17801 - [FEATURE] navigation across folders/groups

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect, P2)

Description

[laurel]

This bug is to track implementation of navigation commands going across folders
or newsgroups.

Crossing folders applies to various commands:
  a.  next unread message
  b.  next unread thread
  c.  next unread folder
  d.  next unread group

Comment 1

[laurel]

When it's time to verify, please provide any (new) rules which may apply because
of multiple accounts.

Comment 2

[selmer (gone)]

Syncing priority with marketing.  Moving to P2 to connote "In" for beta2.

Comment 3

[scottputterman]

moving to M17

Comment 4

[selmer (gone)]

[FEATURE] bugs past M16 are OUT for this release.  Marking M20.  If you disagree 
with this action, please help me explain it to the PDT.

Comment 5

[laurel]

I really use this feature quite a bit.  I think that people who filter incoming
messages to other folders without doing any action to mark them read first would
care more about this navigational feature.

I rely on the Next|Unread across folders to tell me if there really is something
new which was filtered, particularly if it's been filtered to a subfolder in a
currently collapsed hierarchy... I know we have a current bug #19254 to have the
new flag populate up to parent folder in this case, but I have a basic lack of
confidence in our ability to make sure this works all the time.  I know 4.x has
always had some cases where you wouldn't know there's a newly filtered message
in a collapsed hierarchy unless you either looked there specifically or used
navigation across folders. 

Comment 6

[Phil Peterson]

[dogfood-] This feature is cut for Seamonkey :-(

Comment 7

[fenella]

Can someone mark it Resolved/Won't Fixed? Or should we wait?

Comment 8

[fenella]

p.s. I am not sure if you want QA to do it.

Comment 9

[lchiang]

don't worry fenella - this is marked target milestone M20 which is not Netscape 
6.0 release

Comment 10

[lchiang]

Moving target milestone to "future" to be reviewed at a later time

Comment 11

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

*** Bug 56116 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

I did some hacking on this last night.  taking from putterman.

Comment 13

[scottputterman]

nominating for mail3.  This is a highly requested feature.

Comment 14

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Seth, for parts of this code with which it makes sense to do so, it may be worth 
putting it in a general place rather than a mail/news-specific place. Similar 
navigation applies to Navigator (bug 59118), and possibly to Chatzilla as well.

Comment 15

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

I don't think this blocks 59118.

the features are similar in nature, but vastly different in implementations.

removing dependency.

accepting bug.

Comment 16

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

while waiting for the 11/4 builds, I came up with a fix.

known problems with my fix.

1) sometimes after switching folders, the selected message doesn't get loaded.
(should be easy to fix)
2) will not go across accounts.  if you are reading mail on an imap server, it
will find all the unread on that server, but not across to the next server.
(again, should be easy to fix.)

3) the confirm that pops up "Advance to next unread message in <name>?" really
slows me down.

I'm using "n" to go to next message.  in 4.x, space would page down the message,
then go to the next message, and then would act like you hit "ok" in the
"Advance to next unread message in <name>?"

we've got to get space working again.  being able to read all your mail with
just the space bar rocks.

even with all that, I'm going to get a reviewer and land it on the trunk.

I'd like for laurel to be able to use / test what I've got so far.

Comment 17

[scottputterman]

another important part of this bug is that there was a pref that turned this on
and off in 4.x

this is cool a lot of people will be happy about this. BTW, alecf has a bug for
the spacebar if you want to take it. The bug number is in the bug that mpt
references in this bug report.

Comment 18

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

what was the pref?  I'll add that in.

Comment 19

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

Attachment: a first cut at a fix.

Comment 20

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

I also need to figure out what to do when there are no more unread messages any
where.

(I'll go see what 4.x did)

Comment 21

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

after thinking about that patch, I realize I don't need the
nsIEnumerator2JSArray() crap.

I also think I have a good way to make it go across accounts.

I'll code up another patch and re-submit it.

Comment 22

[scottputterman]

this is cool. I applied the patch and had two comments.

The first is that it didn't actually go to my next folder it went to another
folder that had unread messages. I think this is because you are using
GetSubfolder which isn't currently sorted. Currently rdf does all of the sorting
for us.

The second is that it won't go to a subfolder if the parent is closed.(we have a
similar problem when loading the inbox on startup).

But, those two issues aside, this is going to make a lot of people happy.

Comment 23

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

ok, I've removed that nsIEnumerator2JSArray() sillyness.

I also added a call to make sure that the next unread header we auto-select is
visible.

I'm going to land what I've got, and then work on the cross-accounts bit and the
known problems.

thanks for trying it out, putterman.

Comment 24

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

Attachment: the latest patch

Comment 25

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

I've landed my patch.  putterman, do you remember the pref that disabled this in
4.x?

Comment 26

[scottputterman]

I guess I'm wrong. Apparently this pref didn't exist in 4.x. I thought I'd heard
it did, but it doesn't exist on Windows at least.

Comment 27

[Daniel Bratell]

This is great. It will make reading news a much more pleasant experience as soon
as the final issues are ironed out.

Do you open new bugs for the known issues?

Comment 28

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

Attachment: patch to make it go across servers.

Comment 29

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

that last patch makes it go across accounts.

currently, that patch will search the original server twice.
that's not that bad, since it will just ask all the top level folders
if they (or their children) have any unread messages (which they shouldn't)

one optimizations would be to check to make sure we don't search
the original server twice.

the biggest problem I see right now is the one putterman reported ealier:

"The second is that it won't go to a subfolder if the parent is closed.(we have
a similar problem when loading the inbox on startup)."

the out-of-order problem is not good, but not nearly as bad as that one.

this feature really exposes our need for need better folder loading performance.

Comment 30

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

daniel:  I haven't logged bugs on the issues yet.

one more problem:  there is an existing bug where we get the unread counts wrong
for some newsgroups.  (I'm sure it is assigned to me.)

it's annoying to switch into a folder only to find there are no new messages.

see http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34406

once I log bugs on all these issues, I'll mark this bug fixed.

until then, feel free to dump other issues into this bug report.

Comment 31

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

cc'ing jglick.

jglick, are there rules about where "next unread message" should go in the spec?

Comment 32

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

#34406 really rains on my parade.

once you get into a newsgroups with a bad unread count, navigation stops because
when we go to FindNextFolder() we just find the current group, because it has an
unread count of > 0.

Comment 33

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

until I fix 34406, there is a work around.  if you mark all headers read, it
sets the count to 0.

it's lame, but at least it gets next navigation working.

Comment 34

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

another issue:  don't advance to unread messages in the trash.

thanks to laurel for pointing this out.

Comment 35

[jglick]

Seth, no there currently isn't anything in the spec about "next unread message". 
I can add it though.  Sounds like you have:

1. Next unread message in the same folder
2. Next unread message in a subfolder
3. Next unread message in the next folder for the same account (repeat as 
needed)
4. Next unread message in a subfolder of #3 (repeat as needed)
5. Next unread message in the next folder for the next account.

Comment 36

[ethan mindlace fremen]

Next unread message works for me (using imap folders) but the next message is
not highlighted in the "subject" pane when moving from one folder to the next.

Comment 37

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

this is fixed, but I still have to log bugs on all the sub-bugs that still
remain before I mark it fixed.  I hope to do that today.

Comment 38

[laurel]

FYI:
bug 19254 is about the new flag not bubbling up to parent folder
bug 60776 is about not navigating to Trash folder

Comment 39

[laurel]

More FYI:
bug 60782 is about not landing on a collapsed folder/account structure

Comment 40

[scottputterman]

are the other bugs sufficient? Can we mark this fixed now?

Comment 41

[laurel]

I think all bugs are logged.  I'll close this one.
Marking fixed/verified.

Comment 42

[laurel]

.

Comment 43

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by ffxbld-merge:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/2ea9db168b7e
[fenix] Add configuration file for probot-stale - https://github.com/probot/stale (https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/pull/17801)