274934 - Implement contextual menu for message list column headers (Toggle Sort vs. Group By Sort, ascending / descending)

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Ed Holden]

I'd like to request a new feature.  Aside from the "talk bubble" icon in the
message list there is no indication that the program has a very powerful group
sorting feature.  I have been using this program for a while, but I just read
about the grouping in Ars Technica.  I am now grouping messages by date, and I
love it.  This is a feature that should probably have greater visibility - I
know that Outlook 2003 users love this, and so it could score some conversion
points.

Currently to group messages by a field, such as the date, you have to click on
the header and then press G.  This is not a very obvious operation, and it makes
it difficult to choose whether you want to group in ascending or descending
order.  When you could only sort, but not group, this was easy because the arrow
on the header would change direction and your mail would re-sort.  Now there are
more options.  My suggestion is to build a context menu for the headers that has
four options:

 Sort Ascending
 Sort Descending
 Group Ascending
 Group Descending

So when you right-click, all the options are there with no pressing G required.

Another idea, depending on which way you want to go, would be to make the above
menu appear for both left-clicking and right-clicking the column header.  I'm a
right-clicker, but making the menu appear on any type of click would make the
grouping feature more obivous to pretty much any type of user.  I think if you
let people discover grouping they'll love it.

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

just FYI, view | sort by | grouped by sort is the other way to turn on grouping.
This is  similar to the way it works in Outlook, so my hope was that Outlook
users would find this w/o too much difficulty.

Comment 2

[Ed Holden]

Hey, look at that!  Never noticed that before.  I guess I would have found that
eventually, but the header menu might still be a nice add-on.

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

xref bug 263571 -- per the original report of that bug, Outlook also has these 
menus on the column headers.

Comment 4

[Tommy Becker]

(In reply to comment #3)
> xref bug 263571 -- per the original report of that bug, Outlook also has these 
> menus on the column headers.

Mike, thanks for doing this.  Been meaning to get back to bugzilla for a while,
but I've been very busy.

Comment 5

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Updating summary.
This still looks like a valid RFE.