177357 - location toolbar needed

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 21344

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[John T]

Hello. I'm trying Mozilla 1.2b and have submitted comments about Mozilla
Mail/News. Today I read the Mail/News UI description discussing the mail/news
location toolbar that should exist when the folders sidebar isn't displayed, and
then checked the menus of Mozilla 1.2b and found that the location toolbar isn't
an option in the mail/view menu as it should be, and as stated in the official
specification.

I don't like the sidebar display---I would far rather have the location toolbar
which shows the folder (and server), and drops down on clicking to show the
entire list of folders, mailboxes, news servers and newsgroups. I'm sure I am
not alone in this preference.

This is one reason to include the traditional location toolbar in the mail
window. Just shorten the box for entering search keywords to make room for it.
After all, the box doesn't have to show the whole search string, anymore than
the browser location box has to show the entire location string which may be 100
chars long or more.

There are two other problems with the sidebar location display that could occur
with the dropdown location toolbar's display. One is that news servers are shown
collapsed. If you click on the + box to expand them, the program also tries to
retrieve all the header counts for the newsgroups. It's a pain in the rear to
have to contend with retrieving info for about 250 newsgroups just to access one
that is of interest at a particular time. Clicking on a collapsed newsgroup list
(the server name) should NOT result in all those headers being retrieved. The
FIRST click should only expand them. The SECOND click on the server name should
tell the program to get the header info. This should be true both of the
location sidebar and location toolbar actions.

The second problem that the sidebar has now, which should be fixed instead of
duplicating the problem in adding a location toolbar, is that newsgroup names
are abbreviated to a.b.s.p.o.games,
for example, instead of alt.binaries.software.pc.old.games. I want the entire
name showing, not just some inscrutable abbreviation. The display of newsgroup
names in recent Mozilla versions stinks.

Finally, as I stated in another bugzilla feature request, it would be nice to
have a handy way to back up email files to floppies, CDRWs, etc by a program
command, instead of having to do it by hand. It would also be nice to keep mail
files (inbox, sent box, etc) on the system for a while as no-longer-active mail
files, but still available. By hand, I've been renaming my mailboxes as In001
and Sent001, for example. Casual users might appreciate having a Mozilla command
to do this sort of thing instead of figuring out how to do it by commandline or
a file manager program. This isn't the same as automatic compression within the
Mozilla filesystem. It's backup to another location.

Thank you for your consideration of these remarks.

Comment 1

[laurel]

Main idea is a duplicate of bug 21344.


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 21344 ***

Comment 2

[laurel]

marking verified as a duplicate

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Please report only one issue/ bug report !
if you write something about an official document also add the URL.

>Finally, as I stated in another bugzilla feature request
There is already a bug about that. Search and you will find it. 
(you should search before you file a bug report)

you can disable the newsgroup shot name if you create a file "user.js" in your
profile or add this line to the existing prefs.js (but you should use user.js)

user_pref("mail.server.default.abbreviate",false);

or only for one server

user_pref("mail.server.server<x>.abbreviate",false);

Verified x2 

Comment 4

[Ronald Hunter]

When work is done on this subject, please make the space on the screen long
enough to display the whole newsgroup name.  IN NS4.x, the location bar was much
too short, even though a lot of screen space to the right of the area was available.

Of course, much of this could be eliminated if a tool-tip were displayed by a
mouse-over....