1100026 - Switching focus between folders and messages pane, selected folder is always "active" color

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Alan Porter]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_5) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/38.0.2125.111 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Main window showing folders on the left, messages on the right (no preview pane).

Use TAB to switch focus between folders and messages.


Actual results:

The current folder is always blue (active folder highlight color), regardless of whether focus is on the folder window or the message window.

The current message is colored correctly - either orange (active message highlight color) or gray (inactive message highlight color), depending on whether the message window has focus or not.


Expected results:

The current folder should be blue when the folder window has focus (keyboard up/down moves to prev/next folders).  The current folder should be grey when another window has focus (keyboard up/down moves to prev/next messages within the current folder.

Previous versions did this coloring correctly.  V31.2.0 (Mac) does it incorrectly.

Impact: it's only visual, but it makes it confusing to know whether the focus is on the messages or the folders.  I tend to hit TAB several times, and I up/down arrow cautiously to see which side actually has focus.

Comment 1

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Similar phenomenon(Folder is still active color when focus is moved) is observed in Tb 31.2.0 on Win by :
(1) Select a Folder at Folder Pane, then click Help Menu -> Help Menu is expanded.
(2) Select a Folder at Folder Pane, then click "Unread" button of Quick Filter Bar.

But I couldn't observe it in Tb 31.2.0 by (3) pressing Tab when a folder is selected/active at Folder Pane.
(a) When Quick Filter Bar is shown : Select a Folder at Folder Pane, then press Tab key 
      => Focus is moved to Quick Search Box(field for <Ctrl+Shift+K>), and folder color is changed to gray(selected, not focused) .
(b) When Quick Filter Bar is NOT shown
(b-1) When Quick Filter Bar is NOT shown && Some mails are held in folder && Some maails are already selected :
       Select a Folder at Folder Pane, then press Tab key 
      => Focus is moved to Thread Pane, some mails are shown in Selected/Focused(active) color
            and folder color is changed to gray(selected, not focused).
       Press Tab key
      => Focus is moved to Message Pane,
            Color of selected mails at Thread Pane is changed to gray(selected, not focused)
(b-2) When Quick Filter Bar is NOT shown && Some mails are held in folder && No message is selected yet :
       Select a Folder at Folder Pane, then press Tab key 
      => Focus is moved to Thread Pane, top message is shown with dotted box(focused indicator)
            and folder color is changed to gray(selected, not focused).
       Press Tab key multiple times and Folder gets focus at Folder \pane again 
      => Focus is moved to Folder Pane and folder color is chnged to Selected/focused, 
            top message at Thread Pane is still shown with dotted box(focused indicator usually)
However, (b-2) was observed.

If Message Pane is hidden, (b-2) looks as follows :
   Folder is selected at Folder Pane
   Tab -> Focus is moved to Thread Pane, top message is shown with dotted box
   Tab -> Focus is moved to hidden Message Pane,
              top message is still shown with dotted box at Thread Pane
   Tab -> Focus is moved to Folder Pane, folder is shown as selected/focused,
              top message is still shown with dotted box at Thread Pane
i.e. In Tb 31.2.0 on Win, once top message is shown with dotted box(focused indicator) by Tab key, top message always looks "as if Focused" after any focus switch by Tab key.

Similar thing may occur on "message at Thread Pane" after pressing Tab key in Tb 31.2.0 on Mac OS X.
How did you switch focus to "message at Thread Pane"?
How did you know "message is actually focused and folder is not focused" when you saw following which you wrote in bug summary?
>  Switching focus between folders and messages, current folder is always "active" color
Phenomenon is next, isn't it?
   Even when focus is switched to folder at folder pane by Tab key, message is still shown "as if focused" at Thread Pane.
   So, it looks for you "Folder is still shown as selected/focused even when focus is moved to message".
.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Alan, can you still reproduce this issue using a current version)?
(I could not reproduce using nightly build on Windows 7)

Comment 3

[:aceman]

Seems to work fine on Win XP. Could be a theme problem.

Comment 4

[Alan Porter]

Trying on my Macbook running El Capitan, Thunderbird v38.6.0.

Now it's sort of the opposite problem... in the folder pane, the highlighted folder is always the "out-of-focus" grey color, whether that pane is in focus or not.  The individual messages are correctly shown in orange (my current highlight color) when that pane is in focus, and in grey when that pane is not in focus.

Running v38.5.1 on Linux, it appears to work as one would expect.  The currently focused pane is clearly indicated by the color of the current item.  Always orange when the panes are in focus and grey when not in focus.

Alan

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

No theme?

Comment 6

[rocket]

I'm having a very similar (annoying) problem with Thunderbird on linux. When you select a folder in the folder pane and then switch focus away to click on a message in the message pane, the selected folder continues to be the active in-focus color.

I've tested this on Ubuntu 16.04 and macOS Sierra. I discovered that macOS does not display this issue and on linux, the issue does not appear up through 45.8.0, but as soon as I upgrade linux Thunderbird to 52.0.1, the issue appears. Changing the theme on Ubuntu does not resolve the issue. I have tested on the latest nightly build (thunderbird-55.0a1), but the issue still appears.

Please help.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

rocket, do you still see this issue?

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Anthony, if you are inclined to try (but probably not worth it) and can reproduce please reopen.