290136 - Remember position in message when selecting another

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, enhancement)

Description

[Gregor Rosenauer]

I'd find it useful if Thunderbird remembered the (reading) position in the
message, sothat when I select another one and then come back, the mail is
scrolled to that position (similar to Firefox remembering the view position of
pages on Forward->Backward navigation), instead of scrolling back to the top.

Usage scenario:
You are reading an interesting newsletter when suddenly an important, urgent
mail comes in. So you switch to the new mail and process it, then want to come
back reading the newsletter *where you left off*...

Comment 2

[Oleg]

This one should really be a defect and not just an enhancement.
I agree that it WAS an enhancement back in 2005 when this issue was initially reported.
There were no tabs in Thunderbird back then and scroll position was not expected to stay between windows.
But now with tabs users expect scroll position to stay after they switch between tabs.
Could you be so kind to raise the importance, otherwise this issue will never get fixed and users will be getting annoyed on a permanent basis.

Comment 3

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

Oleg, that's bug 487386.

Comment 4

[Oleg]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Oleg, that's bug 487386.

Ummm, that one indeed got right importance and users' rage
However as I understand bug 487386 is caused exactly by this one because tabs appear to be implemented as hacked windows, so technically this is a single bug, or at least they are closely related.

Comment 5

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

To implement this bug, you'd cache the scroll positions for messages and reload them when you reopen the message. To implement bug 487386, you'd make an instance of the message reader for each tab (right now, there's just one message reader that gets moved around from tab to tab). Fixing one eliminates some, but not all, of the problems in the other, so they're separate bugs.