195718 - three-column 3-pane alternative layout

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 89941

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, enhancement)

Description

[Chris Keene]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.3b) Gecko/20030210
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.3b) Gecko/20030210

Under preferences > mail and ngs > windows, it would be nice to see a greate
number of options as to how to lay out the 3 window paines. Example, one option
is to have 3 full length columns, left=folders center=mailbox listing
right=message. Other options may include showing contacts in an additional paine
(or in the folder list). 

Related to this, perhaps the mailbox list could also have increased flexibility,
e.g. instead of a line per message, what about sender/date on first line
(perhaps in bold) and subject + opther columns underneath in small/light text.
This would aid those with small viewing screens, and also for the 3 vertical
paines - where the mailbox listing would only have limited width.

Reproducible: Didn't try

Steps to Reproduce:
1. this is a enhancement request
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Maarten Afman]

Current setup options are: 

       +---+-------+            +---+-------+
       |   |       |            |   |       |
 (A)   |   +-------+      (B)   +---+-------+
       |   |       |            |           |
       |   |       |            |           |
       +---+-------+            +-----------+

These options are fine for use with computers that have 800x600 or 1024x768
resolution. Now if one has a monitor with high resolution, for example a 17" TFT
with 1280x1024, or one of those wide-screen Macintoshes, then it would make more
sense to add a window layout option that makes more intelligent use of screenspace.

For example:
       +---+-------+---------+
       |   |       |         |
 (C)   |   |       |         |
       |   |       |         |
       |   |       |         |
       +---+-------+---------+

where the folder list is left, the message list is in the middle and the message
is to the right.

Generally this should be better for high resolution displays. 
This is because most email messages are truncated at 80 chars, so an email
message displayed in A or B leaves half of the screen blank. 


Advantages of C:

1) allows for more messages to be displayed in the message list.

This allows for better overview of one's mailbox so less chance of not seeing an
important message. It also makes navigating threaded discussions easier and
increases the ability to track an active usenet newsgroup with lots of
discussions being opened.


2) can display most email messages in it's entirety: no scrolling required.

The display of an entire message on screen is a big advantage which will allow a
user to quickly read or skim the message in it's entirety. Reasearch has shown
that on screen information is read less efficient and effective than paper
information, so the application should do it's best to stimulate effectiveness.
I believe that the elimination of the need to scroll is an interesting aspect of
this. 


Of course there are disadvantages, too. It is not handy for someone who really
wants all 25 possible columns in the message list view. It is not suitable for
800x600 use. It resembles OE functionality, so implementing this might be seen
as copycatting. But that is hardly a problem, is it?!



(Related request, I think someone already requested this in a seperate bug, just
need to find it...
when option C is implemented there should be some horizontal scrolling bar for
the message list pane which gets activated when the message list pane is made
smaller than say 600px. The current behaviour is that every column gets resized,
but that doesn't schale down.)

Comment 2

[Daniel Wang]

related: bug 105542

Comment 3

[Teal Bauer [:teal]]

I strongly suggest implementing the "alternate" three-pane view, featuring
Subject on the first line, and Date and Sender on a second line. That would
greatly help users running lower resolutions than 1280x1024 (that is when
three-pane is really usable right now) to use three-pane view.

Currently, we have

 + Re: This is a subject      * Some Sender          2kB Fri 17 Oct 2003 17:18

In three-pane view that is either resized rather ugly, or requires high
resolution to be readable. Alternative view should be something like this:

 + Re: This is a subject  (2kB)
   By [Some Sender] on [Fri Oct 17 2003 17:18]
   -----------------------------------------------
   Hello, how are you? (3kB)
   By [Someone Else] on [Fri Oct 17 2003 17:20]
   -----------------------------------------------

... etc. I hope you get the idea, if not I could draw a mockup I guess.

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 89941 ***