225174 - [meta] Lessen Thunderbird's use of sheet panels for Mac.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Mac OS X Angel]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007
Build Identifier: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.3 (20031013)

Mozilla Thunderbird has inherited Mozilla SeaMonkey's habit of making
practically everything a sheet. Usually an initial dialog should be a sheet,
however any sub-dialog windows should appear directly in front of the sheet.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Click Tools > Account Settings
2. Click Outgoing Server
3. Click Advanced
4. Click Add
5. Now try and cancel out of everything

Further example:
1. Click New > Account
2. Click Cancel
3. Click Exit

Actual Results:  
Sheet after sheet slides out and retracts. In the case of cancelling the Account
Wizard, the Account Wizard sheet disappears to display the Exit dialog, then
re-appears momentarily before retracting again as it actually exits.

Expected Results:  
Sheets should generally not spawn sheets. As an example, open Mac OS X's
TextEdit. Click File > Print. Then click "Save As PDF".

The way Thunderbird operates currently is somewhat dizzying for the user as
sheets keep sliding in and out rather unnecessarily, and navigating through
separate configuration panels becomes difficult, since the hierarchy is lost -
the user cannot see the dialog that spawned the new dialog. After several sheets
have appeared and disappeared, it's hard to remember what will happen next, when
you click OK or Cancel, and with nothing visible behind the current sheet, the
expectation is that once you click OK/Cancel, you will return to whatever is
visible in the background.

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGDialogs/chapter_17_section_2.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20000962/CJECBHJE

Comment 1

[Nathaniel Gray]

This bug is absolutely correct.  Also notice that in Safari, Mail.app, iTunes and practically every other OS 
X application the preferences dialog is just that -- a dialog!  

Sheets are designed to prevent the user from wondering, for example, "which of these five browser 
windows did this error dialog come from?"  They should be used sparingly in place of dialogs that are 
closely tied to a *specific* window within an application, not dialogs that relate to the global behavior 
of the application as a whole.

Comment 2

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

Potential UI issue -> CC'ing Bryan.

Comment 3

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

right, we should be following the Mac HIG guidelines.

( page has changed since comment 0 )

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGWindows/chapter_18_section_7.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20000961-CJECBHJE

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Is this still an issue on MAC?

Comment 5

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #4)
> Is this still an issue on MAC?

Absolutely. Never realized it until now. This is something that should be addressed.

Comment 6

[Javi Rueda :javirid]

About Account Settings being a sheet: there is bug 286664 which was about moving all that into the Preferences window

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

This will be fixed by bug 1884631 in 128. (or 126 if you are using beta)