1656501 - All folders expanded on restart when using Favorite Folders View mode - doesn't remember collapsed status

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement, P3)

Description

[diomede979]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/84.0.4147.105 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

If I set "Folders" view in "Favorite" mode, account folder trees are always expanded. if I fold one of them and restart TB, then it is expanded again.

Expected results:

I expect that, as in "All" mode, TB, after restart, keeps if a menu is folded

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I can't reproduce this on Mac beta and windows 78.1.0

Does it happen for you if you start Thunderbird in safe mode?
If it still does, something in the profile maybe, or folder state isn't being saved.

Comment 2

[diomede979]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #1)

I can't reproduce this on Mac beta and windows 78.1.0

Does it happen for you if you start Thunderbird in safe mode?
If it still does, something in the profile maybe, or folder state isn't being saved.

Yes, it still does but I can't test it that way because everytime you start TB in safe mode, it will be set Folder as "All" instead of "Favorites"

Comment 3

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

I can reproduce using 78.1.0 and 68.11.0 on Ubuntu 18.04.4 Linux.

Selected all my accounts Inbox's as Favorites.
Set View > Folders > Favorite.
Collapsed all the accounts in the Folder pane.
Quit and restarted Thunderbird.
All the accounts expanded and the Inbox's displayed.

It seems to me that is what I'm instructing Thunderbird to do. Show me all my favorite folders.

If I set View > Folders > Unread, collapse the accounts and restart, all the Unread folders appear.

I would think View > Folders > All is broken since they do stay collapsed. But then why would you want to collapse them if you want to view them all?

Comment 4

[diomede979]

(In reply to WaltS48 [:walts48] from comment #3)

I can reproduce using 78.1.0 and 68.11.0 on Ubuntu 18.04.4 Linux.

Selected all my accounts Inbox's as Favorites.
Set View > Folders > Favorite.
Collapsed all the accounts in the Folder pane.
Quit and restarted Thunderbird.
All the accounts expanded and the Inbox's displayed.

It seems to me that is what I'm instructing Thunderbird to do. Show me all my favorite folders.

If I set View > Folders > Unread, collapse the accounts and restart, all the Unread folders appear.

I would think View > Folders > All is broken since they do stay collapsed. But then why would you want to collapse them if you want to view them all?

because the concept of "View" is, show me them in Folder pane, but if you want to see folded or unfolded, is an user preference. If he want to see all expanded or collapsed, he can do that directly on each account of folders pane, but TB must remember the status, for all of folder views

Comment 5

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

Right, and my preference is, I'd rather not have to go down the Folder pane and restore all the collapsed folders for nine accounts with approximately 100 folders. I'm a light user.

If Thunderbird opened with the Favorites and Unread collapsed, I would probably file a bug saying that the View > Folders settings aren't being honored.

I do think View > All not opening expanded is a bug, but I never collapse folders.

Also 68.11.0 has the same behavior you are reporting for 78. So what was the last version it worked the way you expect that you used?

Comment 6

[diomede979]

(In reply to WaltS48 [:walts48] from comment #5)

Right, and my preference is, I'd rather not have to go down the Folder pane and restore all the collapsed folders for nine accounts with approximately 100 folders. I'm a light user.

If Thunderbird opened with the Favorites and Unread collapsed, I would probably file a bug saying that the View > Folders settings aren't being honored.

I do think View > All not opening expanded is a bug, but I never collapse folders.

Also 68.11.0 has the same behavior you are reporting for 78. So what was the last version it worked the way you expect that you used?

As I said earlier, the right consistent behaviour, as in the other clients, is that TB must remember the user settings, if the user wants to keep the less used account like work account collapsed, why he shouldn't do? il Folders > All, is the right behaviour, and I hope it will be applied also to Folders > Favorite

Comment 7

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

Here are the results of my testing on Linux.

Tested with 52.9.1 and a new profile on Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS using my test user account.

Created 2 email accounts.
Created some new folders for each account.
Marked a few as favorites.
Selected View > All.
Collapsed the accounts.
Quit and Restarted Thunderbird.
All accounts remained collapsed.
I expected to view all folders as I have configured Thunderbird.

Selected View > Favorite
The accounts expanded and the folders marked as favorites appeared.
Collapsed the accounts.
Quit and restarted.
Thunderbird opened with the accounts expanded and my favorite folders showing as Thunderbird is configured and as expected by this user.

Same results with versions 60.9.1 with a new profile, version 68.11.0 with my production profile in my test user account. Which I then updated to 68.12.0 and had the same results with that version.

I would say this bug is INVALID or WONTFIX, but will let a developer decide the resolution.

Thoughts Alex?

Comment 8

[diomede979]

as I previously said, this behaviour is in conflict with "Folders > All" behaviour where the expand/collapse state is stored and considered.
In my opinion, the fact that the state isn't mantained in "Folders > Favourite", is a bug. Let's have a look to the other mail clients, like MS Outlook, where the state is considered, so, in TB there is clearly an unexpected behaviour, because the user would have the choice to collapse the less used favourite accounts.
Please, fix it.
thanks.

Comment 9

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

From the code POV it's pretty clear we're not persisting those: https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/1bcbe36ec43f68f5fa52028adf43cd11e0389cd0/mail/base/content/folderPane.js#1546

I don't know what the reason was to do it like that

Comment 10

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Thank you so much Walts48 for your detailed investigation, that was extremely helpful.

I'd say, since this has always been the behaviour of of TB for many years, we can consider this as an enhancement and set a low priority to it.
I'll investigate and see if I can find the reasoning behind the original implementation not persisting the open/closed state when viewing the list of favourite folders. Maybe there's a technical limitation we haven't considered, or maybe the favourite sorting was simply implemented after the state persistence feature and was accidentally missed.

Anyway, I'll set a low priority since it seems that this is the first report related to this "issue" since tb 60.

Comment 11

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Attachment: 1656501-favorite-state.diff

After the work on the multiple folder view, enabling this feature is just 1 string deletion away.

Comment 12

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Comment on attachment 9201011 [details] [diff] [review]
1656501-favorite-state.diff

Review of attachment 9201011 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Let's do it. r=mkmelin

Comment 13

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/ae646e670348
Remember the closed state of Favorite folders. r=mkmelin

Comment 14

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Comment on attachment 9201011 [details] [diff] [review]
1656501-favorite-state.diff

[Approval Request Comment]
Regression caused by (bug #): -
User impact if declined: Inability to remember the closed state of favorite folders
Testing completed (on c-c, etc.): on c-c
Risk to taking this patch (and alternatives if risky): very low

Comment 15

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Comment on attachment 9201011 [details] [diff] [review]
1656501-favorite-state.diff

[Triage Comment]
Approved for beta (doesn't get much simpler)

Comment 16

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Thunderbird 86.0b2:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-beta/rev/bd0d9f9e82ef

Comment 17

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

Works for me in my tests of 86.0b2 on Windows 10 and Fedora 33 Workstation.