219685 - there should be a "downloading mail" dialog with progress bars

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, enhancement)

Description

[Kuba Suder]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030917
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030917

When mail is being downloaded/checked/whatever, I think that the progress should
be displayed not in the status bar, but in a dialog like in Outlook or Evolution. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[José Jeria]

Bug 219347 is reported for the same but for Thunderbird, dont know if this
should merge into 1 bug.

Comment 2

[Matija Polajnar]

I believe it does not need to be a pop-up window. If it's possible, the
"progress" area could fit under the list of folders on the left of the main
window. Also, any progress could be shown here (receiving, sending, moving,
loading, ...); at the bottom of the window a sum of all progresses could be shown.

I hope it's possible to place a label on a progressbar -- examples:
  "Receiving <account name>: 3/5"
  "Sending <subject line of the message being sent>"
  etc.

I beleive this would be fancy :)

Comment 3

[Jo Hermans]

see the discussion in bug 86884, where a similar dialag for sending mail was
*removed*

Comment 4

[Matija Polajnar]

It's duplicate 86393 is more useful.

I didn't have time to read all of the debate, but I believe that bug relates to
the window that opens for every sending message.

I would prefer ONE window, that would show ALL progress of every process
running. When RECEIVING (downloading) mail on more than one account at once (for
example, at Mozilla's start), more progresses interlap with each other. And,
even associated text does not always show. So you can't have any idea about
progress of downloading messages on specific account.

There are many processes that run (sending, downloading, import, listing IMAP
folders content, ...), and every one should create a new line in status window
(which I suggested to be a part of main window), and show its progress there.

Comment 5

[Kuba Suder]

OK, I could agree to info in status bar instead of new window :) (however, an
option in config to enable/disable a popup would be best). The most important is
to be able to know _exactly_ what Mozilla is now doing, and what is the progress
of the process. I mean, _every_ time that thing in the upper right corner is
spinning, I would like to know why is it spinning...

Comment 6

[Matija Polajnar]

That was my point. And, if there are more processes, it would really be nice to
know all of them :)

Comment 7

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 226360 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Matija Polajnar]

*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***

Comment 9

[David :Bienvenu]

we do have a progress window for message send - we'd just need to hook it up to
the get new mail process.

Comment 10

[Frank]

I have been looking into creating an xpi to provide this
functionality/enhancement..  What it does is collect *all* status messages into
a listbox that lives above the default status message location..  That way, the
user gets a 'history' of status messages AND when they occur ( each history
entry is paired with a datetime on it's tooltip )..

Have a look at http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=168491  for
screenshots/explanation.

What I would REALLY LOVE to do is to enhance the actual status messages
themselves so that...
1) each 'receiving XX' and 'There are no messages...' status text is preceeded
by (server name) .. Like '(aolmail) There are no messages...'
.... That way the user would know which messages go with which server

2) Each 'loading message...' message can be configured to show the subject of
the loading message .. Like ' Loading message...[bug 12345] Bugzilla bug'

Also, I would like to provide users with a better progress bar indication..  As
it is now, we get a percentage ( of downloaded/uploaded etc ) .. While this is
nice.. I find it a bit lacking as the progress bar looks the same whether its
10% of 1 mb or 10% of 100 Mb..  It would be nicer if we had XX of YY Kb
downloaded ( maybe in another statustext element, next to the progress bar
element ) 

While I have a somewhat working extension that does all of the above, it crashes
TB quite frequently because of things beyond my control ( I was attempting to
replace the core nsIMsgStatusFeedback component with a JS component and *I
think* the JS component is NOT addrefd properly)..  

Anyway, in order to get this to work more reliably, we need the
nsIMsgStatusFeedback component to either
1) provide a way to add listeners to the nsIWebProgressListener and
nsIProgressEventSink interfaces OR
2) have the nsIMsgStatusFeedback component call more mStatusFeedback ( the js
implementation ) functions.. such as OnStateChange, OnProgressChange, and
OnStatus in order to have js code 'see' the actual state data, request data, and
progress data

I have sample xpi's should you need to see what I mean
Thank you for your time

Comment 11

[Nico]

Bug 258444 is duplicate of this Bug but for Thunderbird.
Some mockups and ideas are included.