251917 - make "to,cc,bcc" menulist cycle when I click it, instead of opening up the menulist

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

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

rfe:  make it so "to,cc,bcc" menulist cycles when I click it, instead of (or in
addition to, depending on where you click?) opening up the menulist.

I've seen other mailers do this, and it's really nice.

we'd still have to make this widget accessible, but that should be possible.

scott, what do you think?

Comment 1

[Eyal Rozenberg]

I kind of like the idea, but what about Reply-To and other possible headers which a user might want to add?

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Don't see how we can do both drop down and cycle.
So which method is preferred, and is this request "wontfix"

Comment 3

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Well, I think you need more of a survey than just people on this bug.

Personally I like cycling much better, but then - cycle through all possible values (at the moment - To, CC, BCC, Reply-To).

If you also Reply-To to just one use, then you can remove it from the cycle once it's been used.

Comment 4

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

This bug won't be relevant anymore after bug 440377 gets implemented.

Anyway, I'm against click-to-cycle options as they seem convenient for seasoned users but are actually a discoverability nightmare as you don't know which options you'll get, if you miss the one you were looking for you need to learn a shortcut to go back or click super quickly to circle back to the option you missed, but then you can miss it again, and so on.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

per comment 4

Comment 6

[Eyal Rozenberg]

Hust a second here... if those bugs contradict, and that one has not been brought up here, not this one over there, give it a while... not so easy on the trigger please.

I've just made a post opposing the approach suggested in bug 440377, let's see how that's received.

Comment 7

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

It wasn't mainly closed because of bug 440377 but against the many clicks that are needed when you are also subscribed to newsgroups: To, CC, BCC, Reply-To, Newsgroup, Followup-To and Supersedes.

Comment 8

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani (:aleca) from comment #4)

This bug won't be relevant anymore after bug 440377 gets implemented.

Let's hope that bug 440377 also imlements smart ways of toggling single or multiple recipients between To, CC, or BCC & friends which resemble the current per-recipient convenience.

Anyway, I'm against click-to-cycle options as they seem convenient for seasoned users but are actually a discoverability nightmare as you don't know which options you'll get, if you miss the one you were looking for you need to learn a shortcut to go back or click super quickly to circle back to the option you missed, but then you can miss it again, and so on.

I concur with Alessandro and Richard that 'click to toggle' anything more than 2 options looks like a bad idea in terms of UX. Not sure why I didn't stick to my wontfix candidate hint 7 years ago. Btw, any other large software which implements that type of click-to-multi-toggle thing?

As a side note, in the current layout one can also focus the recipient type selector and press a character like C for CC to select an option. Less ideal for locales where different types may start with same character (although iirc even fast-typed character sequences may work, except for initial double-characters like "cc").