155273 - [RFE] Message List Pane could scroll by one in advance

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, enhancement)

Description

[Kai Engert (:KaiE:)]

Open the 3 pane mail window.
Make sure you are looking at a folder, where the number of mails in the folder
is larger than the available space in the message list pane.
Scroll to the top of the list, so that scrolling down will be possible.
Click on the bottom most visible message header.

Actual behaviour: The message gets selected, but otherwise the pane remains
unchanged. If you decide you want to read the next message, you have to do a
two-step process. You need to click the scrollbar before you are able to click
and read the next message.


Suggested new behaviour: Selecting the bottom-most message should automatically
scroll down by one. This would conveniently allow you read messages one after
another, without having to fiddle with the scroll bar.


Additional notes:
- the "in advance scrolling" should be done in the other direction too, i.e. if
you select the topmost visible message.
- the "in advance scrolling" should not be done, if the message list pane is too
small, i.e. if it is able to display only one message at a time.

Comment 1

[[e-mail]]

For the scroll-down case I deliberately size my thread pane so that it's one
pixel too short to display a whole number of messages. Thus when I select the
last message the thread pane automatically scrolls the last pixel into view. The
last pixel isn't used for anything useful, just that dotted line used to show focus.

Comment 2

[Kai Engert (:KaiE:)]

cc'ing Jan, is there an easy way to do this?

Comment 3

[Jan Varga [:janv]]

Well, Neil correctly described one already working possibility.
Personally I use the mousewheel for this purpose.
I don't say it's not possible we just need to design a good UI for it.
Can you point to some applications which already do that ?

Comment 4

[Kai Engert (:KaiE:)]

I'm not aware of other application that do this.
But I think other applications don't use list boxes where some lines are only
visible partically.

You ask what UI we could use to implement it.
I would not use additional UI controls but simply use the following logic:

- if the user selects the message that is at the bottom, scroll up by one

- if the user selects the message that is at the top, sroll down by one


Actually, I realize this is something that would have to be done in the mail
application - not in the general widget code.

Comment 5

[Jan Varga [:janv]]

>actually, I realize this is something that would have to be done in the mail
>application - not in the general widget code.

yeah, definitely not in the general widget code

Comment 6

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

No action in 5 years. I think this is still valid but I don't see it because (in a way similar to comment #1) in my maximized 3-pane window (whose preview pane is closed) there is an odd number of half lines (i.e., one half line is visible below the bottommost full line).