1688747 - Check box next to the email should not be selected

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[burevestnik]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/88.0.4324.96 Safari/537.36 Edg/88.0.705.50

Steps to reproduce:

The check box located next to the email message in the list of emails gets automatically selected if I click on the email title or sender.

Actual results:

1. After I click on the check box for another email message this action will not remove a check mark from the previously selected message, and if I click on the Delete button, both messages will be deleted, even though I did not want to delete the firstly selected message.
2. If I know for sure that the message is junk, I should be able to click on the check box and just select it for deletion, but not for viewing. This feature may be a security risk, since some malicious messages may infect my computer when I just click on them (I guess)

Expected results:

1. If a user click on the message in the message list, the check box should not be selected. The check box should be selected only if a user wants to delete or mark as junk group of messages without opening or previewing them
2. If a user click on the check box next to the email message in the list of emails, it should not allow previewing of this message, since these check boxes should only be used for selecting multiple messages with the goal to delete, mark as junk or move them as a group.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

This is working as designed.

Clicking a message, not surprisingly, marks the checkbox to indicate the message was selected. When you then click the checkbox of another message it is reasonable for the previous checkbox stays selected - because you are now using checkboxes to accomplish multiselect, much like the process previously (and still) available where using shift and/or control key in combination with clicking another message does not cause the the first message clicked to be unselected.

Comment 2

[burevestnik]

Wayne, I respectfully disagree. The email applications, such as Lotus Notes and Outlook.com (web version), and I believe Windows Mail app, work differently:
When I click on the message itself, not on a check box, I can preview the message, but not select it with the check box.
When I click on the check boxes for the several messages, then I can delete or send them to Junk or whatever.

This is my use case:

1. I click on the message title or recipient, I can preview the message and the check box gets checked.
2. While I am reading that email, I notice that 2 more messages arrived in the same mailbox.
3. Since I do not need these 2 newly arrived emails, I click on the check boxes for these 2 messages with intention to delete them.
4. If I am not careful, the original message I was reading will be deleted as well! This should not be happening...

If Thunderbird worked like Lotus Notes or Outlook.com (web version), then the original message would not be checked (unless I intentionally click on the check box) and will not be deleted.

Please review and let me know what you think.
Thanks!

Comment 3

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Unfortunately, I don't think that's possible due to the XUL tree element we're using to build the thread pane.

That widget needs to have a row (message) selected in order to trigger the visualization of the message preview.
If you click on another message, it moves the selection to it.
But if you click on the "checkbox" it adds the new message to the selection. That is done by design to allow users that can't use a keyboard to select multiple messages with the mouse.

We implemented another column, the "Delete" column, in the thread pane which allows you to delete messages with 1 click on the trash can icon without the necessity of selecting them.

Comment 4

[burevestnik]

Alessandro,

Since it is not possible to fix, I accept that this is not a bug, but a feature instead :-)
Maybe in the future...