629460 - Do not automatically mark message as read if the user initiates a drag operation

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[Brian Hauer]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100914 Firefox/3.6.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.9) Gecko/20100915 Thunderbird/3.1.4

During the time necessary to move an unread message to a new folder by way of a drag-and-drop operation, the message is routinely marked as read by the "automatically mark messages as read" functionality.

When moving an unread message to a new folder, I usually want to retain the unread indicator on the message.  Because the timer expires during the drag operation, thereby marking the message as read, I have to navigate to the destination folder after completing the drop and reset the unread status.

I recommend that the behavior be changed so that the automatic-read function would not occur if the user initiates a drag operation before the timer expires.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Find an unread message
2. Start dragging the message to a new folder
3. If you take more than a second to do this (by default), the message will be marked unread
Actual Results:  
The actual behavior cause a silly rush to beat the one-second timer.  But I don't want to increase the timer because I want it to be 1 second in the normal selecting-the-message context.

Expected Results:  
Ideally, the message would not be marked as read if I am busy dragging the message to a new folder.

Comment 1

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

What happens if you change the timer in Tools -> options -> advanced -> reading

Comment 2

[Brian Hauer]

I should clarify that in all other contexts (other than dragging a message to a new folder), I -want- a 1-second timer for automatically marking a message read.  So disabling that function, or changing the timer to a higher value is a disappointing concession.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

This might be hard, but I suggest this is a bug.

Only mark messages as read on mouseup if message is in the same folder, i.e not moved?

Comment 4

[:aceman]

This only happens if a single message is selected. Then it is shown in the message pane. While dragged it is marked as read. Not sure if we can detect a drag operation is in progress and prevent the marking.

Comment 5

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

I'd argue that the issue here is that we load a message on mouse-down, not mouse-up.

Comment 6

[:aceman]

That could work. Can you do it?

Comment 7

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

Not anytime soon, I don't think. We'd probably need to change how XUL trees work. Which is fine, since they're not ux-consistent with Windows or Linux in this regard. But XUL trees are a bit scary...