When going through messages: Message header buttons keep changing their location (annoying and error prone)
Categories
(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, defect)
Tracking
(Not tracked)
People
(Reporter: hadmut, Unassigned)
Details
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/78.0
Steps to reproduce:
Just reading my INBOX and sorting my incoming mail, archiving mails by pressing the "Archive" button for some of them.
Actual results:
Thunderbird keeps reorganizing it's mail header view (the part of the window, where the selected message is displayed, the light blue part with From/Subject/To, and the date and the action buttons on the right side.
with every single mail these buttons move up and down, left and right.
Up and down, because thunderbird sometimes shows warnings and hints like a message beeing suspect of scam or things like „This message contains a reply referring to an event that is not in your calendar.”, opening a strip on top of the message header window, thus moving the header part and the buttons up and down.
Furthermore, it adds and removes buttons, depending on what you're showing (grouped/tree view), making buttons like the archive button move left and right.
Expected results:
This is highly annoying, error prone and slowing the user down, because for every single mail you need to look for the button and move the mouse pointer to it's new location.
It's furthermore error prone if you believe to archive something, when the delete-button has move to the position where the archive button had been a second ago and is now under the mouse pointer.
This is terrible, really poor UI design.
Thunderbird had a great user interface at around 2008, then someone redesigned it and just made everything worse with no benefit at all. Just make things ugly, worse, more screen space consuming.
E.g. the old UI allowed to select multiple mails and then click „Junk” for them all. The new one doesn't even show the Junk-Button when multiple mails are selected, thus forcing the user to waste his/her time to mark every single spam mail separately.
Never ever move buttons, especially not destructive ones like „delete” on the screen around, forcing the user to search for them with every single mail.
Under all cirumstances, leave buttons exactly where they are, under reliable positions.
If you really need to display buttons only sometimes, put them to the left, to allow permanent buttons to stay where they are.
If you want do display messages, move the display to the bottom of the header strip, allowing the header to stay where it is.
The user interface is just horrible, counterintuitive, annoying, and especially error prone, and no one has fixed it within a decade.
Nobody seems to care about user friendly user interfaces.
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Updated•5 years ago
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Comment 1•5 years ago
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Version 68 has been out for a year - I don't believe we have issues reported like yours.
Are you really using version 68?
And does the same thing happen in safe mode? Help > restart with addons disabled?
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Reporter | |
Comment 2•5 years ago
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Well, I'm talking about the thunderbird version coming with Lubuntu 20.10. „About Thunderbird” says "68.10.0" and Ubuntu says it's "1:68.10.0+build1-0ubuntu0.20.04.1"
And, btw., you have this issues since around 2008. Since redesign of the UI.
No, it does not happen, at least not that bad in safe mode (only addon I had on the machine, where I tested it: enigmail).
But it does not happen in safe mode, because the addon is disabled, but some of thunderbirds functionality is disabled. E.g. thunderbird does not detect Invitations to calendar events/attachments anymore, and that's why it doesn show the calendar header above the message anymore, which's appearance causes the regular message header (and thus: the buttons) to move up and down when the message line appears and disappears.
Another hint: There's another message type, „To protect your privacy, Thunderbird has blocked remote content in this message”, which is displayed beneath and therefore much better, not causing that problem.
But even in safe mode, the Reply button still jumps to the left and right, because – depending on how many recipients the message has – the "Reply All" button appears and disappears. Stopp having buttons appear and disappear, causing others to wander around. If you don't want to offer „Reply All” (what's wrong with offering it always?), grey it out.
In regular mode, e.g. for collapsed tree views, where several messages are collapsed into a single line, only two buttons are displayed: Archive and Delete, causing the Archive button move to the right.
It's not just horrible to have a UI, where Buttons keep continuously appearing and disappearing and moving around. It's astonishing that you didn't even realize that.
And yes, Enigmail itself is a problem, because it displays its buttons above the mail header, thus causing all buttons shift down, but that's only one of the problems.
Eg. an Invitation to an event causes a blue stripe to appear above the regular header with "This message contains an invitation to an event. Accept All - Tentativ All - Decline all - More". Again, causing the message header to move downwards and taking it's buttons with.
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Reporter | |
Comment 3•5 years ago
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Sorry, it's Ubuntu/Lubuntu 20.04, not 20.10.
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Comment 4•5 years ago
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But even in safe mode, the Reply button still jumps to the left and right, because – depending on how many recipients the message has – the "Reply All" button appears and disappears. Stopp having buttons appear and disappear, causing others to wander around. If you don't want to offer „Reply All” (what's wrong with offering it always?), grey it out.
That is expected.
Regarding the rest - We can't control what enigmail does to your UI.
However, in Thunderbird 78 that will change. Please wait until the automatic update occurs.
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Comment 5•5 years ago
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(In reply to Hadmut Danisch from comment #0)
Hello Hadmut, I'm seeing that you're not happy with the contextual message actions...
It was something to get used to at the time, and I remember I really felt like moving them back to top at first. But we've had them for a long time, don't recall more user complaints, and they're here to stay. In 68, you can still customize header toolbar to (re)move buttons, and also mail toolbar to add them there. Request to preserve/restore msg header toolbar customization is Bug 1556261.
Steps to reproduce:
Just reading my INBOX and sorting my incoming mail, archiving mails by pressing the "Archive" button for some of them.
Please use concise and numbered steps and tell us exactly what we need to press or click to reproduce your problem!
This report does not follow protocol, which makes it much harder to understand and act on.
Thunderbird keeps reorganizing it's mail header view (the part of the window, where the selected message is displayed, the light blue part...
with every single mail these buttons move up and down, left and right.
Up and down, because thunderbird sometimes shows warnings and hints like a message beeing suspect of scam or things like „This message contains a reply referring to an event that is not in your calendar.”, opening a strip on top of the message header window, thus moving the header part and the buttons up and down.
Can you pls attach some screenshots to this bug? I think this should be considered: If calendar and encryption messages would be better off below the message header to keep the header in a stable position.
Furthermore, it adds and removes buttons, depending on what you're showing (grouped/tree view), making buttons like the archive button move left and right.
- For navigating single selections/messages: Reply moves to the left to make space for Reply All, all other buttons stable.
Did you change their default position with customization?
You can try this: Right-click on msg header toolbar > Customize > "Restore Default Set".
With default layout, Archive and Delete never change location for single selections. - When changing between single and multiple/thread selection, yes, toolbar layout changes.
Not sure if that is a problem for mouse users. The alternative, showing and disabling other buttons, also not ideal.
For maximum efficiency, use keyboard instead.
Expected results:
This is highly annoying, error prone and slowing the user down, because for every single mail you need to look for the button and move the mouse pointer to it's new location.
Maybe you should use keyboard shortcuts? A -> Archive. J = Junk. Fast and predictable. Your keys on keyboard won't change location! ;-)
It's furthermore error prone if you believe to archive something, when the delete-button has move to the position where the archive button had been a second ago and is now under the mouse pointer.
Only when changing btw single and multiple selections.
Thunderbird had a great user interface at around 2008, then someone redesigned it and just made everything worse with no benefit at all. Just make things ugly, worse, more screen space consuming.
Contextual UI is a big benefit, but personal preferences may differ. Please be respectful, in general we don't redesign without reason.
E.g. the old UI allowed to select multiple mails and then click „Junk” for them all. The new one doesn't even show the Junk-Button when multiple mails are selected, thus forcing the user to waste his/her time to mark every single spam mail separately.
That's an annyoing shortcoming indeed, bug 523252.
That said, have you tried adding JUNK button to the main toolbar via "Customize" from context menu? Works for several messages.
Never ever move buttons, especially not destructive ones like „delete” on the screen around, forcing the user to search for them with every single mail.
Again, why not use keyboard shortcut DEL key for deleting? Shift+Del for bypassing trash.
If you really need to display buttons only sometimes, put them to the left, to allow permanent buttons to stay where they are.
See above, probably your own customization which causes this.
You've also complained about wasting space - here we're saving space: From: shares horizontal space with msg header buttons.
The user interface is just horrible, counterintuitive, annoying, and especially error prone, and no one has fixed it within a decade.
Please tone down and be respectful. Let's focus on issues rather than emotions.
Nobody seems to care about user friendly user interfaces.
We do care a lot about good UX, but making everybody happy is squaring the circles. UX principles are often conflicting, so it's always a trade-off. If we keep disabled buttons visible for you to achieve stable position (ux-consistency), we'll violate ux-minimalism by showing unneeded buttons. Other than that, sometimes it's manpower constraints, and sometimes between thousands of other issues, things can go off the radar. You're free to suggest and contribute code for improvements.
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Comment 6•5 years ago
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Placement of the IMIP bar (calendar invites) has also been fixed for Thunderbird 78.
Seems we should close this, and if there are specific problems in 78, file them separately.
Description
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