Switching to a folder scrolls to random spot in message list
Categories
(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect, P2)
Tracking
(Not tracked)
People
(Reporter: fred, Unassigned)
References
Details
(Keywords: regression, Whiteboard: [regression: 115.4.1])
+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #1843953 +++
Steps to reproduce:
I have a lot of folders, each of which have a lot of messages (thousands). I use classic view and no message pane (separate window). I select a folder.
Actual results:
The new HTML-based message list randomly spins to a spot. Not the end (all messages are Read). Not FUMLUB (First Unread Message of the Last Unread Batch). Just a random spot, showing messages from 2022, 2018, whatever, different each time I go back to the same folder. So I have to either pull the right-margin slider to the bottom or use the End key to get to the bottom, every time.
Expected results:
It should have gone to the spot where I had last used that folder, be it the bottom of the message list or somewhere else that I was looking at.
Reason for cloning: This bug was closed, and was basically fixed in 115.0.1 or slightly later. In the Release Notes for 115.4.1. it states,
fixed Message list did not automatically scroll to new messages when switching folders
But in fact it has regressed to the 115.0 stage. It's back.
Switching to a folder puts me back at some random spot, often near the middle of the folder, or sometimes about two screens above the bottom. This doesn't happen if I switch away from a folder and come right back immediately, but it does happen almost all the time if I come back considerably later in the day (and I leave T'bird running all the time).
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Comment 1•1 years ago
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Regression of bug 1850190?
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Comment 2•1 years ago
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I don't think so. This is the behavior that should now be fixed in 120 beta 2 by bug 1827042. Bug 1850190 is only about scrolling messages that have just been received into view when switching to the folder that contains them. Unfortunately, the description in the 115.4.1 release notes ("Message list did not automatically scroll to new messages when switching folders") could be interpreted to cover more cases than it actually does.
fred, does this also happen if you had selected/opened a message in a folder? In that case it should scroll to the location of that message when you come back later. On the other hand, there have been many reports that scrolling to the right end of the message list doesn't work reliably if nothing was selected before, see bug 1827042.
This happens when I have no messages open. I don't know what would happen if I left a message open but I normally don't do that. Scenario which I just tested again:
One of my folders receives a fair amount of my most important work mail. It gets, via filters, 5-15 on an average day.k It has about 27000 messages in it. I read them promptly. So I'm all caught up. I read the last ones about an hour ago. I then went to another folder, the default one where bugzilla messages arrive (among other things). I just switched back to that work folder. The view landed with the dates 10/24 to 10/29 on screen, not today's. There is one new message there. If FUMLUB worked, or if it had simply returned to where I had left it after reading the earlier new day's mail, I would have seen the new message without having to a) click on a message in the list, and b) hit the End key to get to the bottom.
For another fairly busy folder, into which a bunch of messages were filtered yesterday, I just switched back to it, and landed in 2020's mail, above (older than) the half way point. That too had a new message waiting at the bottom.
I thought I saw one of these related bugzilla threads mention one of the config editor options that may impact this, but I don't remember it, and certainly config editor stuff shouldn't be needed for this behavior to be fixed. It was fixed before I upgraded from 15.2.2 to 15.4.1. On a different machine with 15.3.1, it works correctly, so this bug came back later.
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Comment 4•1 years ago
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What kind of folders do you use? Real folders like in an IMAP account or under "Local Folders", or virtual ones like saved searches or unified folders?
If you open a message by double-clicking or pressing [Enter], it will be selected, but not necessarily if you right-click and open it from the context menu. In real folders, this selection should be remembered and restored when you switch back, but is discarded when you quit Thunderbird. Unfortunately, this mechanism doesn't (and didn't in 102 either) work reliably in virtual views that span more than one real folder, due to back-end issues that won't be fixed until the next major ESR or later. Anyway, at least scrolling to the end of the list with the latest messages should get uplifted soon to the 115 ESR.
All of my folders are real, with separate mail files, under Local Folders. I use POP to fill them; T'bird's implementation of IMAP is unacceptable. (I suppose I could put in a bugzilla report on something nasty I found related to the only work-around I knew of, but that's off topic.) Thus I don't have to deal with unified folders (all POP servers feed the same local folders), and I don't find its limited virtual folder capabilities to be interesting.
I don't use the context menu to open messages. I double click on the message in the folder view.
Neither scrolling to the end of a list nor opening a messages at the end of the list currently (in 115.4.1) causes the list position to be maintained the way it was in 115.3.1.
Here's an interesting tidbit. I noticed that my previous reporting of this bug pointed to a different bug, 1850190. I was not previously aware of mailnews.scroll_to_new_message as a config option, but checked and it was "true", the default.
For grins & chuckles, I just set that to false. And suddenly I was getting to the end of message l.ists! It appears that the mailnews.scroll_to_new_message option is now being implemented BACKWARDS! I suggest checking it out.
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Comment 7•1 years ago
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Okay, this is valuable information. Could you be so kind as to temporarily set the option back to true, open the error console with [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[j] and clear its output. Then switch back and forth between different folders and select messages from different locations in between. After that, please post any output from the console here. Thanks in advance!
Switching around between folders and looking at random messages, the only error that showed up seemed to come from reading one message:
Layout was forced before the page was fully loaded. If stylesheets are not yet loaded this may cause a flash of unstyled content. 2 aboutMessage.js:54
Nothing obvious about the message list.
I have the same problem as fred with thunderbird 115.4.1 on windows 10. It did not make any differences if mailnews.scroll_to_new_message is set to true or false.
However:
I have sorted the folders so that the newest message is at the bottom. I've now changed all folders so that the newest message is at the top and this fixed it for me.
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Reporter | |
Comment 11•1 year ago
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They hid my last post because it was "advocacy". I want this reopened for 15.4.3. This part of my hidden post was not advocacy, just emphatic:
Okay, upgraded to 115.4.3, whose release notes also suggest a possible improvement here.
Apparently in this tweak, mailnews.scroll_to_new_message set to false no longer makes it true. Nor does setting it to true. IT IS NOW BROKEN IN BOTH SETTINGS AND IT IS JUMPING TO RANDOM SPOTS IN MESSAGE LISTS NO MATTER WHAT!
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Updated•1 year ago
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Comment 12•1 year ago
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fred, could you please test if setting layout.css.scroll-anchoring.enabled to false in the config editor helps?
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Comment 13•1 year ago
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As reported in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1419387#answer-1620288 this seems to be the same cause as bug 1866553, so let's continue there.
Description
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