262676 - MailView is cleared when messages selected via Ctrl-A

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 258888

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Alexander Zink :alex]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de-AT; rv:1.8a4) Gecko/20040927
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de-AT; rv:1.8a4) Gecko/20040927

If a 'View' filter is selected, the messages displayed on screen will fit with
that selection. However if I want to use keyboard shortcuts to handle this new
selection of messages, still the _original/previous_ 'View' filter is applied!
Only _clicking_ into the list of messages after applying a View filter solves
this problem...


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
My task is to move all messages from the Inbox recognized and marked as 'junk'
(e.g. automatically after latest POP3 update from server) manually to a 'MyJunk'
folder. This is how I procede:
1. Open Mozilla Mail component - Inbox message list is visible
2. Press Ctrl-T to get new messages from POP3 account
3. New messages are loaded into Inbox and automatically marked as 'junk' if
applicable - only some are recognized as 'not junk'
4. Click on the 'View' filter above the message header list and select 'Junk' (a
proprietary filter item) or any default View filer (e.g. 'Not Junk') - the list
of displayed messages adjusts correctly
5. Press Ctrl-A to select all the now visible messages fitting with your View
filter to drag them to another folder; this seems to work as expected if you
don't pay attention to the 'View' filter button (see below)!
Actual Results:  
The 'View' filter jumps back to 'All' at the moment when Ctrl-A is pressed, so
what you actually select by pressing Ctrl-A are 'All' messages, not those
filtered previously. So what you really move to another folder is your whole
Inbox content, and typically (if you are not avare of the bug) you do not find
out until you later on try to switch the 'View' filter back to 'All' (which is
already the case!). As the result, the empty list of messages you see is not due
to the fact that all 'Junk' (or 'Not Junk') mails have been moved to another
folder, but your whole Inbox content is gone! And if you were performing _any_
other action after moving the files, even the 'Undo' command won't help you any
more - _all_ messages are accidentally gone from the Inbox (and may now e.g. be
spread among a vaste amount of trash mails)!

Expected Results:  
If the 'View' filter was applied to the current list of messages, this status
must remain stable even when the user continues working by using shortcuts like
Ctrl-A! The 'View' filter must only change status when switching to another
folder or manually selecting a different 'View' item - note that both are
intentional user interactions. However, the status must never switch on its own!

The 'View' filter's buggy behaviour can temporarily be bypassed as follows:
1. Select the 'View' filter you want to apply
2. Click into the list of messages now displayed (!) - the 'View' filter status
remains
3. Press Ctrl-A and move all messages to another folder - the 'View' filter
status will still remain as set and therefore only intended messages are moved

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #0)
> Actual Results:  
> The 'View' filter jumps back to 'All' at the moment when Ctrl-A is pressed, so
> what you actually select by pressing Ctrl-A are 'All' messages, not those
> filtered previously.

I see this happening also.
  Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8a4) Gecko/20040927

Resummarizing for clarity; moving to Front End component, as the problem is not 
with the filtering itself but with the interface.

The easy workaround: instead of using Ctrl-A, click on the first item, and then 
shift-click on the last item.  Yes, this loads the first message selected, but 
the bug severity is still not Major with a simple workaround.

Comment 2

[Andrew Fidel]

This is actually kind of annoying because it should not have changed, in fact if
you go to edit->select->All (ctrl-a) it works as expected and that menu entry
gives what SHOULD be the correct shortcut combo. Still present in 1.8a5 btw.

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

There's a simpler workaround: just move the focus to the thread pane.
While the focus is *on* the mailview, the 'A' is grabbed without regard to 
the Ctrl modifier; and the 'A' is interpreted as the first letter in the 
"All" MailView.

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 258888 ***