273879 - Cannot use addressbook to select multiple BCC or CC recipients - need / implement context menu {Write | > To | CC | BCC}

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1797061

(MailNews Core :: Address Book, enhancement)

Description

[Steve Bradshaw]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040803
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040803

The mechanism in the mail composer which addresses are entered does not allow
bulk changing of one type of recipient (for example "To:") to another (For
example "Bcc:")  If am often sending many mails to many BCC'd recipients, by
choosing them from the address book first.  But when I choose multiple
recipients, and right click and choose "Compose", a new mail is created, and all
the recipients are "To:", then I have to change them one by one to "Bcc:"

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Select multiple recipients from the address book
2.Right click one one, choose "Compose"
3.View new mail 

Actual Results:  
The mail was created with the intended recipients, but I then had to change all
the "To:" markers to "Bcc:" markers, one by one

Expected Results:  
Either provide an option from the address book to "Compose BCC" or, better
still, have a mechanism where I can see and manipulate all of the recipients
from the compose mail page (Outlook Express does this quite well)

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Reporter: I realise this does not fully match your request, but have you thought
about doing it via the select address dialog?

If you haven't, select compose, select address, then select multiple addresses
for your email, and then click the BCC button, then all your selected addresses
will be entered as BCC.

Comment 2

[Steve Bradshaw]

Yes, thanks - that's fine.  For completeness though, could you provide some way
of doing this from the address book, since I can can compose "To:" people
directly from there, it seems strange that I can't "Bcc:" from there, and that
is more common for me. 

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

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.

Comment 5

[Karsten Düsterloh]

Still valid and reasonable, though probably extension fodder.

Comment 6

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

http://gsfn.us/t/1few0 - How Do I Send Several contacts At Once in the Bbc: ?

This looks more like basic functionality to me, only that it doesn't hurt that much as we have the contacts sidebar (F9) as a viable workaround.

An easy implementation could just make the Write command on the context menu a dualbutton, where clicking Write will do what it does now (add contacts to To:), and clicking the arrow on the right will open a submenu for choosing other types of recipients (To | CC | BCC), like this:

+---------------------+
| Properties          |
+---------------------++-------+
| Write           | > || To    |
| Instant Message     || CC    |
+---------------------+| BCC   |
| Delete              |+-------+
+---------------------+

From an XUL pov, we'd be using something like https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XUL/PopupGuide/MenuButtons#The_%27menu-button%27_button
Firefox 4b4 has some examples like Print button in the all-in-one Firefox-Menu that this dual functionality is actually a nice and space-efficient UI.

Apart from this bug, we need a way to bulk-change the type of multiple existing recipients of a message composition (e.g. from to to bcc).

Comment 7

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: V.1 ASCII mockup of dualbutton context menu (Addressbook contacts): Write | > | To | CC | BCC

Bryan, an easy review that adds some basic and helpful functionality to addressbook contacts' context menu, without affecting any of the existing functionality or UI. With this, we'd also provide an easy workaround for our shortcomings in the editor window, where changing the type of multiple recipients (e.g. from To: to BCC:) is a very tedious procedure as you have to do them one-by-one.

Comment 8

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Comment on attachment 474501 [details]
V.1 ASCII mockup of dualbutton context menu (Addressbook contacts): Write | > | To | CC | BCC

This is an interesting concept but I we want to focus something that addresses the original issue directly by allowing the person to change a large number of "to" addresses to bcc or cc.

Comment 9

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Comment on attachment 474501 [details]
V.1 ASCII mockup of dualbutton context menu (Addressbook contacts): Write | > | To | CC | BCC

Sorry, need to flip flags again to link up ui review comment (see next comment)

Comment 10

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Comment on attachment 474501 [details]
V.1 ASCII mockup of dualbutton context menu (Addressbook contacts): Write | > | To | CC | BCC

(In reply to Bryan Clark (Firefox PM) [:clarkbw] from comment #8)
> Comment on attachment 474501 [details]
> V.1 ASCII mockup of dualbutton context menu (Addressbook contacts): Write |
> > | To | CC | BCC
> 
> This is an interesting concept but I we want to focus something that
> addresses the original issue directly by allowing the person to change a
> large number of "to" addresses to bcc or cc.

Yes, mass-changing of recipient types in composition is desirable in current multi-line recipients layout, and can be expected to be simplified by single-line recipients layout (Bug 440377).
However, the scenario of this bug starts out from main AB view. Forcing users to use "TO" from AB context menu, then expecting them to change the recipient type to BCC or CC post-facto, violates ux-efficiency and ux-error-prevention, because it requires extra steps which aren't necessary, and users might forget to change recipient type post-facto, which in turn violates data privacy.

In line with Mozilla's mission to promote data privacy, we must encourage (at least enable!) the use of "BCC" right from the start (in the AB window) instead of needlessly pushing users into using "to" first.
The two approaches (choose recipient type before or after choosing recipients) are not mutually exclusive, and we need them both.

Furthermore, the pre-change approach is a good starting point because it comes at a much lower programming cost, because we'll probably just have to tweak the menus, with a little bit of command coding to enable using "BCC" and "CC" in addition to "TO" respectively.

In view of the above, ui- doesn't seem right -> ui+

Comment 11

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

BTW, main AB window looks like an especially suitable place to start out from for those targeted (mass-)mailings which typically require BCC.

Comment 12

[Lis Eastham]

Just started using Thunderbird as an alternative to WLM - which I preferred as my email client, because I've migrated to a new W10 computer (rather than updated W7). I regularly send group emails, blind copy - and this issue is going to make the sending long, drawn out and irritating. Has a solution been found yet?

Comment 13

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Lis Eastham from comment #12)
> Just started using Thunderbird as an alternative to WLM - which I preferred
> as my email client, because I've migrated to a new W10 computer (rather than
> updated W7). I regularly send group emails, blind copy - and this issue is
> going to make the sending long, drawn out and irritating. Has a solution
> been found yet?

Hi Lis, thanks for sharing your personal UX with us, always welcome. The good news is that in spite of this bug, TB can handle your scenario without any problems:
When composing, please press F9 or from main menu, View > Contacts Side bar. That's a miniature AB right there at your fingertips. There's a search field, so if you tag your contacts, e.g. in Nickname field, you can easily retrieve groups of people, then select and add the entire group to your email in one go, using the BCC button in contacts sidebar.

You can even add more searchfields for more systematic tagging if you customize mail.addr_book.quicksearchquery.format preference from config editor (Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Config Editor). Be careful not to break that query, but you can always reset to default.

Pls let us know if these two ways cover your scenario.

Comment 14

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

There's another feature of Mailing Lists, but unfortunately it's conceptually flawed, so I don't recommend using that as it might easily confuse the integrity of your data between different ABs. Mailing Lists require all of their contacts to be in the mailing list's parent AB; TB let's you chose contacts from other ABs but will duplicate your contact into the ML parent AB - now you're maintaining two contacts with the same name and that's obviously NOT maintainable. Tagging in the way I described above should work well, if tags are unique enough that they can't appear as a substring in any other field which is searched. If you start your tags with a special character like #, say #customers, #team, etc., you should be safe as these normally do not occur in email addresses or names.

Comment 15

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Updated and refiled as Bug 1797061 - Implement Write > To | Cc | Bcc submenu for selected mailing list or multiple selection in address book.

(In reply to Thomas D. (:thomas8) from comment #10)

However, the scenario of this bug starts out from main AB view. Forcing
users to use "TO" from AB context menu, then expecting them to change the
recipient type to BCC or CC post-facto, violates ux-efficiency and
ux-error-prevention, because it requires extra steps which aren't necessary,
and users might forget to change recipient type post-facto, which in turn
violates data privacy.

In line with Mozilla's mission to promote data privacy, we must encourage
(at least enable!) the use of "BCC" right from the start (in the AB window)
instead of needlessly pushing users into using "to" first.