1830262 - Only columns visible in Classic or Wide View are available as sort order options for Vertical View's cards mode

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect, P3)

Description

[abelits]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/112.0

Steps to reproduce:

Upgrade to nightly version with new UI

Actual results:

In menu bar View -> Sort Order (there seems to be no other way to select this particular menu), sort order is available only by fields displayed as columns in Classic or Wide view. This limitation applies even in Vertical view when column display configuration does not affect actually displayed message information in the list, and when no sort controls are present in the list.

Expected results:

It should be possible to select sort order by any field, displayed or not displayed.

For example, Order Received is a useful option when displaying spam/junk folders with messages that may have fake Date: header, however Order Received is usually a useless as a column to display.

(Also selection of sort order should be available even if menu bar is disabled because this is an important option)

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Did version 102 permit this?

Comment 2

[abelits]

Yes, all versions before the new interface change worked with this.

Comment 3

[abelits]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #1)

Did version 102 permit this?

Yes, all versions before the new interface change worked with this.

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #1)

Did version 102 permit this?

Well, this is about the Vertical View's cards list which is new in Supernova... Before we had the tabular format in Vertical View, which was sortable of course.

Hello Abelits, thank you for scrutinizing Vertical View, where we've implemented a new cards UI for the message list (Bug 1819710). This is still WIP. Especially, we're going to bring back the traditional tabular format as an option for the Vertical View (Bug 1823019), which will be much more suitable for sorting - sorting after criteria which aren't displayed in the cards UI may not be very useful. Nevertheless, this is a ux-implementation-level bug of some sort.

Comment 5

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: Screenshot 1: Only columns from Classic View are available as sort order options for Vertical View's cards mode

Confirming for Daily 114.0a1 (2023-04-28) (64-bit), Win10 - weird side effect related to the interim state where we've replaced the Vertical View tabular format with the new cards UI.

STR

• For best illustration: In ≡ > View > Layout > Classic View, reduce number of columns via message list's column picker, e.g. uncheck all columns except Date, Correspondents, Subjects.
• Change to ≡ > View > Layout > Vertical View, which currently offers only cards UI (pending Bug 1823019).
• Then, try to change the sort order of the cards, atm only possible via Main menu > View > Sort by > ... and check out fields available for sorting.

Actual

• Only columns visible in Classic or Wide View are available as sort order options for Vertical View's cards mode, which makes no sense (ux-implementation-level).
• User has no way of understanding this from the UI.

Expected

• Not sure, but certainly not the currently offered sort options defined/limited by choices from another view.
• Give the user more options to sort the cards list (which would probably involve showing the sort field on the card, because sorting by invisible data may not be ideal), and expose those options in the primary UI - Alex probably has a plan.

Comment 6

[abelits]

(In reply to Thomas D. (:thomas8) from comment #5)

• Give the user more options to sort the cards list (which would probably involve showing the sort field on the card, because sorting by invisible data may not be ideal),

Sorting by invisible data makes sense for things like Order Received -- while the number is meaningless for any particular email, order allows to defeat fake Date: headers and makes sure that all newly arrived mail is at the end of the list even if it was delayed.

Comment 7

[Lauren Royce Emery]

I used to be able to sort messages by "Order Received" WITHOUT displaying it as a COLUMN in the display. NOW - if I don't have "Order Received" displaying as a column, the "Order Received" sort option is "greyed-out"!
For me, at least, the information showing in the "Order Received" column is useless and unwanted, and I hate to waste COLUMN SPACE to display information that I don't need. Please allow users to sort our messages by "Order Received" WITHOUT having to display it in a column. Thanks! :-)

Since I initially wrote the above text, someone made the following suggestion which helped a lot, but didn't SOLVE the problem:
As with your problem the sort option for "Order Received" is greyed out. I have managed to fudge it by displaying the "Order Received" column, enabling the sort by "Order Received" then "undisplaying" the "Order Received" column. The sort order is retained.

I'm requesting that Thunderbird Supernova programmers please FIX the program so it can sort by any possible category REGARDLESS of whether a column is/was displayed for it. Thanks very much! :-)

Comment 8

[Richard Leger]

Attachment: 119.0b6_sortby_options_greyed

Fyi, affect also TB 119.0b6 (64-bit) on Windows 10 via Message List Options menu.

Comment 10

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

Attachment: Bug 1830262 - Stop preventing thread pane sort by a hidden column. r=#thunderbird-reviewers

Comment 11

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/21a06dd72a70
Stop preventing thread pane sort by a hidden column. r=freaktechnik

Comment 12

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

Comment on attachment 9408056 [details]
Bug 1830262 - Stop preventing thread pane sort by a hidden column. r=#thunderbird-reviewers

[Approval Request Comment]
Regression caused by (bug #): bug 1815291
User impact if declined: user can't sort by columns that are not visible
Testing completed (on c-c, etc.): 5 days on c-c
Risk to taking this patch (and alternatives if risky): low

Comment 13

[Corey Bryant]

Comment on attachment 9408056 [details]
Bug 1830262 - Stop preventing thread pane sort by a hidden column. r=#thunderbird-reviewers

[Triage Comment]
Approved for beta

Comment 14

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Thunderbird 128.0b4:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-beta/rev/93a505afd485

Comment 15

[Ramona Gavrilescu]

Confirming this issue as verified fixed for 128.0b4(20240624182435) with Ubuntu 22, Win 10 and macOS 14.