306125 - Optional GMail and iTunes layout (with example)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Martin]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050720 Fedora/1.0.6-1.1.fc4 Firefox/1.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050720 Fedora/1.0.6-1.1.fc4 Firefox/1.0.6

I have read that tabs are considered for Thunderbird 2.0.

I think GMail have invented a very good layout, that doesn't require new windows
are tabs to view and handle emails.

There is a mock up of how GMail views emails.

Notice that there is no need for a toolbar.
Notice that I have pressed "More options" on the last email.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Martin]

Attachment: Mock up of GMail viewing an email thread.

Comment 2

[Rick Reilly]

I would love to see a Gmail-like interface in Thunderbird.

Comment 3

[Martin]

Attachment: Combined GMail and iTunes layout

The mock up is made in Inkscape, and the source (svg file) can be downloaded from www.heko.dk/~maj/a/tb-layout.tar.bz2

Comment 4

[Martin]

I suggest this layout idea should be optional, so the user can choose from "Classic view" and "Filtered view".

Changes from Classic UI.

* Fewer default control buttons.
* Control buttons are centered.
* Statusbar is shows current status.
* Header, message, and attachments are notebooks.
* Changed "Combined Pane" to Address, Subject, and Message pane.


How does it work?

The general concept is the iTunes way of filtering, where
  Artist -> Addressbook
  Album  -> Subject
  Song   -> Message

and where Message is GMails way of viewing messages in threads.

  Addressbook:
    The Addressbook pane is similar to the setting 
    "Automatically add outgoing e-mail addresses to my Collected
    addresses".
	
    Or it can be considered as a folder is created for each email
    address you have ever written to, or that have contacted you.

    Or an automation of filtering emails out to folders.

    Whenever an email is sent or received the person is added to
    this pane.

    Pressing on the Addressbook header toggles between "Sort
    alphabetically" and "Sort by unread".

  Subject:
    All unique subjects that matches the selected contact in the
    Addressbook pane are listed here.

  Message:
    The message conversations are listed here. This means that both sent
    and received are listed here, just like GMail does.


The state of the email program that the mock up shows

  Addressbook:
    There are unread mail from Neil Young, which is indicated by
    the name is bold.
		
    There are unread spam from SCO, which is indicated by bold
    for unread and red coloured for spam.
		
    The grey bar indicates, that only emails that matches
    "Elvis Presley" are show in Subject and Message.

  Subject:
    There are two subjects from Elvis Presley. One old that have
    been read, hence the font is normal, and one which is high
    lighted by the gray bar, which indicates that only emails
    matching "Elvis Presley" and "Haven't seen you lately" are
    shown in Message.

  Message:
    There are four emails that matches "Elvis Presley" and
    "Haven't seen you lately" and these are shown here.


Behind the scene considerations

* This layout ought to fix Bug #223340 .
  [Bug 223340] Multiple attachments cause excessive size in attachments pane
  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=223340

* Double clicking on a name in the Address pane means write a message to this
  person.

* Write, Reply, Reply All, Forward all opens new notebooks (not tabs).

* An advanced search button could be considered that opens a new tab.

* New tabs could be considered when middle clicking on an email or folder.
  Tabs could be placed under the main toolbar.

  Tabs in Thunderbird is discussed in Bug #218999 and Bug #297379.

  tabbed message display in Thunderbird
  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=297379

  Thunderbird should use a tabbed interface
  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=218999

Comment 5

[Roland]

Good idea, but why not go a bit further and completely "GMailify" the Thunderbird UI.

My idea is that as computer monitors are getting wider and larger, more space becomes available both vertically and horizontally.

As mail is not going to get shorter any time soon, the vertical space is still much  more valuable than horizontal.

I am currently using Thunerbird's "Vertical View" layout, which works fine for me (I really only show Subject text and read/flag/trash status flags there). 

With some nice improvements this view could become much more useful than it currently is:

* Like in GMail - instead of displaying a line per every message, make it a line per every "conversation"
* Like in GMail (and Outlook) - instead of using simple one row, multiple columns table/tree control, use rich, multi(2?) row items (like in Fx Download manager for example).
* Like in GMail - instead of showing a single email in the content pane, show the entire conversation with already read items collapsed by default.

Optional features, that would also be great to have, but I recongnize that the severity of these changes might be a bit too much:

* Use special "Archive"/"All mail" folder as a container for all the undeleted, non-trash mail and "Inbox" for only those messages that have not been processed by the user (deliberately "archived" or dragged away to another folder).
  Elaborating on this feature, users should be encouraged to archive read 
  conversations whenever the list becomes longer, say20/30 conversations. This
  would help keeping the inbox empty and manageable.

* Use "Tag folders" as sort of semi-smart folders (one message may have multiple tags, thus be in more than one folder at a time). 

* The iTunes style filtering is nice touch - I kind of like it :)

Comment 6

[Martin]

I would love to see some mock ups of your ideas. You may be onto something.

Comment 7

[David Ascher (:davida)]

moving off of blocking, but i definitely would be interested in seeing more mockups.

Comment 8

[Martin]

Thanks for the feed back.

I have put some thought in to it, as you can see in comment #4 , so can you point me in a direction of what you like about it, and what maybe not so keen on?

Comment 9

[David Ascher (:davida)]

Bryan should probably chime in here.

Comment 10

[Roland]

Attachment: A very rough mockup of the GMail style layout for Thunderbird

I threw together a very rough mockup of the GMail style layout for the Thunderbird.

It shows basically the three column layout with accounts panel on the left, conversations listing at the middle and a message/conversation view at the right.

The middle column is slightly modified to show off some of the features I talked about in comment #5:

* Use rich list with 2 rows of information
  On the mockup are shown some of the possible stuff that can end up in 
  the  conversation listing item label:
    * star/flag status
    * conversation participant name(s)
    * number of messages in the conversation
    * message tags
    * message title
  In the Gmail it additionally shows:
    * an excerpt from the last sent message
    * date/time of the last received message
    * An indicator to show if the message was sent directly to you
    * An indicator to show if the message has attachments
    * Type of the message (IM chat/mail message)

* If the conversation has unread messages, the GMail highlights conversation title and participant names in bold (not shown in the mockup).

The conversation panel shows the entire conversation (with read messages collapsed by default).

Comment 11

[Martin]

What you are proposing is something very different from what this bug is about.

Please open a new bug for your idea.

Comment 12

[Roland]

How is that - what I essentially am proposing, is the adaptation of GMail interface to a desktop mail client. And the title of this bug still reads to me as "Optional GMail and iTunes layout".

(I know I did not try to mock in the UI for iTunes like filtering, as I have not yet really put much thought in it)

Granted, my mock up is rather rough approximation and there are many details to consider, but the puropse of the mockup was to present my idea...

Comment 13

[David :Bienvenu]

I believe we have other bugs about experimental message views that might be related. Confirming, but is it possible that this could be duped to other bugs? 

Comment 14

[Martin]

To Comment #13

I have seen a few bugs related to a GMail style layout, but none that proposes what I am suggesting.

Could you deprecate Roland's attachment, as it has nothing to do with this bug?

Comment 15

[Roland]

I would be glad to be pointed to more appropriate bug for my proposal. I'll happily chime in :)

At the moment I joined this discussion, however there were none and this seemed the closest.

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to David :Bienvenu from comment #13)
> I believe we have other bugs about experimental message views that might be
> related. Confirming, but is it possible that this could be duped to other
> bugs?

there are several:
bug 223134
bug 215661
bug 406540
bug 374242
to name a few

Comment 17

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #16)

(In reply to David :Bienvenu from comment #13)

I believe we have other bugs about experimental message views that might be
related. Confirming, but is it possible that this could be duped to other
bugs?

there are several:
bug 223134
bug 215661
bug 406540
bug 374242
to name a few

We are headed in the direction of some of these items?
Do we still need these bug reports?

Comment 18

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Indeed, we can close all of those as after 115 will be obsolete.