Closed Bug 1364659 Opened 7 years ago Closed 2 years ago

Make powerful “Contacts Sidebar” more discoverable for default Thunderbird installations (show [Contacts] button on composition toolbar, and/or show side bar by default)

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

54 Branch
enhancement
Not set
normal

Tracking

(thunderbird_esr102 wontfix)

RESOLVED FIXED
107 Branch
Tracking Status
thunderbird_esr102 --- wontfix

People

(Reporter: ovari123, Assigned: elijmitchell)

References

Details

(Keywords: good-first-bug, papercut)

Attachments

(2 files)

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0
Build ID: 20170508114559
Interesting idea. However, I would think it was not made a default because of address autocomplete.
(I found no previous requests for this in https://mzl.la/2r4QEIL )
Severity: normal → enhancement
Component: Untriaged → Message Compose Window
(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk, NI for questions) from comment #1)
> Interesting idea. However, I would think it was not made a default because
> of address autocomplete.
> (I found no previous requests for this in https://mzl.la/2r4QEIL )

 1. Perhaps there are no previous request for this feature because it is a valid new enhancement bug?

 2. ‘Contacts Sidebar’ complements ‘addresss autocomplete’. ‘Address autocomplete’ does not 
    replace the ‘Contacts Sidebar’. For example:
    (a) Contacts having more than 1 email address → ‘Contacts Sidebar’ quicker than ‘address autocomplete’
    (b) Entering email addresses to CC, BCC → ‘Contacts Sidebar’ is quicker than ‘address autocomplete’

 3. People did not know that this feature was already available in Thunderbird. 
    30,000+ users have downloaded the ‘Contacts Sidebar’ add-on
    https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/contacts-sidebar/
    (a) Seems like ‘Contacts Sidebar’ is very useful indeed.

 4. We did not know about this feature until CardBook incorporated this feature
    https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/cardbook/
    (a) Surely then there are other Thunderbird users that do not know of this feature and 
        would benefit from the ‘Contacts Sidebar’ being enabled by default

 5. Is this a time-saving feature that is not as well known as it could be?

 6. Fortunately, the ‘Contacts Sidebar’ is also very easy to disable.
(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk, NI for questions) from comment #1)
> Interesting idea. However, I would think it was not made a default because
> of address autocomplete.
> (I found no previous requests for this in https://mzl.la/2r4QEIL )

+1, interesting idea and probably not default because it might seduce people to believe that you *have* to use contacts side bar to enter contacts, which might distract from powerful in-place autocomplete.

I'd agree with Ovari's comment 2 that contacts side bar is a very powerful tool which is currently very hard to discover.
I'm not sure yet if it's needed or wise to enable contacts side bar by default, but what if we increased discoverability in this way:

PROPOSAL (make contacts side bar more discoverable):

> At then end of composition toolbar, include "Contacts" toggle button by default (currently available in toolbar palette).

That way, it'll be at everybody's fingertips when they are looking for something other than recipient-autocomplete, but we're not over-emphasizing it by defaulting to contacts sidebar for everyone.
The only nasty thing about that is the current over-emphasis of pressed toolbar toggle buttons which imho is very odd and distractive, but we can talk to Richard to reduce the border of pressed state to regular 1px width which I believe would solve the problem.

---

More on contacts sidebar benefits and philosophy:

It's a different approach because you'll be narrowing down and choosing from a stable, alphabetical list of search results, as opposed to recipient autocomplete which is optimized to rapidly narrow down on a single contact, but results are weighted and order of suggestions changes according to relevance algorithm (which still has a long way to go before reaching Firefox awesomebar levels of intelligent frecency, although most recent Firefox versions have some blunders where suggestions are disappearing when you try to grab them.)

Ovari hasn't listed one of the most powerful features of contacts side bar, which is to find and add recipients in bulk, in both simple and advanced scenarios. Simple: search "Mozilla.com" to find all my colleagues from mozilla, and add in bulk. Advanced: Use nickname or custom fields for a proper tagging system, then use random combination of tags as your search words, narrow down results like a pro (e.g. "TB QA" to find Wayne, Jörg, and Thomas labelled "TB, QA, Devs" in their nickname or custom field), then add all of them in one go, which will be a repetitive hassle with recipient autocomplete. So really, autocomplete and sidebar are complementary, depending on workflow and scenario.
> 30,000+ users have downloaded the ‘Contacts Sidebar’ add-on

FWIW that's less than 0.5% of the user population. And I suspect many may be on old version of Thunderbird. Also the review comments almost never mention wanting this in the compose window https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/contacts-sidebar/reviews/   

Not saying we couldn't do lots better in the current UI - our user exposed functionality does seem somewhat higly compartmentalized.

Also, Thomas' last paragraph is one reason why I used the F9 sidebar many years ago, iirc when autocomplete wasn't working so well.

bug 682424 would probably be a blocker
Depends on: 682424
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 2 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX

Aleca, Contacts Side Bar is a very powerful tool for adding recipients, especially adding multiple filtered recipients in a single action (which is not possible with recipient autocomplete). For more details, see my comment 3. It's unfortunate that this power tool is all but undiscoverable currently (only available via View > Contacts Sidebar from main menu). Can we try and make contacts side bar more discoverable?

The easiest way of doing that imho would be to show the "Contacts" button (available from toolbar customization) by default on the Composition Toolbar, which makes it easily discoverable, but not shown by default. What do you think?

Flags: needinfo?(alessandro)
Status: RESOLVED → REOPENED
Ever confirmed: true
Resolution: WONTFIX → ---
Summary: Enable “Contacts Sidebar” for default Thunderbird installations → Make powerful “Contacts Sidebar” more discoverable for default Thunderbird installations (show [Contacts] button on composition toolbar, and/or show side bar by default)

Yes, I don't see any reason why that button shouldn't be in the default set of the composition toolbar.

Flags: needinfo?(alessandro)
Keywords: good-first-bug
Keywords: papercut
Assignee: nobody → elizabeth
  • Add contacts to default buttons in toolbar
  • Previous customizations are not affected
Attachment #9297482 - Attachment description: Bug 1364659 - Add contacts to message compose toolbar. r=aleca → Bug 1364659 - Add contacts button to message compose toolbar. r=aleca
Target Milestone: --- → 107 Branch

We discussed in phabricator that this change is for new installs and when the user resets the compose toolbar back to the default. https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D158795

Pushed by alessandro@thunderbird.net:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/2780126d18d9
Add contacts button to message compose toolbar. r=aleca

Status: REOPENED → RESOLVED
Closed: 2 years ago2 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
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