327120 - move identities management from account settings panel to its own panel

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Account Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Tobias B. Besemer [:BesTo] (QA)]

Hey all.

I will recommend changing the way Thunderbirds managing identities.
My idea is to have the identities in the account settings on the left in the sidebar as a subtree to each e-mail-address and the options to each account/identity on the right as tabs for settings/copies&folders/...
This will equality each identity of an e-mail-address and (nice for me to see) - if you have a lot of different e-mail-adresses - slim down the left sidebar to some few identities.
What does the others think about it ???

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

See bug 286664 comment 11.  I'm in agreement about making identities more visible, but I also want to change the model so that an identity is not "contained" by an account.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thoughts?

some notable bugs, mostly from https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&resolution=---&type0-0-0=nowords&value0-0-0=count%20counts&product=MailNews%20Core&product=Thunderbird&short_desc=identities&list_id=10511089

Bug 166293 - Ability to tie identities to folder hierarchies (namespaces) (lots of dups)
Bug 476142 - Identities are too heavyweight. Want simpler setup/management
Bug 727813 - if there are more SMTP servers than accounts defined, note to the user he can use the identities feature 
Bug 384303 - (identity_ordering) Allow ordering of entries in Multiple Identities Support
Bug 729027 - Identity Settings dialog is too large (high) for netbook
Bug 524934 - Identity settings dialog is too small

Comment 3

[:aceman]

I can't clearly imagine how it should look like. Maybe Josiah has some ideas. However, adding identities into the same tree as account could be quite hard. If it is just rearranging the current "Manage identities" dialog that could be doable.

Comment 4

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

After thinking about this for a bit, I actually do have an idea. I'm going to put together a mockup, which will be a lot more clear than me attempting to explain it...

Comment 5

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

So, preliminary concept: http://josiah.pancakeapps.com/Identities.html

Feel free to ask questions and make suggestions. I realize this a little more difficult to implement, but I don't think it's impossible by any means. I would be glad to help create it as well.

Comment 6

[:aceman]

Where are the advanced settings of each identity accessible in this design?

So if you want to make identities separate from accounts, why are they put inside a pane inside an account? In that case they could have a separate entry in the left tree, similar to the Outgoing server entry. But yes, we should then somehow link accounts to identities to have at least one default identity for each account. Maybe something like the selectable list of Addressbooks on the Junk pane. On the other hand, are identities and account linked exclusively? An identity probably can't be tied to more than one account? But one account can have multiple identities.

Comment 7

[:aceman]

Also I am not persuaded the arrangement into tabs does scale enough. People can have tens of identities and with long names. Maybe something like the vertical list like the Outgoing servers pane has. Or yes, have them as subentries under an Identities entry in the left sidebar tree. But then we need to put the add/remove buttons somewhere, like the Add/Remove account buttons are.

Comment 8

[K.J. Petrie]

This bug is obviously out-of-date as Manage identities has evidently been moved in TB 38. The trouble is, I can't find out where and I need it today!

Comment 9

[K.J. Petrie]

OK, found it now! I suppose this does indicate some difficulty in navigating the system when things are so complicated even an experienced user can't find what's wanted easily.

Sorry to have interfered in this issue, but maybe something to reflect upon about the UI in general.

Comment 10

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to firefox.bugs from comment #8)
> This bug is obviously out-of-date as Manage identities has evidently been
> moved in TB 38. The trouble is, I can't find out where and I need it today!

It might be better to ask questions than to make wrong claims about this bug and application design... "Manage Identities" hasn't been moved in any way for TB 38. It's still the plain old button triggering a small dialogue: Tools > Account Settings > Your Account > [Manage Identities...] (button at the bottom of the main account panel).

Comment 11

[K.J. Petrie]

I had already apologised when you posted. Perhaps the posts crossed in composition. The path is not under the Tools menu but under the Edit menu.

The interface is confusing because the item in the left pane which needs to be selected looks like a heading with clickable items under it and it is counter-intuitive to click the heading. However, I appreciate that's not a matter for this bug.

Comment 12

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to firefox.bugs from comment #11)
> I had already apologised when you posted. Perhaps the posts crossed in
> composition. The path is not under the Tools menu but under the Edit menu.

It IS under the Tools menu on Windows, your OS may vary.

> The interface is confusing because the item in the left pane which needs to
> be selected looks like a heading with clickable items under it and it is
> counter-intuitive to click the heading. However, I appreciate that's not a
> matter for this bug.

Commenter is trying to say that in the main account manager dialogue, he wouldn't think of clicking on account names in the left pane because they look like general expanded headings with the real items being the sub-headings like Server Settings, Copies & Folders etc.

So far we haven't heard any complaint about that, and I'm not sure if this is really a design problem. But I get what you're saying.

Richard (:paenglab) is working on account manager in a tab, which might change the design somewhat.