227455 - Sort icons on thread pane column headers are inverted (wrong on windows)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[Craig Marshall]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007 Firebird/0.7

The grid of mail items, which includes Subject, Sender, Date, etc. is sortable.
When I click a header, such as Subject, and the arrow on the column header
points downwards, I'd expect the mail to sort into a descending order, but it
sorts into ascending order. It's the same with all the columns. I think the
images need to be reversed. Outlook works in the opposite way and I find its way
more intuitive.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Click the Subject header in the mail window

Actual Results:  
The image displayed next to the word "Subject" (a downwards pointing arrow)
doesn't match the sort order (ascending). It's the same for all columns.

Expected Results:  
The arrows should point downwards if the mail is sorted into descending order,
and upwards for ascending order.

Comment 1

[Jon Henry]

Is there an "official" way for this widget to behave in applications? I just
checked and for what it's worth Outlook Express behaves the way Craig is asking
for (an upward arrow puts newest messages at the bottom of the list, a downward
arrow pus newest messages at the top when sorting by date).

Comment 2

[Jon Henry]

Fixing this simply requires swapping the filenames on sort-asc.png and
sort-dsc.png in toolkit/skin/<platform>/tree. However I have no idea if that's
what the desired behavior is by those in charge, and it would affect Firebird
and anything else using the toolkit as well.

Comment 3

[Jon Henry]

One last comment out of me...there's an old SeaMonkey bug on the same issue, bug
93772. And obviously I meant .gif in the file names, not .png.

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

See bug 166491 comment 1.

Comment 5

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 228183 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 260057 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 263325 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

As noted in bug 93772 comment 49, there are platform differences; Windows and 
Mac apps generally show the arrows as requested in this bug, but many Unixy 
things show them opposite.  

Philosophically, it's a question of whether the triangle is pointing, or showing 
relative magnitude of the two ends.  I think "pointing," and so feel that 
Windows screwed things up and Mozilla has it right.
 Pointing:                        Magnitude:
        A -> Z                     1  <  10
  earlier -> later

Comment 9

[Dave Bullock]

Attachment: Sort-order Triangle: Ascending versus Descending

Let's make the sort-order triangle's direction user-selectable!

Comment 10

[André Jagusch]

I support this suggestion.
Perhaps you should make it user-selectable, but for the many from-OE-switching
users it would be best to order it the way Craig is asking for...

Comment 11

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

*** Bug 311704 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[kaeptn00]

Have to add my POV to that issue ...

For me (using Windows and having used Amiga Mac Unix) triangular shaped things in icons _always_ mean direction.

Sorting columns should _always_ be indicated by directional visual hints and _never_ by magnitude as the later just does not fit in this context.

I personaly strongly suggest to raise the severity from "trivial" to "major" as the reverse icons are really confusing.

Especialy for "switchers" like me ... I find myself hitting that damn thing more often because visual hint and expectation are contrary.

Comment 13

[SyS]

I think too that this issue is very annoying:/

Comment 14

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 330324 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 15

[Thomas Bertels]

I think the two points of view have their pros and cons. It's more a question of habit.

So I suggest to make it OS dependent, since the behavior seem consistent inside an OS (like the OK/Cancel buttons).

Comment 16

[Dave]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Let's make the sort-order triangle's direction user-selectable!

I whole-heartedly agree.
bug 93772 comment #66
bug 301792 comment #10

Comment 19

[simon.morris]

surely it's irrelevant what the icon means! the application is running on windows and there is a standard - you can't just change it because you think it's wrong! i think someone needs to read a few books on usability. if the icon had matched windows when thunderbird was released noone would have even mentioned it, isn't this obvious?

the fact firefox uses it's own default printer (ignoring the windows default) is similarly astonishing. 

one of the fundamental rules for ease of use is consistency.

Comment 20

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

For firefox/toolkit bug 93772 swapped the arrows on windows. Looks like bug 418623 will fix this for us by using the toolkit tree.css

Comment 22

[MrMe]

One more nail in the coffin of how Thunderbird is doing it now: Wikipedia uses the up=ascending, down=descending mnemonic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_National_Hockey_League_players_with_500_goals).  I would say this is a defacto standard.  In fact, other than Thunderbird, I can not think of any application that does it the other way.

Allowing the user to choose which way they want the arrows is an ok idea, but it just doesn't seem worth the effort.  I would recommend first fixing the arrow icons (which should be a really simple fix) and then if someone wants to go to extreme lengths to give people the option to use a more unintuitive icon arrangement, then fine.  But let's fix this problem first.

Comment 23

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

This is now fixed with bug 418623 landing.