187

Comment 32

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

hey, what do you know.

what I came up with was option 1, from the spec.

see http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/views/#Menus

http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/views/images/Menu1.gif

updated patch, coming.

Comment 33

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

Attachment: screen shot

Comment 34

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

Attachment: patch

Comment 35

[[e-mail]]

> what I came up with was option 1, from the spec.

So, does this mean that the Threads options will be disabled during QS?

Comment 36

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

> So, does this mean that the Threads options will be disabled during QS?

it will be enabled, and will take you out of the current QS / message view.

Comment 37

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

Attachment: patch

Comment 38

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

Attachment: fix wording, and stand alone msg window

Comment 39

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

fixed, this has r/sr=bienvenu, a=sspitzer

Comment 40

[[e-mail]]

The way this is written means that views aren't an extension any more?

Comment 41

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

> The way this is written means that views aren't an extension any more?

that's right.

from mozilla/mailnews/extensions/Makefile.in

# these extensions are not optional
DIRS    = mdn mailviews bayesian-spam-filter

but, I'm not against allowing the user to hide the UI for it.

(something like View | Show / Hide | View Picker...)

but that would be for 1.5 or beyond.

Comment 42

[parish]

Err, Seth. I've just noticed on the View menu that Sort By and Threads have the
same shortcut key, 't' so Alt-V,T,T (to select Threads with Unread) doesn't work.

Comment 43

[Ninoschka Baca]

Trunk build 2003-05-18: WinXP
Trunk build 2003-05-20: Mac 10.1.5, Linux RH 8
Verified Fixed. The following works as expected, thanks!

1) allow the user to change the message view, from the view menu
2) keep the menu and the view picker "in sync"
3) try to keep a,b,c separate