269264 - add a tool-tip like preview of message body to message list items

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Alan Robinson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0

I like to read my email without the preview pane open, but there is one
situation where I wish there was a quick way to preview the contents of a
message. This is when I have located a probable spam, and am about to click on
the "mark as spam" column.  Often it's not clear from the subject alone that the
item really is spam. If I had the preview window open, I could just click on the
item, but then I would have to have the preview pane open all of the time, which
I don't like. 

The solution, I think, is a tool-tip like preview of the message body. When
pointing at the "mark as spam" dot in the message index window, a tooltip would
pop-up below the cursor, showing the first two-three lines of the message's
body. No images or formating would be needed; just the raw text.

This is somewhat similar in spirit to the in-place previews that MS outlook (the
full version) provides, except in outlook the previews are always shown,
directly below each message's subject. I really like that feature, though I
think a tool-tip like version of it would be at least as good, if not an
improvement.  As is, I often have to open a message to make sure it's not spam,
and that's a real pain. 

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

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

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Comment 2

[alan]

I still think this would be a very useful feature.

Comment 3

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

I like the idea of offering tooltip previews of msg body in message list. Related Bug 634820 proposes an optional extra column for the message body, hovering which will also show a tooltip.

I don't think we'll want the body tooltip on the "mark as spam" column, we'll need a separate body column for that. That column could have msg text preview or even just an icon for showing the tooltip.

The next step here is to identify the details of the requested UI.

Comment 4

[Teal Bauer [:teal]]

Also related to Bug 634820, Bug 213945, and maybe Bug 441414.