244000 - Option to display no message in preview pane when folder first opened

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, enhancement)

Description

[lotek]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040413 Debian/1.6-5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040413 Debian/1.6-5

It would be nice if there were a setting so that when I navigate between
folders, no message loads in the preview pane until I select one manually. 
This is a compromise between the standard preview pane behavior where a message
(either last selected or last unread) is automatically loaded when a folder is
opened, and the 'open each message in new window' option, which doesn't open
messages until you manually select them, but forces you to have each message in
a new window. 
Either no message should be selected at all, or, preferably, the chosen message
(last selected or last unread) should be selected, but not yet displayed in the
preview pane.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open a folder using the preview pane view
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
A message is automatically displayed in the preview pane.

Expected Results:  
Either no message should be selected at all, or, preferably, the chosen message
(last selected or last unread) should be selected, but not yet displayed in the
preview pane.

Comment 1

[lotek]

Oops. I realized I should clarify this a little more.
I think there may actually be 2 problems here.
1) Auto-preview -- It would be nice to be able to turn off the auto-preview
while still using the preview pane.
2) Single-click both selects & opens in the preview pane -- It would be nice to
be able to set it so that single-click selects the message, but double-click
opens in the preview pane

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

You *can* turn off display of a message when folder first opened:

  Preferences | Mail&Newsgroups 
   [] Remember last selected message

As for your suggestions in comment 1, I doubt any change will ever be 
implemented along those lines.  If the preview pane bothers you that much, turn 
it off and use double-click to open a message window.

Comment 3

[lotek]

(In reply to comment #2)
First, I don't currently use MozillaMail, in part because of this annoyance. As
I stated in the bug, I dislike opening every message in a new window. That
creates way too many items in my taskbar. For the windowing behavior I prefer,
the preview pane is superior. However, I do like it that the message isn't
opened until I double-click. Hence, some way to compromise between the 2
different behaviors would be useful.

As to your suggestion, 'Remember last selected message' automatically selects,
and therefore previews, the last message I had open in a folder. So when I
navigate between folders, messages are constantly being opened automatically,
when all I want is the message list.

Comment 4

[Christian Eyrich]

The option Mike wrote about does prevend you from a message being opened when
visiting a folder - when unchecked as his "figure" shows.
Why an option for a doubleclick to open it?

BTW, there's no preview pane, it's the message pane.

Comment 5

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

> I dislike opening every message in a new window.

Well, what do you know: Mozilla has an option to handle that as well:
  Preferences | Mail&Newsgroups | Windows
    (*) An existing message window

That will limit you to at most one open message window.  If that's insufficient, 
you can modify the software yourself to implement your desired behavior, even 
publish it as an extension if you so like.  Or you could, if you weren't so lame 
that you can't be bothered to explore the options provided by the program before 
posting bugs.

This bug is invalid.  I suggest you re-resolve it as such.