196250 - Compose UI gets cluttered when recipient field is resized to be quite small

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[Andreas Kunz]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030302
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030302

When you make the recipient field in a compose window smaller by moving the
horizontal splitter below the subject field upward the UI gets corrupted:
Any (up to 4) recipient lines with text in them do not disappear behind the
subject field and the surrounding bar, but are displayed over it.

If there are less than four recipient lines with text in them, there is still a
rectangle of the size of four such lines drawn in some UI background color. That
one does not overlap the subject field, but is "under" it and displayed in the
mail body field (and hides any text that is entered where this rectangle is
displayed).

Neither subject field nor splitter get mouse clicks in that "four recipient
lines area": you can only access the subject field by pressing 'tab' when you
chose to display less than four recipient lines.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open a mail compose window
2. Move the horizontal splitter below the "subject" field upward

Actual Results:  
It does not look good and does not work right.

Expected Results:  
It should at least look good. :-)

This is kind of a regression: in Mozilla 1.2.1 one simply could not make the
recipient field smaller than four lines and everything went well.
(There's probably the place to find that magic "four"...)

Now one can make it smaller (which is fine!), but there seem to exist things
that do not get smaller and the z-order of the recipient lines vs. the subject
bar is wrong (subject disappears behind the field above).

Comment 1

[Andreas Kunz]

Attachment: Screenshot

In this example ther have two recipient lines text in them (or at least that
address book icon). They overlap the subject field.
Below the subject field you see the "UI background colored" rectangle that
stays exactly there, no matter where I drag the splitter. Text in the message
body would appear behind this rectangle.
Note that the mouse pointer does not change to a "resize" one: I cannot grab
the splitter there; only more to the right, under the Attachments field.

Comment 2

[Andreas Kunz]

Attachment: Patch - in theory...

http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/mailnews/compose/resources/content/addressingWidgetOverlay.xul#31

is the key line with the magic number in this bug:
Changing 'rows="4"' to 'rows="2"' makes the composer window only show 2
recipient lines when opened - and it makes this bug much less visible because
only the upper 2 addressing lines go *over* the subject box, while the others
(no matter if there is text in them) are covered by the subject box (as it
should be).
This line was introduced in bug 45173.

Removing 'rows="4"' totally makes everything work well(!) BUT initially the
compose window displays always a little more than eight recipient lines (no
matter how large the window is). It seems to like that size... (I also removed
the attachment bucket to see if that one was the cause for that excessive
height, but: no).


This patch removes the 'rows' attribute, but makes sure that only a reasonable
number of lines is shown initially. It also ensures that at least one line is
shown.
The problem: there is almost always a vertical scrollbar in the recipient field
(just resize it and you'll see). And it behaves very strange (as in, does
nothing or just disappears when clicked).
This scrollbar also appeared earlier - but only if there were more than the
magic 4 recipient lines were displayed. Now it appears always and I consider it
disturbing enough that this patch is not the way to go at the moment.
Maybe it can be prevented from appearing by removing the last recipient line
(that is the reason for it to appear) if there is nothin written in it...

I also tested the mailinglist address enter field in the address book where
this addressingWidget is reused (see bug 45173). It appears to be everything
well there.

BTW: This bug only happens on classic theme because on modern you still cannot
make the recipient area smaller than four lines. Which is strange because the
theme files in question look unsuspicious and have not been changed between
1.2.1 and 1.3a.

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Andreas Kunz, I can not duplicate this bug because it appears the splitter will 
not shrink the address panel to smaller than four lines, plus From: and Subject:

If this concurs with your observation, please mark this bug Resolved|WorksForMe.

Comment 4

[Andreas Kunz]

Thanks, Mike for reminding of this bug.
This bug as descriped WFM now: behaviour changed in a way that now prevents
resizing the addressing field to be smaller than four lines.

I still consider four lines too much as a default and even minimum, but that's
not this bug and it's probably not worth it to try change this...

-> WFM

Comment 5

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

v wfm.