332628 - [Mark|v] button should not be disabled in toolbar when no message/article is selected: can't access "Mark All Read" and "Mark Read by Date" from dual menu button dropdown in that scenario

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[David E. Ross]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 SeaMonkey/1.0 Mnenhy/0.7.3.0
Build Identifier: Thunderbird version 1.5 (20051201)

I am using Thunderbird with the "wide view".  When I open a newsgroup, the Mark button on the toolbar is disabled, even after I left-click on the blank area in the upper-right pane (header pane).  

The pull-down context menu is also disabled until I left-click a second time, which then highlights the first message in the pane.  But this still does not enable the toolbar button.  

To enable the button, I must select a message and then a second message.  This is not acceptable if I want to select [Mark > All Read].  


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Select a newsgroup to open it.  
2.  Left-click in a blank area of the header pane.  
3.  Left-click again in a blank area of the header pane.  

Actual Results:  
At step #1, the Mark button is disabled (gray).  The pull-down context menu is also disabled.  

At step #2, no change is seen for either the Mark button or the pull-down menu.  

At step #3, the first message in the header pane is highlighted as if it had been selected.  The Mark button remains disabled.  The pull-down menu is enabled.  

Expected Results:  
At step #1, the Mark button should be enabled with some of its menu items (e.g., All Read) also enabled.  The pull-down menu should be enabled with Mark and some of its submenu items enabled.  

At step #2, the Mark button and pull-down menu should be enabled as for step #1.  

At step #3, the Mark button should be enabled as for step #1, especially since a message is now highlighted as if selected.  

Yes, I know I can use the pull-down on the newsgroup pane and select Mark Newsgroup Read.  However, for other Mark activities, I want the repertoire of the Mark button; so that is where I initially go by force of habit.

Comment 1

[David E. Ross]

Even selecting the +box to expand a thread in the header pane is insufficient to enable the Mark button or the pull-down menu.  

Comment 2

[David E. Ross]

Changing the status of a newsgroup message from unread to read by selecting the green dot leaves the Mark toolbar button disabled.  

Comment 3

[Scott MacGregor]

I wasn't able to reproduce this. I may be misunderstanding what's being asked for here. The mark button is properly becoming enabled when I select a newsgroup message, so i'm going to downgrade my initial milestone assignment for this bug.

Comment 4

[David E. Ross]

The menu for the Mark button includes "All Read".  Selecting the pane with headers (the upper-right pane in wide view) should be sufficient to enable the Mark button for at least this menu option without selecting a specific message.  This does not work.  

The menu for the Mark button includes "Thread As Read".  Expanding or collapsing a thread should be sufficient to enable the Mark button for at least this menu option.  This does not work when the thread is the first item in the pane (i.e., no prior non-threaded message).  

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

WFM version 3.0a1pre (2007123103), after step 3 no message is selected.
Please reopen if you see this in a current trunk build.

Comment 6

[David E. Ross]

The issue in this bug report is NOT whether the first message was selected in step 3 of the "Steps to Reproduce".  The issue is that the Mark button on the toolbar is disabled at step 1, remains disabled at step 2, and thus cannot be used at step 2 to mark "All Read".  It should not be required to select any specific message within a newsgroup to mark all messages in that newsgroup as read.  Thus, step 3 -- even if it enabled the Mark button -- should not be necessary.  

Note:  I have a dial-up connection.  Thus, I do not download nightlies, alphas, or betas.  I sometimes download release candidates.  If the problem described in the paragraph above in this comment -- the real problem -- is indeed resolved, I will test it when either a release candidate or end-user version is available.  

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

OK, I understand now.

Magnus, wontfix?  Or, should context and button exactly mirror what's enabled in command menu?  Or, follow bug 65263 comment 18

if a folder or message(s) are selected then "mark" button is enabled (and so is context item).
if nothing is selected then button is not enabled.
makes sense to me.  and doesn't bother me as I'm a keyboarder, not a clicker :)

what's murky here is inability to do "mark all" - an action that's murky also in other areas, for example bug 327828

=> OS=ALL

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

blake, bryan, can you weigh in on the question of whether Mark in toolbar or context should be enabled when no message(s) is selected?  

The answer might not be clear - much like bug 327828.  The only reason it "needs" to be enabled is for Mark "All Read".  If implemented and no messages selected, the other choices under Mark would need to be disabled.

Comment 9

[David E. Ross]

Re comment #8:  

The "All Read" item on the Mark button menu and the [Message > Mark > All Read] on the menu bar would be more clear if the label were instead "All Messages Read" or "All Msgs Read".  

Alternatively, mail and newsgroups could have distinct labels: "Folder All Read" for mail and "Newsgroup All Read" for newsgroups.  However, I would expect this to require a significantly larger effort to implement.

Comment 10

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

STR

1) on a mail or news account
2) with [Mark|v] button in mail toolbar (customize toolbar)
3) unselect all messages (select one, then Ctrl+Space to unselect)
4a) check state of Message > Mark > All Read from the menu
4b) compare with state of [Mark|v] button and try to "Mark All Read" from Mark button dropdown


Actual Result

3) with no messages selected, Mark button is disabled, including the dropdown
4a) Message > Mark > All Read from main menu is correctly enabled, because it's practically a folder action and the folder is active, so "Mark All Read" is a legitimate action in that scenario
4b) However, [Mark|v] button is disabled, so "Mark All Read" is inaccessible from the toolbar button dropdown.

Expected Result

4b) This bug requests that "Mark All Read" (and "Mark Read by Date") is accessible from toolbar button when no message(s) are selected

Evaluation

* from an UX perspective, this is a minor yet legitimate request. If the same command is enabled in the main menus, why should it be inaccessible from the button?

* from an implementation perspective, this isn't as trivial as it seems:

We cannot enable the "Mark" (selected msg(s)) part of the dual menu button because we may not even have a message with focus; so strictly speaking, we'd have to enable the dropdown part of that button only to grant access to "Mark all read" and "Mark As Read by date" from the dropdown.
Iirc, we are technically unable to disable only the main part of the dual menu button (I seem to recall a bug in this corner, but maybe that was about separate tooltips for the two button parts).

So we'd have to find other ways of making "Mark all Read" & "...by Date" available without enabling the simple "Mark" for selected msgs (as there's no selection).
a) For the scenario of this bug, we could replace the XUL dual menu button on the fly with a simple dropdown Menubutton, so it looks like [Mark v].
b) Or, we could change the main part of the dual menu button to read "Mark All Read" (similar to the dynamic reply button on msg header), and en-/disabling respective commands from the dropdown part.

This looks like a legitimate and technically possible request -> confirming (to get it out of unconfirmed nirvana).

Realistically, the chances for such tweaks to happen seem pretty low. This is certainly minor. In the meantime, Shift+C and C are always available to trigger the desired action, regardless of focus.

Comment 11

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #10)
> In the meantime, Shift+C and C are always available to
> trigger the desired action, regardless of focus.

Oops, that's supposed to be "regardless of selection" (I'm too much into focus these days... ;)