267673 - indicate that a closed group has any unread messages, should not be bold if all are read (usability issue)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, enhancement)

Description

[Alexander Myodov]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.53  [en]
Build Identifier: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.9 (20041103)

See "steps to reproduce" and "expected results".

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Switch to Inbox, mark all read.
2. Do sort by date, then group by sort.
3. Open any (say, "today" group). Mark any mail in "today" group unread.
4. Close just opened ("today") group.

Actual Results:  
All groups look similar.

Expected Results:  
The group "today" which contains an unread message should be somehow different 
from other groups.
The most consistent (with "news" case) approach is for a group to be underlined 
when it contains at least one unread email.
Besides, the group can also has a mark in "read" column (see bug 267663, which 
is different nevertheless, cause addresses another issue).
Besides, resolving of bug 267672 could also be useful.
Nevertheless, the most consistent and preferred approach is to have the group 
name underlined.

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

if you have the unread column displayed, you can tell if a group has unread
messages.

Comment 2

[Mike Fedyk]

I believe the group heading should be unbold if it only contains unread messages.

The background color can be changed to help identify group headings.

Comment 3

[Alexander Myodov]

(In reply to comment #1)
> if you have the unread column displayed, you can tell if a group has unread
> messages.
Yes it's a real workaround to "how to see", but first (and most important) of 
all, it doesn't resolve the inconsistency with style of threads' top email 
(underlined if a thread contains at least one unread email); and second, it's 
too pixel-wasting, having useful information only for group lines (which are 5-
10) but wasting the space for email lines (which number may be several hundreds)
. And at the same time the "read" flag columns is not used for them...

Comment 4

[David :Bienvenu]

ok, got it, changing summary (since there is a way) and severity to enhancement

Comment 5

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 274200 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Michael Osipov]

this is a real annoyance!

my bug has been mark a dupe of!

Comment 7

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
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If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
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Thank you for your help in this matter.

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Comment 8

[Alexander Myodov]

6 comments, and noone confirmed it yet... It would be good if someone with 
sufficient rights confirmed it, otherwise it will be lost.

Comment 9

[Berend Veldkamp]

This issue still exist in TB 2.0.0.0, please confirm. I'd be happy to change usercontent.css, if that offers a solution?

Comment 10

[Berend Veldkamp]

Attachment: One of these groups contains an unread message

Here's a screenshot to illustrate the problem. "Yesterday" contains an unread message, but how to tell?

Comment 11

[David :Bienvenu]

there's a patch in some bug about putting the counts for the groups in the group line, which would give you an indication of what the unread counts are for each group.

You could also use the column picker to add the "unread" column to your thread pane.

Comment 12

[Berend Veldkamp]

Well, that was fast, thanks
I'd misread #1, thinking I had to display the "Read" column, which is on by default, but doesn't show anything useful in the group header

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

seems like this should be easy

Comment 14

[alta88]

Attachment: groupedUnread.patch

Using the counts to determine unread is ocular carpal tunnel, it should be the well known underline for fast indication.

Comment 15

[alta88]

Attachment: groupedUnread.patch

tweak to only get unread count for collapsed threads.

Comment 16

[Kent James (:rkent)]

Comment on attachment 8654612 [details] [diff] [review]
groupedUnread.patch

Review of attachment 8654612 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

LGTM

Comment 17

[aleth [:aleth]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/d8297b57fec96d7735db58823e77ed38e9bc4993
Bug 267673 - indicate that a closed group has any unread messages, should not be bold if all are read. r=rkent