315271 - Unify parts of RSS and newsgroup UI

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Håkan Waara]

I'm using the new RSS features a lot, it's great.

What kind of hit me the other day was that newsgroups and RSS feeds are very similar. You subscribe/unsubscribe, you may want to manage the subscriptions etc.

I think it would make sense to unify their UI more. Right now there is one "Manage subscriptions" for RSS that is very different from the "Manage subscriptions" on news accounts.

My suggestion is this:

* Make it possible to subscribe/unsubscribe to a feed by right-clicking it.
* At the same time remove the "Trash can" in the RSS feeds.

The more things that unify newsgroups and RSS feeds the better I think. It will make Thunderbird more consistent.  Sounds good?

Comment 1

[Håkan Waara]

There are many more things that could be done to make them more consistent, but this is a start. If you like the idea I can help out with the patches.

Comment 2

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> * Make it possible to subscribe/unsubscribe to a feed by right-clicking it.

Would be nice, also deleting a feed folder should (ask to) unsubscribe the feeds, imho. 

> * At the same time remove the "Trash can" in the RSS feeds.

Since news messages can't be "deleted", it's not needed in news. RSS items can be deleted, so personally I kind of like the trash can being there.

Comment 3

[Håkan Waara]

(In reply to comment #2)
> (In reply to comment #0)
> > * Make it possible to subscribe/unsubscribe to a feed by right-clicking it.
> Would be nice, also deleting a feed folder should (ask to) unsubscribe the
> feeds, imho. 

Yes, the I have actually never understood the point of "feed folders" and actual feeds. I understand feed folders to be some kind organisatory feature. In the end I think it would improve the ease of use if there were simply feeds, then maybe a way to manually add folders (if you want to organize). This would actually also make sense to implement for newsgroups.

The point is that these techniques are so similar that we can actually profit off of it from a usability/simplicity point of view.

I'm still interested in hearing what bienvenu and mscott thinks of this idea, does it sound good? I'd be happy to provide patches.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #3)
>...
> I'm still interested in hearing what bienvenu and mscott thinks of this idea,
> does it sound good? I'd be happy to provide patches.

It may make sense from a user/UI standpoint at the "article" level, but the rest seems to me like a mixed bag - networking and subscription differences are rather fundamental.  What about search?  Also, consider they may diverge in some way(s) if the RFCs are superseded in the future.

Comment 5

[alta88]

The feed dialog has diverged and by its nature is quite different (especially how cross account actions/display work), so this isn't really feasible.