1673796 - Mail/Vertical View/ can't move Message list columns around

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1834656

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, enhancement)

Description

[Steve Jasik]

Attachment: TB_SS.jpg

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_14_6) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/14.0 Safari/605.1.15

Steps to reproduce:

Using TB 83.0b1 on a 2018 MacBook Pro with OSX 10.14.6
I am using "Vertical View"
and found out that that is NO way of directly controlling the width of the last 2 Message List columns

In the enclosed screen shot,
What finally ended up working was to get the dbl arrow to the left side of the text window to control the text window width & Message list pane size, ...

1. I tried using the "Restore Column Order" command which moved the Subject column from the far right to the far left which I DID NOT WANT

the web page: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/message-list-columns
SAYS: To move a column, click and drag the column heading to the desired position.

Change that to :
To move a column, click and drag (shuift-click) the column heading to the desired position.

2. there is no vertical separator between the date and time column

3. The Config Editor - Totally un-documented like the rest of TB. :-(
   I started programming in 1967 or so on a CDC 6600 supercomputer at NYU/CIMS as a grad student in Mathematics and ended up spending the next 40 - 50 years as a programmer. 12 at Control Data and 15 at Apple among others.
   We were required to document our programs.
   I have spent some time trying to understand the TB code and gave up when I found 3 sets of EQU files for the different parts of it.

Actual results:

See see enclosed screen shot

Expected results:

I wasted an hour or so to finally remind myself that drag = shift-click
and text window width is controlled from the left

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Steve Jasik from comment #0)

Created attachment 9184151 [details]
TB_SS.jpg

Thanks for the screen shot - that helps a lot.

Steps to reproduce:

Using TB 83.0b1 on a 2018 MacBook Pro with OSX 10.14.6
I am using "Vertical View"
and found out that that is NO way of directly controlling the width of the last 2 Message List columns

Does this reproduce for you? I am unable to reproduce with the same columns as your screen shot, using 90.0b3 on OSX 11.r

In the enclosed screen shot,
What finally ended up working was to get the dbl arrow to the left side of the text window to control the text window width & Message list pane size, ...

1. I tried using the "Restore Column Order" command which moved the Subject column from the far right to the far left which I DID NOT WANT

the web page: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/message-list-columns
SAYS: To move a column, click and drag the column heading to the desired position.

Change that to :
To move a column, click and drag (shuift-click) the column heading to the desired position.

Thanks for the info. It may help in this buggy situation, but that is not standard combination - it should absolutely work without shift.

2. there is no vertical separator between the date and time column

Perhaps a symptom of this situation you are in.

3. The Config Editor - Totally un-documented like the rest of TB. :-(
   I started programming in 1967 or so on a CDC 6600 supercomputer at NYU/CIMS as a grad student in Mathematics and ended up spending the next 40 - 50 years as a programmer. 12 at Control Data and 15 at Apple among others.
   We were required to document our programs.

Not sure what config editor has to do with this?

Are you referring to user doc or source code doc? If the former, UI should normally not need documentation - UI should generally be simple enough and functional well enough to not need documentation.

If the later, see https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/get-involved/#documentation

In any event, config editor is core code not controlled by Thunderbird

Comment 2

[Steve Jasik]

0. I will be using 10.14.6 for a long as I an on my 2019 MBP as I don't want to shell out money on a monthly basis for a 64 bit copy of Photoshop which I use infrequently
   After some of the problems I settled on using 88.0b3 and am reasonably happy with it as it is a PITA to try and go backward

Documentation - about a year or so ago when I first started using TB, I wanted to change the "get mail" (from the server) command from Command Y to Cmd-M only to find our that the EQU for Cmd M appeared in THREE different files.
As I pointed out I did software for Apple for 15 years and EQUs for a given thing only appeared in ONE place.
After that I gave up on trying to modify TB.
I got the sad story of TB moving from the Bay Area to Canada & back from a former employee at a Hackers Conference a few years ago.

As for documentation:
both user & internal documentation would make it possible for new people to join the project
and understand what the config editor options control

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

@Reporter,
Does this still reproduce when using version 91? And if you resolved the problem, what was the solution?

Comment 4

[Steve Jasik]

Wayne,
After some dubious experiences with TB I have stayed happily on V88.0b3 for the last few months .

I do need instructions in how to save and go back to the old version before updating to a newer version so that I can go backward if necessary.
That or the update process should have a "Save old version" option built into the update process.

I can't figure out how to add another screen shot so I sent it to your email
As it is a year old, I no longer remember how I solved my problem.

As to my comments about documentation and coding, they still hold and the config editor options should be documented
as I would like to know how to set the text column width in messages I write as I don't know where to look for it among other things.
One way to do it is to explicitly show the EQU names so one can search for them in the code.

It would also be nice to have a culumative change history which shows ALL changes tio ALL versions.
I did that for my software (MacNosy & The Debugger) and I expect no less for SW written by others.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Steve Jasik from comment #4)

Wayne,
After some dubious experiences with TB I have stayed happily on V88.0b3 for the last few months .

I do need instructions in how to save and go back to the old version before updating to a newer version so that I can go backward if necessary.

Please see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-release#w_how-do-i-change-from-release-back-to-esr

Note, backward compatibility not guaranteed. The question now, is does this problem reproduce with version 128 or 140?

Comment 6

[Steve Jasik]

Wayne & others. 11/5/2025

Thank you for reminding me that I had a bug that was never properly closed.

A year or so ago TB crashed on me and magically insisted that I update to V115.0b6 (64-bit) which has a number of annoying changes in it such as:

1. excessive white space in the subject column
2. I make multiple passes over the new messages deleting some and marking other messages with different colors which to me mean "ToDo", "Later" ...
3. Annoying changes to the contextual TAG command in that I can no longer select it and press a number key to select the color I want
4. Cluttering up the contextual menu (command key down) with a bunch of commands that have keyboard equivalents or I find useless. So only way I do NOT have to scroll past them is to hilight more than 1 row. An option to get rid of them would be nice
5. Lastly the Yellow New msg marker at the beginning of the subject line went from being removed one at a time to all at once. Maybe you should just get rid of it

======= end of V115 rant =======

Now in the interim TB has advanced to Version 140 along with warnings that it may not work with Mojave (10.14.6) which was the last 32 bit version of the Mac OS which is what I am running on this computer.

For unknown reasons TB no longer to tell me about them - I would like to give it a try but going back to V115 of TB might be difficult.

I will also say that I am having problems with the ESR version of Firefox as at least 3 web sites that I have attempted to visit have added additional security ( HSTS ) and will not load. The Mojave version of Safari has similar problems :-(

I would like to give TB V140 a try but as per: https://thunderbird.topicbox.com/groups/enterprise/T740ca41fad2e7d65
you were blocking it for 32 bit systems back then. Before I do so it would be nice to see a total TB change history in ONE web page AND Also HTML is a moving target and there is the somewhat invisible question of have the TB programmers taken advantage of any new features that are just programming conveniences than an older VERSION OF OSX will not handle ??

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thanks for the reply.

In rereading your original report and checking the screen shot, I believe your column sizing issue is Bug 1834656 - Resizing column width is very difficult since version 115. Improve the elastic resizing of the tree view columns. Which will never be fixed in version 128.

To resize the rightmost two columns (date and size) you must drag the left edge of the From column to the left, which will in turn move to the left the columns which are to the right of the From column.

Your other items are not related to this bug, but I attempt to answer some of them.

(In reply to Steve Jasik from comment #6)

Wayne & others. 11/5/2025

Thank you for reminding me that I had a bug that was never properly closed.

A year or so ago TB crashed on me and magically insisted that I update to V115.0b6 (64-bit) which has a number of annoying changes in it such as:

1. excessive white space in the subject column

Sounds like you mean horizontal space, but I don't understand how that would have changed between 88 and 115. An illustration or more detail is needed. Perhaps best asked in support.

2. I make multiple passes over the new messages deleting some and marking other messages with different colors which to me mean "ToDo", "Later" ...
3. Annoying changes to the contextual TAG command in that I can no longer select it and press a number key to select the color I want

Tagging by numbers works - I also use it. What I think you mean is the "Tag" context menu item can't be selected by keyboard, which I do see. However, I seem to remember that accelerator keys in context menus are not guaranteed to trigger all menu items. I haven't found the bug report for that - perhaps Alex knows.

I did find Bug 1836846 - Ability to visually open context menu in the message list by keyboard does not work in macOS. So are you raising the context menu on the Mac using the mouse click?

4. Cluttering up the contextual menu (command key down) with a bunch of commands that have keyboard equivalents or I find useless. So only way I do NOT have to scroll past them is to hilight more than 1 row. An option to get rid of them would be nice

Not sure what you mean.

======= end of V115 rant =======

Now in the interim TB has advanced to Version 140 along with warnings that it may not work with Mojave (10.14.6) which was the last 32 bit version of the Mac OS which is what I am running on this computer.

If you are staying on 10.14 then Thunderbird 128 is the max version you can run. So ignore previous comments about running version 140.