190381 - Message Filters dialog is missing its Help button

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Filters, defect)

Description

[robinf]

Using ns trunk Build ID 2002012308:

From Tools menu, select Message Filters...
Expected: There should be a Help button in this dialog. (There used to be one.)

The Help button should use the following Description ID to point to the correct
location in the mail help:

<rdf:li> <rdf:Description ID="mail-filters" nc:name="Creating Message Filters"
nc:link="chrome://help/locale/mail_help.html#MAIL_FILTERS"/> </rdf:li>

nominating for next release.

Comment 1

[robinf]

over to Seth

Comment 2

[Samir Gehani]

Mail triage team: nsbeta1+/adt2

Comment 3

[Sean Su]

robin, do you know where the help button used to be at?  Do you have an image
that I can look at.  It looks like I might have to create the help button myself.

Comment 4

[robinf]

Attachment: Message Filters dialog with Help button

Comment 5

[Sean Su]

Attachment: patch v1.0

Comment 6

[Sean Su]

Attachment: message filter dialog with patch v1.0

Robin, does the [Help] button look ok for you in the dialog?  Let me know if
you want it elsewhere.

Comment 7

[robinf]

Placement of Help button is fine. The OK and Cancel buttons are missing - is
this by design? They used to be there.

Comment 8

[Sean Su]

Actually, I can't add the help button into the message filters window.  This
window is current defined as a "window" as opposed to "dialog".  This makes it
hard to create a [Help] button because on different platforms, this button is
displayed in different places.

So changing this window to a "dialog" allows me to specify default buttons, such
as [Close] and [Help].  It'll also show them in the appropriate places depending
on the platform.

However, this also has it's problems.  Given that the filters dialog has a
progressbar at the bottom, it conflicts with the default [Close]/[Help] buttons.
 It'll conflict in that it'll show the progressbar above the row where the
[Close]/[Help] standard buttons are shown.  I'm not sure if there's much I can
do about that.  I'll ask around though.
(I'll attach a screen shot of the conflic indicated.)

Also, the spec:
  http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/filters/#Msg%20Filters%20D

Shows that what we have is correct, though one could argue that the spec needs
to be fixed :)

Comment 9

[Sean Su]

Attachment: filter window converted to "dialog" w/Ok & Help buttons

Comment 10

[robinf]

Should that be "OK" and "Cancel" as the bottom buttons (instead of "OK" and
"Help")? 

Comment 11

[robinf]

Apologies - disregard my last comment. I just re-read your comment #8.

Comment 12

[Sean Su]

The reason for not having a [Cancel] button is because there isn't really
anything to cancel.  It wouldn't make sense to allow the user to cancel after
they have ran the filters.  What would they be canceling?  Or if they
created/modified filters, then clicked cancel, would it mean that everything
they did was canceled?  Even if that's what we wanted it to behave as, it would
be too complicated to implement, thus no [Cancel] button.

Comment 13

[Sean Su]

Attachment: possible fix #1 - win32/linux dialog w/Ok & Help buttons

This is another possible fix that samir came up with.  the Ok & help buttons
are above the progress bar, but below the Run Now button.  This is what it
would look like under win32/linux. OSX image coming up.

Comment 14

[Sean Su]

Attachment: possible fix #1 - OSX dialog w/Ok & Help buttons

This is what it would look like under OSX

Comment 15

[robinf]

looks good.

Comment 16

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

hey sean, thanks for doing all the investigation on this.

here's what I think we should do for 1.4 final:

1)  keep it as a window.  don't convert to dialog.  since it is a window, not a
dialog, no need for ok button.  since the window manager [x] will be there.
2)  add a help button.  for example, see another window (not dialog) with a help
button:  the search dialog (for addressbook, and mail messages).  at this point
in the game, I say just add it run under "Delete".

this is low risk, and acceptable, in my opinion, for 1.4 final.

then, maybe for 1.5 (or future), decide we want to:

1)  convert to dialog.  add ok / help buttons.
2)  remove the status area, and instead, open up a progress dialog when running
filters, that will give us a way to see what's going on.  or, find a better
place for it.

but to be honest, I don't think we'd do this.  what you have (if you add help
under delete) is acceptable to me, and I don't think i'd revisit this dialog for
a while (given all the other bugs we have).

sorry to make you spend all this effort, but it is appreciated.

Comment 17

[Sean Su]

Attachment: patch v1.1

This places the [Help] button right below the [Delete] button.

Comment 18

[Sean Su]

Attachment: screenshot of patch v1.1

Comment 19

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

Comment on attachment 123524 [details] [diff] [review]
patch v1.1

sr/a=sspitzer

thanks again, ssu.

Comment 20

[Sean Su]

patch checked in.

Comment 21

[esther]

using trunk build 20030519 on winxp, mac osx and linux this is fixed per
attached image in comment 18. also verified clicking on help button brings the
user to the correct help. verified.