1656180 - Cannot attach attachment via left-click on attachment pane whitespace (only triggers attach dialog when the attachment pane is empty (no attachments yet))

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Ja.Claudius]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; ) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/83.0.4103.116 Safari/537.36 OPR/69.0.3686.95

Steps to reproduce:

Can't attach 2 attachments to email, TB version 78.0.1 (32 bit).

Comment 1

[Ja.Claudius]

Error update. If I use the menu -> file -> attach, then more attachments can be inserted. If I click in the attachment field, only 1 attachment can be inserted.

Comment 2

[Ja.Claudius]

Error update. If I use the menu -> file -> attach, then more attachments can be inserted. If I left-click in the attachment field, only 1 attachment can be inserted. If I right-click in the attachment field and select the option to attach a file, more attachments can be inserted.

Comment 3

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Ja.Claudius, thanks for reporting this.
Next time, please offer proper steps to reproduce your problem, so that it becomes actionable.

STR

1. compose msg in TB78, View > Attachment pane (Alt+M)
2. left-click on whitespace of empty attachment pane to Attach File(s) (as hinted by pane tooltip)
3. left-click on whitespace below 1st attachment again to Attach File(s) (as hinted by pane tooltip)

Actual result

• step 2: first left-click on pane whitespace: success (highly efficient, intuitive and convenient way of adding attachments)
• step 3: subsequent left-clicks on pane whitespace: fail (Tooltip says: Attach File(s), but nothing happens)

Expected result

• ux-consistency: Attaching via left-click on attachment whitespace should work regardless of previous attachments added or not.
• The correct behaviour is seen on TB 68.10.0 where this just works - please try it!
• Very efficient and convenient because attachment pane whitespace is a big, no-brainer click target.

This is a regression caused by bug 1613004.

As Magnus pointed out, we should ensure to prevent selection misclicks, which is easy to achieve:

• do nothing (i.e. don't deselect, don't show attach dialog) when clicking whitespace while holding Ctrl or Shift modifier keys.

With that error-prevention in place, there'll be no risks or side-effects of restoring this useful behaviour (available since time immemorial).

Comment 4

[Ja.Claudius]

I have been using Thunderbird since its first version and I know its behavior and functions in great detail. This is not a click in the wrong place of the window, nor does holding the Ctrl or Shift key help. I can live with that mistake, because there are other ways to insert an attachment. But the mistake is there and it's annoying after many years of use to do it differently.

Comment 5

[Ja.Claudius]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11LN0el7XkBPf3OrmlXyadkkgdNdyXAE-/view?usp=sharing

Comment 6

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

I think this works as designed. Like I wrote in the other bug, it's a list, and trying to combine complex list selection behaviours with doing other "magic" is not a good idea.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

double click also previously worked

Comment 8

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Closing per comment 6.