214896 - Main window title should not show message subject

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Rod Begbie]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030731 Mozilla Firebird/0.6.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.1 (20030723)

When a message is selected in the Main window, the window title changes to read
"Subject - Folder - Thunderbird".  However, once you've opened a few emails, it
is very unclear looking at the Taskbar which window is an email, and which is
the main window.

In addition, if you don't display the message pane in the "3 pane view", then
the title is totally erroneous, as you have no message open in that window.

The window should instead just be (at most) "Folder - Thunderbird".  (Discussion
as to whether it should just say "Thunderbird" is another point, but a much more
minor one).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:




See Mozillazine discussion:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=14778&highlight=window+title

Comment 1

[Rod Begbie]

Oh, and see old MailNews bug: Bug 142471

Comment 2

[David P James]

Occurs in Linux as well

OS --> All

To add to the confusion, the taskbar icon is the same for a message window as
for the main 3 pane view, so there is no visual cue that they are any different.

Comment 3

[Malte Rücker (mbr)]

*** Bug 223342 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[Wilson Bilkovich]

I would love to see an elegant solution for this.  I would vote for this bug,
but it's still "NEW".

Comment 5

[Lisa]

i'm surprised that this hasn't made it into TB yet, since Bug 142471
(http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=142471) has a fix for MailNews that
works perfectly with TB. I've applied it using notepad to delete the offending
"setTitleFromFolder" line from threadPane.js, found in mail.jar, and now I no
longer see the message subject in my TB title. It shows "[Folder] for [email
address] - Mozilla Firebird".

I would submit a patch, but I don't understand the patch lingo well enough to
type one for myself, only enough to apply it on my own system.

Comment 6

[Malte Rücker (mbr)]

*** Bug 228998 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[bluppfisk]

I don't understand that it hasn't been fixed yet. It's truly irritating, and
indeed the patch worketh well, but you can't blame a regular user for not
finding out how to do that.

Comment 8

[Lisa]

There's an extension now, so at least until this is fixed in the core, the
"regular" user doesn't have to try to apply the patch themselves.

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=478400#478400

Comment 9

[Haris Karahristianidis]

How can I vote for this bug??

Comment 10

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 233098 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Steven Garrity [:sgarrity]]

I asked Scott about this bug and he suggested I write up a proposal for the
suggested behaviour for the application window title. It turned out to be short
enough to just post here:

Thunderbird Window Title Proposal

Currently, Thunderbird uses the subject line of the selected message, the
current mailbox title, and the application title in the window title bar. I
suggest that this behaviour be changed to show the current mailbox title and the
application title, but not the current message subject line.

While it is generally a good idea to show the title of the current document in
the window title bar, this doesn't apply directly to a mail browser. In
individual message windows, this makes sense (subject as window title). However,
the main application window needs to be distinguished from individual message
windows.

As it stands right now, the window title for the main application window is
exactly the same as an individual message window. A typical use-case goes as
follows:

1. Open the main mail application window
2. Open several messages in their own windows
3. Minimize the main mail application window
Now, in the task bar, there is no way to tell which of the taskbar items is the
main application window vs. an individual mail message.

Here are some Examples:

Current Thunderbird application window title (with a message selected):
"Hello from Spain - Inbox for [e-mail] - Mozilla Thunderbird"

Proposed application window title (with a message selected):
"Inbox for [e-mail] - Mozilla Thunderbird"

Other popular mail applications follow the proposed behaviour as well (Apple
Mail, Microsoft Outlook, and Outlook Express):

Apple Mail: Mailbox title + unread count ("In (3 unread)")
Microsoft Outlook: Mailbox Title + App Title ("Inbox - Microsoft Outlook")
Microsoft Outlook Express: Mailbox Title + App Title ("Inbox - Outlook Express")
Ximian Evolution: Mailbox Title + App Title ("Inbox - Ximian Evolution")

As for individual message windows, the current behaviour works relatively well
and is close to the conventions used by other mail applications. The only key
difference here is that Thunderbird shows the mailbox title ("Inbox for
[e-mail]") after the message subject. This tends to make the window
titles excessively long and given that the message subject is already shown,
this may not be necessary.

Comment 12

[Scott MacGregor]

Attachment: the fix

implements Steven Garrity's spec

Comment 13

[Scott MacGregor]

fixed

Comment 14

[trix supremo]

verified on all latest 20041124 builds

Comment 15

[David.P]

How can I get this behavior back?

I need the selected message's subject line in Thunderbird's titlebar for technical reasons.

Any ideas?

Thanks
David.P