324479 - After selecting "Address Book" (or "Tools", "Address Book"), any alternate address books are not selectable...

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, defect)

Description

[jeroboam bramblejam]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

... as they are when creating a "Message", "New Message", in which case a drop-down box allows selection of an alternate "Address Book".  
thanks,
[e-mail]

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.(described above step-by-step)
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
(ibid)

Expected Results:  
(ibid)

Comment 1

[Ryan Flint [:rflint] (ping via IRC for reviews)]

*** Bug 324480 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[jeroboam bramblejam]

(In reply to comment #1)
> *** Bug 324480 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
> my bad;  the big, blank "Additional comments" block was empty when i went to look at my submission, so i presumed it didn't 'take'.

Comment 3

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

> ... as they are when creating a "Message", "New Message", in which case a
> drop-down box allows selection of an alternate "Address Book".  

I'm sorry but this doesn't make any sense. Different address books are selectable by the list on the left hand side of the address book window, and not via a drop down menu - that is the intended functionality.

I don't understand your problem here - are you saying that you can't select the different address books? Perhaps you could attach a couple of screenshots to show us what the problem is.

Comment 4

[jeroboam bramblejam]

Attachment: this is a composite of two screenshots: one is of the "address book" screen; note the absence of the other two address books visible in the dropped-down box in the "compose" page.

Thank you~
I have attached a composite image of two screenshots; one is of the "Address Book" screen;  note the absence of the other two address books listed in the dropped-down box in the "Compose" page.   My presumption is that the "Address Book" page is for organising adresses in any of the address books - "Personal Address Book", "Yahoo ab" and "Collected Addresses".
thanks again for your kind attention,
jeroboambramblejam
(by the way, you may like to consider whether  "...i don't understand..." or "...I can't make sense of this..." may be a more useful comment than "...this doesn't make any sense." )

Comment 5

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Created an attachment (id=209541) [edit]
> this is a composite of two screenshots: one is of the "address book" screen; 
> note the absence of the other two address books visible in the dropped-down box
> in the "compose" page.

There should actually be a third pane down the left-hand side of the address book window which will allow you selection of the address book.

I can think of two possibilities:

1) The address book pane has been collapsed. Try moving your cursor onto the left-hand border of the window and see if it changes to a double arrow ( <-> ). If it does, then you should be able to drag the border to the right to show the address book pane.

2) Are you using a different theme from the standard? If so try using the standard one (qute? I think) - if that works then there is most likely a problem with the theme that you are using.

Comment 6

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

> 2) Are you using a different theme from the standard? If so try using the
> standard one (qute? I think) - if that works then there is most likely a
> problem with the theme that you are using.
> 

Scott, David, without any response from the user, I believe this is a themes issue and not one with the address book. If you collapse the third pane on the address book window, you can't actually tell it exists. I'm not too good with themes, so could one of you have a look please?

Comment 7

[David :Bienvenu]

I'd say WFM since there's no response from the reporter, and no one else has reported anything like this...If the reporter is still around, checking the javascript console after opening the address book (tools | javascript console) and seeing if there are any details there might be interesting.

Comment 8

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Reopening. I explained this to David on IRC, the issue remains (even with no response from the reporter) that when the panes are collapsed there is not a big enough prompt to an inexperienced user of the state they are in - this is due to a themes issue. SeaMonkey for example has a handy little indicator that shows it is collapsed.

Comment 9

[jeroboam bramblejam]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Reopening. I explained this to David on IRC, the issue remains (even with no
> response from the reporter) that when the panes are collapsed there is not a
> big enough prompt to an inexperienced user of the state they are in - this is
> due to a themes issue. SeaMonkey for example has a handy little indicator that
> shows it is collapsed.
> 
Thanks Mark~
I'm the originator of this bug report~
I appreciate your sensitivity to the bug~
Is SeaMonkey the name of a Theme?... if so, I didn't find it with the search function under Thunderbird Themes~
I tried several other Themes with no change in the original grief~
You mention a "...big enough prompt to an inexperienced user...";
Did the prompt simply escape my attention, or do you see it in the screenshot i posted and described?
Thanks again,
[e-mail]

Comment 10

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Scott, I'm requesting blocking thunderbird 2 as I think this is a problem with the themes and it makes finding "hidden" panes pretty undiscoverable in Thunderbird.

A user also reported this recently in the support forums (http://groups.google.co.uk/group/mozilla.support.thunderbird/browse_thread/thread/090ea13219211eb2/a319bc015487e766)

Comment 11

[Scott MacGregor]

Moving off bugs that didn't make the deadline for Thunderbird 2. 

Comment 12

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to comment #11)
> Moving off bugs that didn't make the deadline for Thunderbird 2. 

Fair enough, but I think you should consider adding a relnote on this as like I said in comment 10 - if the panes gets "hidden" its not easy to find them again especially if you're a basic user.

Comment 13

[David Ascher (:davida)]

I'm not convinced a relnote is the right outcome for this.  Mark, your thoughts?

Comment 14

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to comment #13)
> I'm not convinced a relnote is the right outcome for this.  Mark, your
> thoughts?
> 
I've had another look at this. On trunk Linux and Mac the theme has been changed on you can now see (although on Linux, not amazingly obvious) that there is something there even when the bar is collapsed.

Not sure what it looks like on Windows, perhaps Bryan could check?

Either way, at least on trunk we shouldn't need to do any fixes for Linux or Mac, and I think that the relnote probably doesn't apply now either.

Comment 15

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Has anyone else been able to check this on Windows?  I can give a look tomorrow otherwise.

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

clarkbw in comment #15
> Has anyone else been able to check this on Windows?  I can give a look tomorrow
> otherwise.

Tomorrow is today? :)

I don't see this on windows trunk.
Calling this WFM.