1602492 - Auto-complete dropdown suggestions too far away from text input, esp. if recipient is added towards the right side of recipient field. Pill's autocomplete too small.

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #1602477 +++

I am looking at the latest available iteration of bug 440377 (try build 73.0a1 (2019-12-06) (64-bit).*

STR

1. Fill to-field with pills to the end, leave space for entering one more
2. Enter recipient address behind existing pills (on the far right)
3. Observe auto-complete dropdown (with multiple suggestions, on the far left...)

Actual result

• as dropdown covers the with of entire recipient field, and entries are left-aligned, suggestions are far away from the actual focus point where user is typing.
• visually odd, functionally inconvenient

Expected result

• We must find a better way which gets the dropdown suggestions horizontally as close the actual user input as possible (dropdown left-aligned to the input as long as possible, then change to right-aligned for entries too far on the right).
• I know this was done intentionally (avoiding super-slim dropdown), but that's an implementation-level argument. This isn't good enough. I'm sure we can do better. Popups can definitely be styled in some way to position this right.

*: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try-comm-central&revision=674bb73bd2b093deb8170dc8ecd7d67b5d1239a9

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Imho this is akward for entering any recipient starting from the second pill, but it gets worse for pills on the far right.

Comment 2

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Yeah wanted, but we weren't yet able to figure out how to resolve this technically.

Comment 3

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

On a related note, the autocomplete dropdown inside a pill in edit mode is too small.

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Mass-changing bugs around the new recipient area (pills) from product/component MailNews Core/Composition to Thunderbird/Message Compose Window, because composition frontend code is not shared with SM. Mostly cloned from Bug 440377 which started out in MailNews Core long back.

20200614002RecipientPillsProductChangeTypeEnhancement

Comment 5

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: Screenshot1: Autocomplete suggestions appear far away from user's input

This is still biting. Here's a screenshot of the problem: With only 5 recipients already entered, autocomplete suggestions for the next recipient will appear a whopping 40cm away from the user's current input position that they're looking at... That's pretty un-ergonomic as they'll have to keep checking far-right and far-left in turns as they type to narrow down the results. Not good for enterprise UX, either.

Alex, any ideas? Can we try harder to do something about this?

• Whenever possible, autocomplete popup should be left-aligned (for LTR languages) with the actual address-input where typing happens.
• If the available space to the right (for LTR) is too small to show the longest autocomplete entry (well, probably some maximum default width which we assume or calculate), as we cannot display outside the window, it should end up right-aligned with the right border of the Write window and preserve X of that position.
• We could calculate the maximum default width like this:
  • Longest address book name (as those can also get displayed in autocomplete results, iirc) + some maximum default length for a long email address with a long display name.

Comment 6

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

I'll see if I can find some time later this week to find a solution.

Comment 7

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

We haven't gotten any complaint or feedback from other users in 3 years regarding this.
Since that autocomplete is something coming from m-c, tweaking it is a very bad idea, so marking this as WONTFIX.