111665 - Re-sorting messages should scroll to show selection

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 186999

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Les Gasser]

Summary: Message list window should be positioned
on selected items after sort.

Suppose I select an item (message header) in the message list in the
Mail/News main window.  (I may do this by double-clicking on the mail
item to display the message, for example, or by just single-clicking
to select it.)

Now I sort the messages list, e.g. by pressing the "Subject" column
bar. Where has my selected message header gone? Well, I have to scroll
the message list window by hand to find it. If I have several thousand
mail headers active (which is usual) this can be hard.

In Netscape 4.7x, when I re-sort the mail header list, the list gets
resorted and the window gets repositioned in the newly sorted list so
that the selected mail header stays in view.

This is VERY useful, for example, to find a thread of messages
quickly: find one of them, then re-sort by thread, and there is the
whole thread. Currently, in Mozilla, I need to sort by thread, then
scrool through hundreds or thousands of messages to find the thread.

There are some issues to consider about what to do when many
[possibly non-contiguous] messages are simultaneously selected. An
easy default is to position the window over the "first" one (lowest in
the sort order).

Comment 1

[Peter Lockhart]

reporter: can you check if this is still the case on a new build. I can't
reproduce the bug - message selection remains on that which i selected despite
changing sort order or columns.
needs to be marked as worksforme otherwise

Comment 2

[Les Gasser]

Peter, this bug has not been repaired in 0.9.8;
I haven't checked the most recent nightly build
though.

Just to be clear the issue is that when messages
are resorted, the window does not change position 
with respect to the messages. Thus the same,
still-highlighted message is likely to
move out of the visible window,and one has
to scroll all over the place to find it again.
This is not easy in a large message collection.

The issue is NOT that the highlighting changes or that
a message loses highlighting. The issue is that
once resorted, a still-highlighted message is 
hard to find in a large colection of messages
(e.g. the 6000+ normally in my inbox).

Again. compare to Netscape 4.7 behavior in this
situation - the visible window scrolls with a 
re-sort so the originally-highlighted message
remains visible.

Thanks, -- Les

Comment 3

[Hal Black]

I can confirm this problem in the latest nightly build.

Comment 4

[nemo]

I tried duplicating by choosing a thread that extended over several months.
Then choosing various messages in it, and repeatedly sorting by subject, date,
and threaded.
The message I had selected always stayed focused.
Is this behaviour still occurring?  Using 2002041721 linux

Comment 5

[Les Gasser]

I confirm it in Mozilla 9.9 (2002030112/linux) but
that is an earlier release than kyberneticist's report.
Here is a simple and explicit test/illustration that maybe
someone with a newer version could try:

1. Open a mail folder that has a significant number of message
headers, at least more headers than will display in the one header
display window visibly. 100 msgs or more should probably do.

2. Sort by Sender by clicking on the "Sender" header bar (which means
sort alphabetically by sender)

3. Scroll down and highlight the bottom-most message in the list
("highest" in alphabetical order) by single-clicking on it.

4. Re-sort by Sender by clicking on the "Sender" header bar
(which simply reverses the alphabetical order).

5. If the bug that I'm reporting still exists, your highlighted
message is no longer visible - it is off the screen
somewhere. (I.e. it's now at the "top" of the list, while your window
remains positioned over the "bottom" region.)

-- Les

Comment 6

[Hal Black]

I can confirm it (again) in the latest nightly build under W2K.  The latest
nightly build in this case is 2002041803.

How to reproduce:

Sort by date.  Select a message.  Sort by Sender.

Result:

The mail box resorts the messages however you told it to sort them.  However,
the list window does not scroll at all, it just stays where it was before.  So
you have to scroll through and hunt for your message.

I have tried this with mail folders of 164 and 2065 messages.

Comment 7

[Luke Deller]

I tried to reproduce this bug in Mozilla 1.0rc3 under Win2K using the steps
suggested in comment 5 and in comment 6.  Mozilla correctly scrolls the list
window for me.  Looks like this bug has been fixed?

Comment 8

[Hal Black]

Okay, here is the deal with this bug (it is still there as of build 2002053008).

The "preview" window has to be open for this feature to work *WHEN YOU SELECT
THE MESSAGE*.  That is, you are seeing a 3 panes (mail folders, message headers,
and message), not only 2 panes (mail folders, message headers).

If you select the message in 3-pane mode, sorting will follow the message.
If you select the message in 2-pane mode, sorting will NOT scroll the scrollbar
at all.

This is interesting, because if you switch modes AFTER the message is selected,
it has no effect.  This should make it easy to track down.

So, let's add another step to the instructions in comment 5.

0. Open the messenger window.  If the message preview / message view panel is
open, click the handle on the divider bar between the message headers and
message view panels until the message preview window is no longer visible.

Comment 9

[Daniel Wang]

*** Bug 134635 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[laurel]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 186999 ***

Comment 11

[laurel]

marking verified as duplicate