340982 - Make it easier to locate collapsed (hidden) folder pane -- difficult for users to figure out what's going on

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 609245

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Kevin Boyd]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060426 FreeBSD/i386 Firefox/1.5.0.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060426 FreeBSD/i386 Firefox/1.5.0.3

I have several users who tend to accidentally hide their Folders pane, and then they wonder where it went. They don't seem to be able to understand the concept of moving the mouse to the left, waiting for the cursor to change, then clicking and dragging it back out. Perhaps a pulltab or a clickable widget of some kind needs to be implemented, a la sidebars in other programs (or the Performancing blogging extension for Firefox), to give them a visual cue to act on. It would make over-the-phone support much easier.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Click and drag folder pane border until pane is hidden.
2. Bring inexperienced user to computer
3. Ask them to "drag the left border to restore the folder pane"
4. Watch as hijinks ensue, and they get a silly look on their face.

Actual Results:  
Hidden folder pane's border is very thin and difficult/non-obvious for users to understand.

Expected Results:  
Hidden folder pane should have some visual cue for restoring it, a widget of some kind that the users can click.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

what if the folder pane had a minimum width and didn't disappear ...

Comment 2

[Kevin Boyd]

Attachment: Proposed widget for hiding/showing folder pane.

I think that a widget similar to this would provide the necessary tools for helping my users restore their folder pane over the phone. Which, by extension, means that it will help out a lot of other users as well - pretty much any user who makes their folder pane disappear, goes "wtf", and then never uses Thunderbird again.

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

I'm confirming this because I've triaged several bugs about this issue.
Too bad Scott doesn't like grippies, but maybe a wider splitter or something would be helpful.

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 330621 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[Kevin Boyd]

I found an extension that takes care of this. Grippies!

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2242/

It could use some more promotion, though (as well as interoperability with Lightning :)), because I think many end-users won't know about it.

Comment 6

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

This is not fixed.  Even if nobody else cared whether this was resolved in the code without an extension, "Fixed" is the wrong resolution; you'd use "WorksForMe" in this case.  However, I don't think an extension solves the problem -- since there were multiple bug reports about this already, clearly it's an issue.

Comment 7

[u93378]

I have been having this problem repeatedly, FWIW, on multiple versions of Thunderbird.  There seems to be a key combination (I haven't been able to isolate it), that can cause the folder window to collapse, and I am then unable to restore it.  Sliding a border doesn't work for me --- it's too close to the edge, and the window manager seems to get confused (I use Thunderbird on both linux and windows).
The only solution I have found is to hand-edit localstore.rdf.

Comment 8

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

I've been wanting to try a larger minimum with here with some description.  If we use a folder icon of 16x16 and text of similar size I'm pretty sure the sidebar could collapse into about 18px of space that reads "[icon] Folder Pane" vertically.  This would help explain where it went and give a good size gripper to get it back.  I don't think 18px is too much to ask.

Myk's post had me thinking of this but I only just found this bug again recently.
http://www.melez.com/mykzilla/2008/10/easier-access-to-sidebars.html

Comment 12

[David :Bienvenu]

This is a frequent issue on Get Satisfaction.

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Brian in comment #8:
> I've been wanting to try a larger minimum with here with some description.  
> ...
> Myk's post had me thinking of this but I only just found this bug again
> recently.
> http://www.melez.com/mykzilla/2008/10/easier-access-to-sidebars.html

this is much the same as bug 262128 which was duped to a wontfix bug

xref Bug 509359 - Vertical splitter between folderpane and threadpane should only look like it's 1px wide, but be wider for clicks - but doesn't address the fundamental problem.

I'm pretty sure my mother encountered this in one of her occasions of [insert adjective] clicking everywhere in the UI. This should be pretty easy to fix, and save some users from heart attack.  Nominating wanted in honor of mother :)

merging 
 http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/folder_select_panel_gone
 http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/my_folder_pane_disappeared
 http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/where_has_my_thunderbird_mail_side_window_pane_gone
into http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/folders_sidebar_vanished to make it canonical.  David, if you can remember others, please merge them. Thanks.

Comment 14

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

I'm working on a fix for this in bug 609245.

Comment 15

[Rob Hudson [:robhudson]]

I don't know if this adds to the conversation but I'm on OS X Lion, which added window expansion on all sides, and I'm not able to bring the folder pane back, presumably b/c as I get close to the edge the OS X window manager shows the <-> icon rather than Thunderbird's?

Comment 16

[Roland Tanglao needinfo please :rolandtanglao, :mohnkuchen, :adobo, :sinigang, :roland]

(In reply to Rob Hudson [:robhudson] from comment #15)
> I don't know if this adds to the conversation but I'm on OS X Lion, which
> added window expansion on all sides, and I'm not able to bring the folder
> pane back, presumably b/c as I get close to the edge the OS X window manager
> shows the <-> icon rather than Thunderbird's?

here's a workaround for Lion:
http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/workaround_to_fix_collapsed_folderpane_and_collapsed_address_books_pane_problem_unti_tb10_is_released