322337 - "Get Next 500 news Messages' only accessible via File menu - would like a 'Headers' button like in OE

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Toolbars and Tabs, enhancement)

Description

[RenegadeX]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

Outlook Express has a 'Headers' button that can be used while reading newgroups to download the next ~x~ number of message headers from the newsserver, especially useful when visiting a newsgroup with many thousand messages (esp binary groups where single files(split) might take up a few 100 messages each). Thunderbird (I'm using 1.5RC2, but any version will do), only offers this function via the 'File->Get Next 500 news Messages' menu-item. I think a menu button that does the same thing would be useful. (There seems to be an abundance of '2+ click' procedures in TB that OE allowed users to do with just 1).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Subscribe to a new newsgroup that is likely to contain many thousand messages
2. When prompted, do NOT click the 'mark remaining headers as read' box but download the default 500 messages.
3. Attempt to download older message headers beyond the initial 500 that download without using the File menu..

Actual Results:  
Currently, you must do a 2-click process (or use the kb) in order to download more headers:
1) Click 'File'
2) Navigate to 'Get Next 500 news messages' and click to do it.


The code the button needs is:
goDoCommand('cmd_getNextNMessages')

(I made my own using the 'Customize Toolbar Buttons' extension, but having this function built-in to Thunderbird would be quite handy, and make users migrating from Outlook Express more 'at home').

Comment 1

[Ronald Killmer]

This RFE is a candidate for a folder pane context menu item that appears when hovering over a news account. The needed property of server type-nntp is exposed to aid hookup of the needed command.

This could have low L10n impact by reuse of the string from the file menu.

If done as a toolbar button, art work would be needed for each of the 3 default themes.