273556 - account settings, new account wizard is one inch wide and not resizable

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, defect)

Description

[nebmail1]

User-Agent:       Opera/7.50 (Windows NT 5.1; U)  [en]
Build Identifier: Mozilla Thunderbird version 1.0 (20041206)

Tools... Account Settings... Add Account... brings up the Account Wizard. On my 
screen this modal dialog box is about 1.5 inches wide and not resizable. In 
fact, it's about just as wide as the "New Account Setup" words at the top. The 
box is the correct height. It is not resizable. I cannot add any new accounts 
because of this bug.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled all mozilla products to no avail.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Tools... Account Settings... Add Account... brings up the Account Wizard
2. Notice that the wizard is unusually (and unusably) skinny 

Actual Results:  
Just as described

Expected Results:  
The Account Wizard should render itself to the correct size. Or, if you can 
handle it (yes that's a challenge), make the wizard resizable. Fixed-sized user 
interfaces are primitive and lead to all sorts of system portability issues.

Another solution is to make your account settings configuration files cleaner. 
Then I could edit the thing myself (or write a third-party account wizard that 
can be resized!).  Open configuration is as important as Open code!

I have had many versions of firefox, mozilla calendar, and thunderbird installed 
at one time or another.  This problem appeared somewhere around thunderbird 0.
7-0.8, but I can't be sure because I don't change my accounts that often.

(Now I want to use the new RSS capability!!)

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

I believe the window sizes are stored in the profile, as localstore.rdf.  Try 
creating a new profile:
  <path>\thunderbird.exe -profilmanager

Comment 2

[nebmail1]

localstore.rdf appears to contain x,y,width,height for user-adjustable windows,
including the account settings dialog. However, the new account wizard, I cannot
find.

After creating a new profile, the new account wizard is the right size (and
still the old size under the old profile). So, this setting must be somewhere in
my profile, but I can't identify it.

Thank you for the workaround. It's a hassle to create a new profile, though. I
hope this problem can be resolved.

Comment 3

[nebmail1]

... I deleted my localstore.rdf, which prompted thunderbird to create a new one 
from scratch. This fixed the new account wizard dialog. I just had to adjust the 
UI again - existing accounts were not affected.

In my old localstore.rdf, I noticed relics from Mozilla Calendar (I had tried to 
install it as a thunderbird extension once). One of the calendar "ordinal=" 
settings used the same ordinal number as another persist setting. Is that right? 
Maybe the new account dialog was reading the wrong persisted state. I could not 
isolate how to repair my localstore.rdf, but starting from scratch worked OK.

This is probably a fringe case. It would be a major problem for mere mortals 
(non-developers), and I barely escaped the peril (being a non-mozilla-developer)
. Anyway, thanks for the pointers.

Comment 4

[Scott Reed]

The Account Manager is a reasonable size in my case but for the Disk Space page
it is not high enough. Some of the options at the bottom are cut off. Why isn't
this a resizeable window?????

Comment 5

[nebmail1]

Yes, maybe a mozilla developer could turn this problem report into a request for 
resizable windows in place of specific fixed-sized ones...

Comment 6

[Petya]

Hello,
I just downloaded Thunderbird 1.0.2, I got the bug with the non-resizable 
Account Settings window, uninstalled this version and installed v.1.0, but I 
still have the problem. I use Win Me. I don't understand much of making new 
profiles as recommended by Mike C. so can you suggest another solution?

Comment 7

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #6)
> can you suggest another solution?

Comment 3 suggests finding and deleting the localstore.rdf file (while TB is not 
running, of course).  This will delete a number of saved window sizes and 
positions, but they can all be reset as desired.

(In reply to comment #5)
> maybe a mozilla developer could turn this problem report into a request for 
> resizable windows in place of specific fixed-sized ones...

Scott has other plans for the options dialog (which you can see in current 
nightly builds, leading up to TB 1.1 -- it follows the new Firefox model), and 
also for the account-settings dialog; see bug 286664.

Because of those, I'm going to WontFix this bug.  After TB 1.1 is released, if 
further problems with the fixed-size dialogs occur, please open a new bug for 
those.