236833 - Restructure Message menu's Reply and Forward menu items

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Currently (Moz 1.6), the Message menu has four or five (mail vs. news) menu 
items for handling Reply and Forward:
  Forward
  Forward As   >    Inline | Attachment
  Reply to Sender Only   [visible only when news message selected]
  Reply                  ["Reply to Newsgroup" when news message selected]
  Reply to All

"Forward" (Ctrl-L) uses Inline or Attachment according to the user's stated 
preference, and performs the same function as the toolbar button; whereas 
Forward As allows per-message selection of the forwarding action.

"Reply/Reply to Newsgroup" (Ctrl-R) also performs the same function as the Reply 
toolbar button.  Reply to All maps to its own toolbar button.

"Reply to List" (bug 45715) is unimplemented.

This seems pretty cluttered to me.  Also, I disagree with hiding items in the 
main menu based on context; disabling is better.

I suggest the Message menu reduce the options to two items, each with a submenu. 
The tricky part would be to display the shortcut in a dynamic fashion:

  Forward As >
     Inline       <- Ctrl-L shortcut would be shown on whichever is default
     Attachment
  Reply To >
     Sender       <- Ctrl-R shortcut would be shown on whichever applies
     Newsgroup    <- 'Newsgroup' and 'List' would be disabled (NOT HIDDEN)
     [List]            when option doesn't apply to selected message
     All          <- Ctrl-Shift-R shortcut, always

Presumably, if Reply to List were implemented, then that would be the default 
action (Toolbar button / Ctrl-R) for messages from a list; and the list would be 
one of the recipients of a Reply To All action.

Comment 1

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

See also bug 17796, which has had a patch waiting on reviews for ages.

Comment 2

[Michiel van Leeuwen (email: mvl+moz@)]

>  Forward As >
>     Inline       <- Ctrl-L shortcut would be shown on whichever is default
>     Attachment

I usually don't want to think about inline vs attachment. And i know what it
means. A normal user doesn't. Don't force him to choose beetween things he
doesn't know anything about. He just wants to forward a mail.

Comment 3

[Robert Accettura [:raccettura]]

I was thinking this a while back.  It does need a little cleanup and polish.

But I also agree that bug 17796 should be resolved first though.

If a consensus is ever reached on how to restructure the menu, I might take this
bug, if I have a few free cycles at the time.  I love menu's!

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #2)
> >  Forward As >
> >     Inline       <- Ctrl-L shortcut would be shown on whichever is default
> >     Attachment
> 
> I usually don't want to think about inline vs attachment. And i know what it
> means. A normal user doesn't. Don't force him to choose beetween things he
> doesn't know anything about. He just wants to forward a mail.

I see your point, but I still think a single Forward item on the Message menu is 
an improvement over the current, somewhat redundant structure.

Rather than "forcing him to choose between things he doesn't know anything 
about," I think of it as "forcing him to learn what the difference is."  There 
are contexts where forwarding inline is the wrong thing to do, and others where 
forwarding as attachment is the wrong thing to do.  If J.User remains ignorant 
of the difference, it's a potential source of frustration.

I would also advocate that the context menu continue to have only "Forward" -- 
as however the pref is set.  Same for the toolbar Forward button (altho that is 
an excellent candidate for the dropdown-style toolbar buttons, per bug 17796).

Another thing that could be done would be to put whichever Forward mode was the 
default into the first position of the submenu; in this way, the shortcut would 
always appear on the top item.  I'm not sure how desirable this would be.


One final thing: my suggested menu layout in comment 0 shows the Forward items 
preceding the Reply items; that was an error, I would expect Reply to continue 
to come first.

Comment 5

[Aaron Lawrence]

I would just like to make the comment that:
- when I want to forward to a person, I use forward [inline].
- when I want to forward a spam to spamcop, I use forward as -> attachment.
It's quite tedious getting to the forward as attachment, and *for me* I would
prefer NOT to use submenus, but rather have the options at the top level:

---
Forward 
Forward as [other option]
---
Reply
Reply to all

I'd also like a toolbar button for forward as attachment, but that's a whole
nother topic :)

Comment 6

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Moving my front-end RFEs from MailNews to Thunderbird (sorry for spam)

Comment 7

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

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.

Comment 8

[Jens Müller (:tessarakt)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> >  Forward As >
> >     Inline       <- Ctrl-L shortcut would be shown on whichever is default
> >     Attachment
> 
> I usually don't want to think about inline vs attachment. And i know what it
> means. A normal user doesn't. Don't force him to choose beetween things he
> doesn't know anything about. He just wants to forward a mail.

I'd like to have a drop-down arrow on the buttons (main toolbar and the button in the message pane). The arrow should allow choosing the mode, while just clicking on the button should use the default forwarding mode.

Comment 9

[Jens Müller (:tessarakt)]

ok, filed as separate bug 508250