114637 - can't drag-select in thread pane (Rectangle selection)

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, enhancement)

Description

[FZiegler]

A great legacy feature of 4.x was the ability to select multiple messages in the
thread pane by click and drag. Typically: pick a sort order, then select a
contiguous group that you want to trash, mark read, move to another folder, or
whatever.

(Very convenient to read newsgroups: hold the mouse, drag it just under the pane
so the list scrolls; stop at the first interesting subject/author/whatever; then
all scrolled messages are selected, so you can mark them read *without
downloading any of them*. In IMAP mail, same method to scroll past a bunch of
SirCam messages you don't want to download :-)

(Powermail, http://www.ctmdev.com/powermail3.shtml, is another 3-pane reader
that allows drag-select in the thread pane.)

Why has this expected behavior disappeared in Mozilla? I suggest extending bug
48912 (which calls for drag-selection in bookmarks and other trees,
browser-side) to address the thread pane tree as well.

Comment 1

[Dimitrios]

This feature exists in Mozilla, with a known bug (101549): it doesn't work when
you d&d from Subject column. Do you see the issue you are reporting when
dragging from the rightmost part of thread pane?
As for bug 48912, afaik, it doesn't apply in thread pane because the latter use
outliner instead, not tree. Someone more knowledgable please correct me if I'm
wrong.

Comment 2

[FZiegler]

No, I mean something different - I guess I haven't been clear enough. Bug 101549
talks about (D&D'ing) a multi selection that has *already been done* "using ctrl
key". I'm talking about *doing the selection* by click and drag.

Sure, you can select multiple messages by

* (1) click to select one message
  (2) hold the shift key (or ctrl, or cmd on Mac)
  (3) scroll to another message using mouse or arrow keys
  (4) click that message to extend selection
  (5) to extend further, repeat from (2)
      ...
      ...
  (N) to extend further, repeat from (2)
                   **

In contrast to this (and to Pine, or Gnus), Netscape was truly point-and-click
(the whole idea, no?): assuming that (1) to (N) above are subject lines in the
thread pane, you could select them all by holding the mouse button down at *,
moving to ** (automatically scrolling down in the process, if N is large), and
releasing the mouse button there. Or conversely from ** to *. All done with one
hand instead of 2 or 3, with as much trial-and-error as you like, and all
*without* downloading the first selected message (which one can't avoid, in the
current Mozilla).

This may all sound complicated to explain, but for me, it makes newsgroup
reading about ten times more tedious.

Comment 3

[FZiegler]

To make myself (hopefully) clearer, in the above description in Mozilla you need
one mouse click at (1), hold down shift key, several mouse clicks in the scroll
bar at (3), another mouse click at (4), etc., until (N).

In Netscape 4.x all was done with ONE click: hold down at (1), drag, release at (N).

Comment 4

[Dimitrios]

I cannot reproduce suggested NS4.x behaviour on Win98. Supposing it is Mac only
? Platform->Macintosh.

Comment 5

[laurel]

I can't seem to reproduce the described thread pane effect in 4.7 on mac OS 9.2.  
I understand the difference in the above descriptions, but I'm not seeing a 
scroll by drag at all, much less a select without using ctrl or shift.
Of course, drag selection, including scroll, does work in the message pane...

Comment 6

[FZiegler]

Attachment: drag-select in thread pane (Netscape 4.75)

Well, I'm trying to attach two screenshots of Netscape 4.75, which I hope will
clarify. In the first, I select a few messages by click, hold and drag within
the thread pane. In the second, I have dragged the mouse below the edge of the
pane, causing hundreds of messages to scroll by as more and more of them got
selected. You can't do any of that in Mozilla.

Comment 7

[FZiegler]

Attachment: drag-select in thread pane (part 2)

Comment 8

[Sheela Ravindran]

changing to enhancement. I am still not able to simulate this behavior. Since
the reporter seems to be sure of being able to do this changing the status to
enhancement.   This could be mac specific and also there could be some other
settings turned on in the os to be able to do so.  
Reporter,
Do you have any settings in os to be able to do so? 

Comment 9

[FZiegler]

> I am still not able to simulate this behavior. 

It's the way 4.x behaves on a Mac. No need to simulate :-)

> This could be mac specific and also there could be some other
> settings turned on in the os to be able to do so.  
> Reporter,
> Do you have any settings in os to be able to do so? 

Yes, I think it's Mac 4.x specific. (I just checked 3.04 on Mac and 4.70 on
Linux, and neither allows drag-selecting messages.) Marking 4xp because it's a
clear regression from past Netscape behavior on the Mac. 

And no, I don't need any special settings to do that. Unlike
[e-mail], I'm unable to NOT get this behavior, in any 4.x version I
have around, on several Macs, both under OS 9.x or Classic in OS X.

Laurel: can you take a look at the attached screenshots, and try again?

Comment 10

[Jan Varga [:janv]]

There might be a problem with having both drag select and drag and drop from
thread pane to folder pane.

Comment 11

[Jesse Ruderman]

*** Bug 128200 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[FZiegler]

Attachment: drag-select in thread pane (Netscape 4.75)

png version

Comment 13

[FZiegler]

Attachment: drag-select in thread pane (part 2)

png version

Comment 14

[FZiegler]

I have uploaded png versions of the screenshots, since I'm starting to worry if
the tiff format I used isn't hurting people's ability to view/believe them (Jen
Glick tells me that the bug "hasn't been duplicated by qa yet") -- even though
it's already been duped at least twice: bug 128200, bug 138628.

(By the way, is anyone else having trouble seeing those tiffs in Mozilla? All
I'm getting, under Mac OS X, is a quicktime icon. Is this a known bug?)

To address Jan Varga's comment 10: I don't see why this would be more
problematic than it was in Netscape 4.x, or than it is in the OS X Finder's list
view. 

Comment 15

[Don Erway]

I miss the same thing under win2k, using moz1.3b

Comment 16

[Don Erway]

Just to be clear - it is not mac specific.  Many apps including the windows
explorer, support this "drag a rectangle" selection method, and I find myself
trying to use it over and over, in mozilla, under windows.

Seems to me it always worked in netscape 4.7, & win-nt.  But I'm not putting it
back on, to find out...

Comment 17

[Dimitrios]

Don was right, it isn't Mac specific issue. But I can't recall what was
happening on NS4.x for Windows. Changing OS to All.

Comment 18

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 245545 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 19

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Interesting that nobody has bothered to point out why drag-selection doesn't 
work -- or at least, why it would be hard to implement -- in the Thread Pane:  
It's because the entire line is hot -- if you click in any column, the item is 
selected (excepting the flag, junk, and read columns, which change the status of 
the item).  You can click on the date to drag the message to a folder, etc.

Compare this to (for example) Windows Explorer, where only the name is hot; 
clicking on the date does nothing.  This allows you to make a click somewhere to 
begin a selection rectangle, without the click immediately selecting an item for 
dragging.

Comment 21

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9pre) Gecko/2008052901 SeaMonkey/2.0a1pre

WFM as follows:

- continuous selection (shift-click, or shift-up, shift-down, shift-Home, shift-End)
- discontinouous select (Ctrl-click, or Ctrl-arrow followed by space)
- discontinuous unselect (Ctrl-click, or Ctrl-arrow followed by Ctrl-space)

Comment 22

[FZiegler]

First of all, this is about making a (continuous, "rectangle") selection using *only the mouse*. So none of your keyboarding (ctrl, shift, up, down, Home, End, space) is relevant.

Second, even in the case of continuous selection by "shift-click", please count your clicks. As detailed in comment#2 you currently need two of them (in different places) for each extension of the selection by 10 messages (or however many are *visible* in your thread pane). This can add up to *dozens*.

Whereas, as previous comments and attached pictures explain at length, the behavior in 4.x (and OS X Finder, and Windows Explorer, etc., etc.) require *one*:

1) Mousedown near first message to be selected;
2) While still holding mouse button down, move pointer to end of desired selection
    (note: any necessary scrolling to get there happens automatically);
3) Once there, release mouse button.

Comment 23

[FZiegler]

(Granted you may 1) click on first-mesage-to-be-selected, 2) go click in the scroll bar until the last-to-be-selected appears, 3) come back shift-click on that. That's still tedious and several clicks too many, compared to expected behavior.)

Comment 24

[Karsten Düsterloh]

Thomas, 
there's no need to tag bugs in the SeaMonkey component as [SM] …