142471 - Don't show msg subject in window title of main window

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, enhancement)

Description

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

If you click on a msg in the thread pane, the subject of that msg will be added
to the front of the window title of the main Mailnews window (3pane). I.e. the
title will look like:

[Bug 61497] can't select text in message headers, but I'll make the subject a
little longer to illustrate the problem - Inbox for [e-mail]
- Beonex Communicator

I hope it's easy to see that this is quite unusable as window title.

This is being made worse, if you use standalone msg windows. These windows will
have the same title, so you end up with 2 completely different windows, which
have exactly the same title. This makes it impossible to restore the right
window using the taskbar.
Even worse it gets, when I have a browser window open with a similar title (e.g.
the same bug).

The title is also wrong, if I have the msg pane disabled, because the 3pane then
doesn't show the msg at all that is being advertized in the titlebar.

Fix is simple: Remove the one line that updates the titlebar. Will attach patch.

Comment 1

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Attachment: Suggested fix, version 1

This is against the branch, but will hopefully apply on the trunk. Slated for
inclusion in trunk.

sspitzer, please review.

It makes the window title of the 3pane display the folder, account and appname
only, even when a msg is selected in the thread pane. Standalone msg window is
not affected.

Comment 2

[J Luh]

*** Bug 130509 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[Anthony DiSante]

This is a really annoying one, because as the poster said, you end up with
multiple windows with the exact same title, and the same icon no less, so you
really have no idea what's what.

He mentioned that his patch only changed the title of the main window (not the
message window) but I'd like to suggest that that is equally important.  The
title of a message window should be the message subject; it makes no sense for a
message window to be named "Inbox for [e-mail]" because it's NOT
the inbox.

Finally, I'm using Moz 1.5b, almost a year and a half after the original bug
report.  I don't know how this all works with the patches and whatnot, but if
there's a working patch, shouldn't it have made its way into the release version
of Mozilla by now?

Comment 4

[Anthony DiSante]

...and I meant to also say, perhaps this bug should be renamed from:

   "Don't show msg subject in window title of main window"

to:

   "Deobfuscate overlapping window titles"

or something like that, to reflect the fact that it's not just the main window
that's got a problem, and to sound more scary and important :)

Comment 5

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> He mentioned that his patch only changed the title of the main window (not the
> message window) but I'd like to suggest that that is equally important.  The
> title of a message window should be the message subject; it makes no sense for a
> message window to be named "Inbox for [e-mail]" because it's NOT
> the inbox.

The message window's subject was and still is '<subject of msg> - <folder> for
<email of account> - <appname>'.

Comment 6

[Anthony DiSante]

> The message window's subject was and still is '<subject of msg> - 
> <folder> for <email of account> - <appname>'.

Right, so when you're reading any message that's in your inbox, you get:

Re: No video after kernel compilation - Inbox for [e-mail] - Mozilla

...which is first of all, ridiculously long, and second of all, "incorrect"
inasmuchas the window title says "Inbox for [e-mail]" but the
window isn't my inbox at all.  I'd say that's arguably incorrect from the user's
point of view, but even if one would argue the correctness of it, at best it's
still confusing and misleading and way too long.

Comment 7

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

It's not incorrect, because it's the *message* (identified by subject) *in* the
Inbox. It shows that you're reading your mail and not e.g. a news post.
Yes, it is excessively long.

It's not the subject of this bug anyways. It's a (slightly) different problem
and (totally) different patch.

Comment 8

[Anthony DiSante]

> it's the *message* (identified by subject) *in* the Inbox. 
> It shows that you're reading your mail and not e.g. a news 
> post. Yes, it is excessively long.

But that's only true when I'm reading a message in my inbox; when reading a
message in an arbitrarily-named folder, the title bar wouldn't tell you that it
was mail as opposed to news.

Since mail messages are categorically different from news messages, I think they
should probably have different icons (maybe they do; I haven't got any news set
up, so I haven't seen the news icon).  If the browser icon wasn't virtually
identical to the mail icon (especially at higher res/smaller icon sizes), and if
the mail message and main-mail-program icons weren't the same, this problem
wouldn't be much of a problem at all.

But I still think that if we're going to remove message info from the title of
the mailboxes window, then only makes sense to remove mailbox info from the
title of the message windows.

Would it really be that different of a patch to change the title of the message
windows?  I can't imagine it would be any more complicated.  Or did you just
mean that they should be 2 separate patches?

Comment 9

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> when reading a message in an arbitrarily-named folder, the title bar
> wouldn't tell you that it was mail as opposed to news.

"Beonex for [e-mail]" sounds terribly after mail.

> Would it really be that different of a patch to change the title
> of the message windows?

Yes. Please file a new bug. If only not to obfuscate this bug with discussion
irrelevant to the original problem. Thanks.

Comment 10

[u32858]

Hopefully fixed soon, by chaps.
JG

Comment 11

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 233326 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Comment on attachment 82441 [details] [diff] [review]
Suggested fix, version 1

mscott, this bug considerably degrades usability IMO.

Comment 13

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Attachment: Updated against 1.7.x

Comment 14

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

mscott: ping?

Comment 15

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

A screen shot of what is proposed?

Or, is this bug obsolete? 
(at least one item mentioned is fixed, i.e. when preview pane is closed)

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

related Bug 274009

Comment 17

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 274009 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 18

[Scott MacGregor]

Comment on attachment 157370 [details] [diff] [review]
Updated against 1.7.x

clearing an old review request, we no longer show the subject in the main title bar.

Comment 19

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

To bug opener, do you still see problem you state in bug summary?

Comment 20

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Please test yourself and stop asking that in all my bugs.

Comment 21

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

This is fixed in Thunderbird.
I don't use Seamonkey. Somebody using Seamonkey please chime in, it's trivial to check.

Comment 22

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

I checked with Seamonkey 2 and Thunderbird 2, but I couldn't see problem. So I asked you for "still occurs" and "if occurs, steps to re-produce".

Comment 23

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> I checked with Seamonkey 2 ... but I couldn't see problem

OK, closing as WORKSFORME (fixed in the meantime)