255233 - Please make dialogs such as "Do you want to send unsent messages?" modeless instead of modal

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 794595

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Travis Evans]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040626 Firefox/0.9.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040626 Firefox/0.9.1

version 0.7.1 (20040626)

When I started Thunderbird, I had some unsent messages that I had written while
not online. It had been a few days since last using Thunderbird, so I couldn't
remember what I wrote so I could tell Thunderbird whether I wanted the messages
sent right now or not.

I tried to check the unsent messages, but couldn't because the dialog box asking
if unsent messages should be sent is modal. I had to press "Don't send", check
the messages, and then manually find the "Send unsent messages" option when I
decided to send them.

Many other dialogs in Firefox and Thunderbird are modal, and there aren't many
good reasons to make them so, IMO. They are very annoying and lessen usability.

The following link is to an article that I fully agree with. It explains why I
dislike modal dialogs so much.
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/usability/library/us-cranky12.html

Thanks!

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[John David Galt]

Have you looked at bug 274280?  It seems to me it would make this change
unnecessary.

Comment 2

[Travis Evans]

My main concern wasn't just with this particular message, but with modal dialogs
in general.  It seems to me that at least 75% of modal dialogs I see in
applications don't really need to be modal.  They can be quite irritating
because they force me to dismiss the dialogs just to check something else in the
same program, even for a moment, and then reopen the dialog, perhaps reentering
all the data I had just entered, to continue what I was doing.  IIRC, Seamonkey
gets this right for the most part, but Firefox and Thunderbird have too many modals.

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 4

[John David Galt]

I still believe this enhancement is needed.

Comment 5

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #2)
> My main concern wasn't just with this particular message, but with modal
> dialogs in general.  

Well, some dialogs are being made non-modal -- a recent example is the Customize MailView dialog.  You really should specify exactly which ones are the problem, tho.  Maybe nobody will address your pet peeves even if you do, but the chance of the problem being addressed if you *don't* is even greater.
If the dialogs in question aren't all closely related, you probably should open individual bugs for each set of related dialogs.


As for the Send Unsent, there are many things that could be done differently; see, for instance, bug 232810, which directly addresses the useability problem you describe in comment 0.

Bug 274280 has been fixed, so it's no longer necessary to dismiss this dialog on startup (but see bug 273496).

Comment 6

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

cc'ing our UI guru...

Comment 7

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Plausible request, albeit imo not very high in priority.
I recommend confirmation.

Anecdotal evidence: For my QA/bug triage work, I often deliberately use "Send later" so that I can check the resulting message as it will be sent. If I don't remember to move them out of "outbox" immediately, I'll get the modal "sent unsent messages now" message on next startup. I can't imagine many users blindly confirming that message for an unknown set of messages that may be outdated or otherwise no longer suitable for sending.

UI idea:
Why not make this a bar, with a link to "outbox" and a link to customizing options for this feature? (the same type of bar we have for attachment reminder)

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

bug has much more current info, so duping forward