1896977 - Implement the ability to collapse folder modes

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, enhancement)

Description

[chrizilla]

enhancement idea 💡

make tags section in folder pane collapsible

implementation

A small ">" to the left of "tags" (exactly like for folders with subfolders) would be very unobtrusive and would not disturb any user, but would come in very handy for momentarily expanding/collapsing the section if the vertical space is required.

Why is this needed ?

• When using more than the 6 default tags, users have little vertical space remaining for the folder tree.
• Especially needed on small notebook displays with little vertical screen space.

real-life use case

User needs to find a folder buried deep down in the folder structure. To that end, user collapses the tags section, navigates the folder structure to the deeply buried folder and does stuff with this folder. When finished, the user collapses the folder structure again and re-expands the tags section.

workaround 1: disable/reenable tags section

1. click on ...
2. in the pop-up menu click on folder modes
3. in the second pop-up menu click on tags
   And then once the momentary need for collapsing the tags section has ended:
4. repeat steps 1-3 to re-enable the tags section

That's ok for single use, but cumbersome for constant use.

workaround 2: use the vertical scrollbar

Yes, the folder tree has a vertical scrollbar, but it would be much more joyful if the user could momentarily collapse the tags section in order to momentarily better navigate the folder tree without vertical scrollbar (thanks to the freed space by the collapsed tag section). See use case above.

Imagine you could not collapse but only vertical-scroll the attachment pane filled with dozens of attachments. Same thing. That's why the attachment pane is collapsible.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Why would we offer this when the user can disable the tags folder mode?

Comment 2

[chrizilla]

Thank you for the question. I updated comment #0 to clarify.

Answer: The goal is not to entirely disable the tags, but only to temporarily hide them when user needs more vertical space. So it's for the very same reason users can temporarily expand/collapse other generally desired areas (e.g. attachment pane) when there is not enough screen space.

"Why would we offer this when the user can disable the tags folder mode?"

In the same manner, you could also ask: "Why would we offer to collapse the folder tree and its subfolders, when the user can disable the folder pane altogether?" Imagine you only had the choice of either disabling the entire folder pane or use a 3-step workaround (workaround #1 in comment #0) each time you want to expand/collapse a folder in the folder tree. That would be quite cumbersome either way.

Comment 3

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

I'm gonna update this bug to have a more general scope of allowing the ability to collapse folder modes.
Since the "tags" are the same as all other modes it wouldn't make sense to implement this feature only for a single mode.

Implementing this will add some interaction points that need to be evaluated carefully as folder modes are not clickable nor selectable to not affect the folder pane navigation flow, so some UX prototype will be needed.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Comment 4

[chrizilla]

Good initiative to extend the scope. Thanks.