536117 - Empty message header - Functionality (usually Buttons) not appearing or available

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, defect)

Description

[leroy_tennison]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091201 Firefox/3.5.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091204 Thunderbird/3.0

Most common is message pane issues (on both OpenSuSE 11.2 and Debian 5.0.3).  On some messages (all of them "old" in the sense that they had been received prior to upgrade) the Reply/Forward/Archive/Junk/Delete buttons appear and work.  On others they aren't there (not just invisible - clicking where they should be produces no action).  I haven't been able to identify any further commonality.  Deleting old messages doesn't cause additional ones to have button functionality, sorting messages doesn't seem to have any impact, it's not just a contiguous range either.

On one occasion so far the subject lines for four messages disappeared and I couldn't open them by clicking on them (they were in the middle of my Inbox).  Exiting Thunderbird and restarting it solved that problem.

Reproducible: Always



Expected Results:  
Buttons should appear and be active for each mail message.

If you feel it would be beneficial I can forward a couple of emails where the buttons appear and a couple where they don't.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

are you using default theme?
can you reproduce with thunderbird started in safe mode.
can you attach screen shot?
is this both in message preview (3 pane window) and standalone display?

Comment 2

[leroy_tennison]

Attachment: A message with buttons present

Comment 3

[leroy_tennison]

Attachment: Message with buttons missing, the header is at it's top position, note "From" not visible

Comment 4

[leroy_tennison]

Attachment: Same message as TB3-b.png but header scrolled to see "From"

Comment 5

[leroy_tennison]

Attachment: Message in TB3-a.png opened in a separate tab

Comment 6

[leroy_tennison]

Attachment: Message in TB3-c.png opened in a separate tab

Comment 7

[leroy_tennison]

Attachment: Same message at TB3-a.png, proof we're in safe mode

Comment 8

[leroy_tennison]

Attachment: Same message at TB3-c.png, proof we're in safe mode

Comment 9

[leroy_tennison]

Attachment: Current xorg.conf

Right now I have 38 messages in my Inbox.  1-5 and 7 have buttons, the rest don't.

Comment 10

[leroy_tennison]

Attachment: Messages blanked out

Wasn't expecting to be able to document this but it happened again.  I happened to click the "Sort by junk status" button and several messages blanked out.  I also couldn't open them.  All 38 Inbox messages have subject lines.  I exited Thunderbird and restarted it (again in safe mode) and all 38 messages showed a subject line and the three I opened contained the original message.

Comment 11

[leroy_tennison]

If you need anything else please let me know.  Again, thanks for your effort on this.

Comment 12

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

So do you have the issue in safe-mode (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode) ?

Anuything in Tools -> Error console when this happens ?

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

dup of bug 526918?

Comment 14

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

(In reply to comment #13)
> dup of bug 526918?

I agree too (it seems closely the same behavior). 
Feel free to reopen it if I'm wrong.

Comment 15

[leroy_tennison]

Attachment: Question about Error Console

I found an error message in Error Console but I had been doing a number of things (reading/deleting messages) so I wanted a "clean state".  As a result I opened your message in a new tab then exited Thunderbird.  After re-launching it I opened the Error Console, that is what the attachment represents.

Comment 16

[leroy_tennison]

I looked at bug 526918 and am unsure of the duplicate status.  That bug talks about varying space in the header causing someone to have to scroll to get to the content but some of the screen shots show the problem I am reporting (no buttons in the header).  Rethinking this, there are three problems here, maybe we need to open bugs for each.  The three problems I see are:

Excess leading space in the header causing it to need to be scrolled (bug 526918)

No buttons in the header (this bug unless you want to consider that a part of bug 526918.  If so then it reports two separate issues, the one above and this one.)  It doesn't matter to me how you want to handle it, just let me know.

Subject lines in the message list "blanking out" which also has the effect that the message can't be opened and it won't display in the reading pane.  This is comment 10 above.  I had this happen again tonight while working on replying only this time it happened after deleting a message (the messages below the deleted one blanked out).  I now realize that my bug is actually two separate issues.

My suggestion would be to create three separate bugs (those above) out of these two in order to avoid confusion about what needed to be fixed.

Comment 17

[leroy_tennison]

One other comment, it seems that there is a patch for at least some of this.  Would it be easy for me to incorporate in my Thunderbird 3 installation?  If so I'd be glad to download it (just tell me where to get it and what to do with it) and test.  If it fixed something that might be helpful in simplifying things.  Let me know.

Comment 18

[leroy_tennison]

More information about the "disappearing list entries" part of this bug.  I noticed tonight that, once an entry in the list "went blank", as I moved my mouse over other entries they went blank as well.  I also discovered that I didn't have to exit Thunderbird to "recover", I switched focus away from the list to an email and, when I returned, the blank entries now appeared again.  Hope some of this helps find the source of the issue.

Comment 19

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

do you see this in v3.1?  And if so, please recap by supplying a set of numbered steps (actions) to reproduce the problem.

Comment 20

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

RESOLVED INCOMPLETE due to lack of response to previous comment. If you feel this change was made in error, please respond to this bug with your reasons why.