302906 - scrolling in sidebar and maillist causes a total redraw

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Seph M. Soliman]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050730 Firefox/1.0.6 (Debian package 1.0.6-2)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050730 Firefox/1.0.6 (Debian package 1.0.6-2)

Scrolling folders and accounts in the sidebar causes a total redraw of the
sidebar contents, instead of moving existing content.
This is a small issue that applies to both the sidebar and the mail list.
The problem is apparent on very old graphics cards and over VNC connections,
where a copy-rect way of scrolling instead of a totalt redraw would produce
movement instead of a total redraw.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. scroll the message list or "folders" sidebar

Actual Results:  
Entire list is redrawn (hardly visible on new computers)

Expected Results:  
Existing contents is moved accordingly

Comment 1

[Adam Guthrie]

version 1.0+ (20050731)

Works for me. Can you reporduce this in the newest builds? If so, are you using
any extensions that may be causing this?
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-trunk/

Comment 2

[Seph M. Soliman]

like i said it isn't really visible on newer computers, but it's a bit annoying
over VNC
my build is from: 20050531
I just downloaded the latest - next time i'm at work, i'll test if there is any
difference, but I hardly think there is any change...(?)

Comment 3

[Seph M. Soliman]

Attachment: screenshot of redraw problems possibly related to this issue

I tried using build 20050802 - no change. It still redraws the entire list
(both mail and folder sidebar).
I also notice some small problems on the scrollbar. it seems that the scrollbar
leaves a trail when dragged. The problem is more apprent when doing slow
dragging. It quickly disappears, but I belive it to be related to this issue.
Redrawing only what's needed instead of everything would most possibly remove
this redraw problem.

Comment 4

[Adam Guthrie]

The issue you showed in the screenshot is bug 297508. You didn't answer if you
were using any extensions or not. Do you see this in safe mode?
http://kb.mozillazine.org/ 

When I was trying to reproduce I noticed that it only scrolls in the size of the
folder names' height with each scroll. So it "snaps" to those heights when
you're scrolling. This could give the appearance of a repaint maybe?

Comment 5

[Seph M. Soliman]

Sorry - I am not using any extensions.
The problem is unchanged in safe-mode.

Well - I am 100% sure about the appearence or the behaviour of VNC, but take
gnome-terminal for example. It redraws the content window each time it makes a
scroll (that includes pressing return). With XTerm it doesn't - it simply moves
text up and adds the new text.
I am perfectly aware that it jumps lines instead of 1 pixel, but that really
shouldn't make any difference.
To take another example - scrolling half a page in the message-preview-pane only
redraws the new half.

Sorry about the confusion with the screenshot, I just belived it to be related.

Comment 6

[Kyle Guinn]

I believe I am having a similar problem with Seamonkey 1.0 on Win98.  When using the scroll wheel or scrollbar in the message list pane, there is a noticeable delay as it first redraws the scrollbar, then as it redraws the message list.

The bug is really noticeable on slower processors.  I'm using an AMD K6 256MHz processor and it takes about 0.2-0.3 seconds to redraw, making the program feel very unresponsive.  Other programs, such as outlook express, don't have this noticeable delay when scrolling.

Comment 7

[andy]

i am not sure if this is the same issue, but I am using Mac OS X, and my folder sidebar scrolls very slowly/jerky. my computer is only 1 year old, and the folder sidebar had no problems scrolling in Thunderbird 2. i have tried upgrading to thunderbird 3.1 beta 2, and this has done nothing to help. the message list doesn't seem to have a problem scrolling smoothly.

Comment 8

[andy]

I have not used Mac OS X in quite some time and have been using linux for several years now. It is still slow to scroll sometimes, but not nearly as bad as I remembered. I do now have more folders and a faster CPU, so I'm not sure if the problem is really solved or not. I'm getting the impression now though that the slow scrolling may be related to populating some new information needed about the folders to draw items that are off of the screen. After I scroll up and down a few times, it then scrolls smoothly after that for a few minutes.

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thanks Andy.

Does anyone still see this issue?