308273 - Userfriendly creation of subfolders (not backslash but tick box)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Jobst Schmalenbach]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

I know I can create subfolders by simply appending a "/" slash to the name of
the new folder being created, but explain this to a normal user!

I look after a range of people (as a sysadmin) including smmal sized companies,
schools etc and I **MAKE** them use firefox and thunderbird.

However, its hard to justify my action when people are baffled about the
creation of subfolders as in:

  - accountname
    |- Inbox
    |- Drafts
    |-SUBFOLDER
    | |-mbox1
    | |-mbox2
    |-someothermbox

I would be really nice to to have a selection button on the dialog box
(the one that appears when you click "NewFolder") which has a 
tick box "Make this a container", or "Make this a folder that can contain
multiple mail boxes".

Its hard to explain a few things to a simple user (and I mean real simple user!!).






Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Menu -> File -> New -> New Folder
2.dialog box appears
3.need to append "/" to create subfolder (subdirectory)


Actual Results:  
Need to append "/" to create subfolder

Expected Results:  
From a userfriendly point of view there should be a tick box making it possible
to create a "container" of "mboxen".

Simple terms, please!

Comment 2

[Robert Relyea]

Ignore the dup above, it was meant for bug 308275

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

You only need this when system doesn't allow folders to have both messages and folders, correct?  

If so, this is WFM in thunderbird 3.  (behavior is changed)  Please test thunderbird 3 beta. 
 (back up your profile first)
 http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/early_releases/

Comment 4

[Jobst Schmalenbach]

Hi Wayne again ;-)

been busy answering your questions, hehehehe
I need to find some spare time to do that ... next couple of days maybe.

I am not suire what you mean by 

  "You only need this when system doesn't allow folders to have both messages 
   and folders, correct?"

jobst

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

jobst in comment #4
> I am not suire what you mean by 
> 
>   "You only need this when system doesn't allow folders to have both messages 
>    and folders, correct?"
> 
> jobst

actually, let's ignore that question for a moment. can you reproduce the problem using thunderbird 3 beta 2, available at http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/early_releases/ ?

back up your profile before using - info at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_FAQs_:_Backing_Up_and_Restoring

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Attachment: screen shot

my trunk build shows subfolder creation per screen shot. Note: my advanced server settings is *unchecked* for server supports folders that contain messages and subfolders

Comment 7

[Jobst Schmalenbach]

You are correct, with the setting OFF it works.
Now if I read this line 
  "server supports folders that contain messages and subfolders"
means to me I need to check this because my dovecot imap server support both, folders that contains subfolders and messages.
I do not understand why I need to turn this off.

Comment 8

[Willie]

@Jobst, if your Dovecot IMAP server supports folders that contain both messages and subfolders then, yes, leave that setting checked/on.  You won't need to explicitly tell the server anything special.

However, if it only supports Message-holding folders OR Subfolder-holding folders, then turn that setting OFF.  In this case, Thunderbird will ask you which type of folder you want upon creation.

Since Thunderbird 3 now supports your original enhancement request, should this bug be closed out somehow?

Comment 9

[Jobst Schmalenbach]

(In reply to comment #8)
> @Jobst, if your Dovecot IMAP server supports folders that contain both messages
> and subfolders then, yes, leave that setting checked/on.  You won't need to
> explicitly tell the server anything special.
> 
> However, if it only supports Message-holding folders OR Subfolder-holding
> folders, then turn that setting OFF.  In this case, Thunderbird will ask you
> which type of folder you want upon creation.

Willie, hope you can answer this: How do you change the behaviour in dovecot??

Comment 10

[Willie]

Jobst, sorry I didn't get back to you for a few days -- work has been crazy this week.
With Dovecot, you could use Maildir instead of mbox.  Maildir allows you to have subfolders and messages, where will mbox it's one or the other.  Check out mail_location in your dovecot.conf file.
I don't know the best way to convert between them though.  You may want to look around on the Dovecot wiki, starting here: http://wiki.dovecot.org/Migration/MailFormat