214766 - Mechanism for entering email addresses (to, cc, bcc) is awkward

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 252665

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[rich cowan]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)
Build Identifier: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.1

Many users, particularly novices and older people, are going to likely have 
trouble with the size of the font for the "to" line.  I think that it is kind 
of wierd that a large amount of screen space is allocated to the from line 
(something you normally don't want to change), but a much smaller space is 
allocated to the "to" line, which in some cases will contain a large number of 
email addresses.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. click on compose
2.
3.



Expected Results:  
A way to resolve this is to take the "from" line and break it up into 2 parts, 
and put the "reply-to" in there.  I.E. From is still a pull down menu, and 
reply-to would be on the right hand side.  It would say:

Reply-To:  (same as From)  [Edit]

I.e. the [Edit] would be a button, you could click on it, and
it would open up a pop-up window where the user could enter any text
they wanted to enter.

Then you could do a similar thing withe the to line.  Make it taller, with a 
larger font, but leave some room at the right for an [edit] button to pull up a 
pop-up window that would allow the user to see all 25 email addresses that they 
have put into the "to:" line at once, for instance.

This kind of change would go a long way towards allowing the software to
be used in many of the small organizations we work with, where the
ease of use and accessibility of the software are priorities.

Comment 1

[rich cowan]

Additional comments on this issue were made here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=239569#239569

A summary of the some of the comments here:

a) you need to use the mouse to enter a "cc" or a "bcc" or
   you need to use an awkward work-around (enter, shift-TAB,
   then the "c" key).  The user is going to probably try to
   tab down to the next line to put the bcc or cc in but the
   cursor will end up way down in the message body.

b) It is cumbersome to view a large number of emails (i.e. more
   than 5)

c) there is no visual indication of your "focus" if you do press
   the "tab" key from the "reply-to" address it jumps 
   to the "to" address but it looks like the cursor disappears

Comment 2

[石庭豐 (Seak, Teng-Fong)]

Is this bug similar to bug 226468?

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #0)
> I think that it is kind 
> of wierd that a large amount of screen space is allocated to the from line 
> (something you normally don't want to change), but a much smaller space is 
> allocated to the "to" line

What?  You mean the horizontal space?


> A way to resolve this is to take the "from" line and break it up into 2 parts, 
> and put the "reply-to" in there. 

The "reply-to"?  What are you talking about?


> Then you could do a similar thing withe the to line.  Make it taller, with a 
> larger font, but leave some room at the right for an [edit] button to pull up
> a  pop-up window that would allow the user to see all 25 email addresses that
> they have put into the "to:" line at once, for instance.

Note that the term "line" is not making much sense in this context -- the 
compose window has any number of fields, each of which might be said to be on 
its own "line".


I suggest duping this to bug 252665, which is at least well-described and 
requests a specific feature, which I think would offer you at least some of what 
you're looking for.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Is this bug similar to bug 226468?

no


(In reply to comment #3)
> I suggest duping this to bug 252665, which is at least well-described and 
> requests a specific feature, which I think would offer you at least some of what 
> you're looking for.

indeed, bug 252665 addresses much of comment 1


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 252665 ***