143147 - More obvious way to remove (multiple?) email addresses when composing

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1100103

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[Max Waterman]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; IRIX IP32; en-US; rv:1.0.0+) Gecko/20020506
BuildID:    2002050623

It is awkward to remove addresses from the address list of an email that you are
composing.

Please consider adding a 'x' button on each line that will remove an address
from the list, or adding a delete option to the
'To|Cc|Bcc'|ReplyTo|Newsgroup|FollowUp' menu for each line.

Thanks.

Max.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.reply-all to an email
2.try to remove one of the email addresses from the list
3.

Actual Results:  You have to select the entire email address, hit 'backspace'
and then hit 'delete'.

Expected Results:  just click on an 'x' for each entry, or select 'delete' from
the menu for each line.

Comment 1

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

-->varada. Probably a dup

Comment 2

[Ricardo dos Santos Freire Jr.]

This used to be the way in Messenger (NS 4.78): you could click the "card" just
before the adress in the list and then hit del to remove it. In Mozilla 1.0 RC3
it doesn't work. 

Comment 3

[Kai Lahmann (is there, where MNG is)]

does this problem still exist with 1.1beta?

Comment 4

[Max Waterman]

This problem still exists with build 2002111303.

Max.

Comment 5

[Max Waterman]

Still exists in 2002122508

Comment 6

[Max Waterman]

I'm using Mac OS X 10.2.3 now, and it also has the problem, so I don'tbeleive it
is IRIX only (and I didn't really think it was).

Comment 7

[Aaron Lawrence]

The 4.x behaviour now works in Moz 1.8a3. Click the card icon, that selects the
whole address, then you can delete. 

In my mind that is still clumsier than the original suggestion of an [x] button.
It is also very non-obvious, why would I click on the card icon to select the
address? I'd actually expect it to show me the address book entry, if anything...

This does bother me in practice. 

Incidentally, if you click the "Address" button there is an obvious remove
button there... 

See also bug 101074, but it's not a dupe.

Comment 8

[Max Waterman]

agree with everything you say.

address icon delete will do for now, so this should be an RFE.

Comment 9

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 87051 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 277789 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Incidentally, if you click the "Address" button there is an obvious remove
> button there... 

That's only true for the suite; TB only provides a sidebar with two Add buttons 
-- xrer bug 252665.

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #11)
>TB only provides a sidebar with two Add buttons 
> -- xrer bug 252665.

And more's the pity.

bug 252665 requests the old behavior be restored, which could potentially make the request here for an X unnecessary.

Comment 13

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #12)
> bug 252665 requests the old behavior be restored, which could potentially
> make the request here for an X unnecessary.

Maybe.  If you do the select-card-icon and <delete> (requiring mouse and keyboard action), there's still an empty address field left; you need a second <delete> or <bksp> to remove it entirely.  Quick removal of one address at a time, at least, without needing to open a dialog or switch between mouse and keyboard, would be much appreciated I think -- as would an accompanying Undo feature.  

With better keyboard navigation of the addresses (bug 244512), a quick keyboard deletion -- perhaps Shift+Del -- to completely remove the address field would be good, too.

Being able to simply delete a single address, multiple times, would be easier than creating a multiple selection using Ctrl+Click and then deleting the selection.  But a shift-click/shift-drag/shift+arrow to select a number of consecutive addresses would probably be better handled in the dialog, where you can more easily view a larger number of addresses.  See bug 136897 for multiple-selection within the address fields.

See also bug 284648.

Comment 14

[Don Erway]

Why not just allow multi line select in the address list of the compose window?

This would be even simpler, than checking an x.

We could just ctrl-click, or shift-click, and delete, or change recipient types, or...

Comment 15

[Karel Koubek]

I agree with Don, Ctrl/Shift-click would be the best intuitive solution to the problem. Many PC users are already used to this when selecting multiple files in a folder.

Comment 16

[mwu4]

I agree with Don too and look forward to this UI change in Thunderbird.

Comment 17

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

an important enterprise issue (including comment 13). 
just spoke to someone about this a couple days ago.

Comment 18

[Steven de Jong]

It seems this change has still not been implemented. It is a miracle that such a badly designed piece of UI work has now been around for, well, basically 6-7 years.

No offence meant, but also no improvement seen :)

Comment 20

[Stephen Schaub]

The ability to delete multiple recipients from a message easily is one of the features I was really hoping to see in Thunderbird 3. I am disappointed it still has not arrived.

Comment 21

[Jesse Wiens]

Adding my voice to those who *really* would like to see this get addressed.
I can't wholeheartedly recommend TB to others without it.

Comment 22

[kaecyyalpha+mozilla]

This bug makes Thunderbird extremely frustrating when trying to put together mails to
multiple addresses quickly.

You can’t copy and paste email addresses from To, From fields, etc, drag and drop them into other emails, and so on-- way too clunky and difficult to manage!

Comment 23

[annihilannic]

Another strong encouragement to improve this confusing UI behaviour.  

I regularly 'Reply All' to something in my sent items as a way to resume the thread or remind a non-responding recipient.  But then deleting myself from the recipients is not straightforward; I have to click in my address field and then either Ctrl-A or triple-click to select all and delete the contents... or if I want to remove that field completely I have to click the To:/CC:/etc drop-down list to select it, then click again to roll it up, then hit delete to remove that recipient field completely.  Or click in my address field, shift-tab to select the drop-down list, then delete.

I can figure this stuff out as an IT professional, but I'm trying to encourage end-users to use TBird too and things like this are... unexplainable.

Comment 26

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/address-close-button/ works nicely

Comment 27

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

This has been thoroughly fixed by now.

• In bug 1100103, Richard implemented a basic (x) button for each recipient (which makes this bug a duplicate of that)
• In bug 1493158, Thomas D. sorted out the error-prone behaviour and cleaned up the UI
• In bug 1527547, Thomas D. streamlined the entire workflow of deleting single and multiple recipients (consecutively), both for mouse and keyboard, with recipient auto-select now allowing fast deletion of multiple or all recipients especially via keyboard.
• In bug 440377, Alex (aleca) radically re-designed the entire recipients area, laying the foundation for more effecient handling of recipients, including some basic (multi)deletion patterns and massive overall UX improvements
• In bug 1602431, Thomas D. once again fixed and streamlined the entire workflow of deleting single and multiple recipients, especially via keyboard.
• In bug 1615917, Thomas D. implemented a simple way of deleting all recipients of a message via incremental Ctrl+A
• More improvements pending, see dependants of bug 440377 (recipient pills), bug 1601748 (pills-UI), bug 1601745 (pills-UX), many filed by Thomas D.

Comment 28

[annihilannic]

Thanks to all invovled! The addressees UI is vastly improved. Must be satisfying to close off an 18-year-old bug.... ;-)