247335 - Add separate "First Name", "Last Name" and "Display Name" fields to address book column picker for optional display in AB list pane

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, enhancement)

Description

[Daryl Biberdorf]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040608 Firefox/0.8
Build Identifier: 

When viewing the address book, there is no ability to display first or last
name, only display name (which is incorrectly populated on an import). It would
be nice to be able to display first and last names, especially for sorting purposes.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Ben]

In Thunderbird 0.7.3 in the Address Book window there is the menu option: "View
> Show Name As" with three options:

- First, Last
- Last, First
- Display Name

Is the first option what you are looking for?

Comment 2

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

Really, this window should have a column picket widget, like (eg) the thread
pane does.

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Has a column picker now, but first and last name are not available. Probably because the search uses nsMsgSearchAttrib and that do not have those fields, so adding it would be more work... 

Comment 4

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Adding nickname per bug 407070

Comment 6

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Nickname is now available from column picker, but optional separate columns for first/last/display Name are still missing.

Combined, customizable "Name" column per comment 1 might be useful for many default scenarios, but I'd still consider not having the 'real' first/last/display name columns as an option from column picker a design flaw which obstructs a lot of useful purposes like easily sorting by first/last/display name, finding blanks and wrong attributions in those columns, etc. Having to go through the main menu e.g. when you want to sort by first name instead of last name is a nuisance, and the combined column is so confusing as it mixes everything up, even local parts of email addresses when first/last are not specified in spite of display name present.

Magnus, is comment 3 still applicable or we now have more fields in nsMsgSearchAttrib?

Comment 7

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

It's a long time ago I made that comment so i don't know if the analysis is correct, but if it is, looks like it's still applicable: http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mailnews/base/search/public/nsMsgSearchCore.idl#76