23045 - UI: mailnews sidebar should not have "what's related" panel

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect, P1)

Description

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

I don't think it makes sense to have the "what's related" in the
mailnews sidebar.

what is going to be related to email messages?

if the email has attached html pages, I'll probably open the
page in a browser window.

comments?

Comment 1

[Robert John Churchill]

I agree that "What's Related" shouldn't be in the sidebar...

... UNLESS its a useful enough feature to define what "Related EMail"
is --- perhaps, a singular threaded mail view for the current message, or all
other email sent by the sender of the current message, or ... ?

Comment 2

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

I like the idea of the thread  (or all email from that person, etc) in the
related category.

Comment 3

[jglick]

cc'd German and John Gable for their opinions.

I believe how Sidebar Panels currently work is that the user selects from a pool
of available panels which panels they want active.  Certain panels will already
be active by default.  Then, for EACH application SEPARATELY, the user can
decide which of the panels they have already activated, that they want to appear
in the Sidebar panel for each app independently.  Again, defaults for each app
will be set.  I believe that for Mail, the Whats Related panel is turned off by
default but turned on for the Browser (if not, it should be this way).

In addition, the overall architecture of the sidebar panels is that any panel
can be available to any of the applications if the user so desires and chooses
to customize their panels that way. And panels always behave consistently
regardless of what app you are viewing them in. For example, Booksmarks, News,
Calendar, Tinderbox, Weather, etc, are always the same info from app to app.

The idea of a message threading view or other e-mail from the same sender is
nice although both ideas are already available in some form in the message list
pane (threaded view, or organized by Sender). But this changes the functionality
of the Whats Related panel based on what app you are in.  I'm not sure we want
to do that.

Currently Whats Related displays current and previous search results, history,
etc.  Is the name of this panel going to change?

From German's Sidebar spec: (http://gooey/client/5.0/specs/sidebar/)
"Panels may be removed or added on a global basis . Upon selecting the
Customize... item From Add Panels... in the My Panels header area a separate
customization window is opened."

"The Add Panels... button gives users access to selecting which of the panels
they subscribe to appear in the My Panels section on a per application basis.
Thus panels 2, 4 and 6 may be shown in Navigator whereas panels 3,5 and 6 are
shown in AIM. The panels to be shown can be selected From a list of all panels
the user has subscribed to. This list will fly out as a submenu once the Add
Panels... button is clicked on. The last item on this list will allow to
customize the overall list of available panels and add new panels From the net."

Comment 4

[johng]

By the tiem we ship, the user will be able to choose which panels they can view 
from Navigator and which ones they view from Mail or IM.  That way we can 
exclude "What's Related" from the other apps (until the day that What's Related 
becomes valauble in other apps).

So the goal is to have different viewed panels per component.  The question is - 
what can we do by beta 1.  Slamm?

Reassigning to slamm.  Also see bug 24602, a beta1 bug.

Comment 5

[Chris McAfee]

beta-radar, m14

Comment 6

[don]

This is close to being fixed now ...

Comment 7

[Steve Lamm]

I just checked in a fix. I excluded "What's Related" from AIM, compose,
addressbook, and mail. It's easy to exclude other tabs if needed.

You will have to remove panels.rdf from your profile to see the new defaults (or
you can create a new profile).

Comment 8

[Ninoschka Baca]

Build 2000-05-12-10M16: NT4, Linux 6.0, Mac 9.04
Verified Fixed.