363473 - Implement (dockable) tags pane with list of tags (make tags easier to apply, easy application of tags)

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Martin Meyer]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20060601 Firefox/2.0 (Ubuntu-edgy)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061211 Thunderbird/2.0b1 ID:2006121103

I'm trying to use tags to make my email easily searchable, but right now it's way too hard to search by tag. The process now is:

1. Edit -> Find -> Search Messages
2. Select 'Tag' 'contains'
3. Select the desired tag from the list
4. Click search

It would be nice if there was a 'Tags' group in the folders list at the same level as your mail accounts and local folders. This entity would automatically be populated with a complete list of all your tags.

Also, it's not that easy to apply tabs to messages. There is a drop-down list which is nice, but it would be more useful to have a list of tags always visible that can be applied to the current message. The message list could be a little less wide and a list of tags could be at the far right side of the Thunderbird window. This would allow the user to quickly apply tags to a message.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Karsten Düsterloh]

> Also, it's not that easy to apply tabs to messages. There is a drop-down list
> which is nice, but it would be more useful to have a list of tags always
> visible that can be applied to the current message.

There's a toolbar button named "Tag" which has the tag list as a direct dropdown. Also, the first 9 tags are available via the keys 1 to 9.

Comment 2

[Martin Meyer]

I've got a lot of tags already and that drop-down list is getting pretty long. It would be nice if the field were scrollable.  What happens when the list gets longer than my screen is tall? It might help if I could hide those ridiculous standard IMAP labels. Important? Work? wtf! Like "Work" could ever be just one tag...

Anyway, I'm just looking for an easier way to apply new tags, and it would be nice if i could see a list of them on the screen somewhere. This could also eliminate the need to have a Tags: section in the displayed message header, which btw uses just a whitespace to separate tags which themselves can contain whitespaces. It's not great trying to figure out if that message was tagged as "read" and "stuff" or just "read stuff".

And please don't miss my request for automatically creating new search folders when a tag is created. I supposed that should have been broken out into a separate bug :-/

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Bugs that contain a litany of vague complaints seldom get any action.  Well defined bugs around one issue each are more likely to see a fix.


(In reply to comment #0)
> I'm trying to use tags to make my email easily searchable, but right now it's
> way too hard to search by tag. The process now is:
> 
> 1. Edit -> Find -> Search Messages
> 2. Select 'Tag' 'contains'
> 3. Select the desired tag from the list
> 4. Click search

There are mailviews defined for each tag, so you can pick one of those.  MailViews do only apply to one folder at a time, but if you're using a lot of tags you're probably not using a lot of folders.  If you're using a lot of both, then you need to figure out a strategy to make tags useful for you.


(In reply to comment #2)
> I've got a lot of tags already and that drop-down list is getting pretty
> long.  It would be nice if the field were scrollable.  What happens when the
> list gets longer than my screen is tall? 

I don't understand this -- did you experience a truncated list that you couldn't scroll?  That would be a bug.


> Anyway, I'm just looking for an easier way to apply new tags

A better way to *apply* tags will still require some way of determining which set of messages you want to tag.  One big problem in this area is that the Search Messages window doesn't let you apply tags (or do much of anything, really) with the list of results: bug 302609.


> and it would be nice if i could see a list of them on the screen somewhere.

What?  The only way I can envision this "feature" seems something that would be utterly worthless.


> This could also eliminate the need to have a Tags: section in the displayed
> message header

How so?  And why is displaying that header a problem that should be eliminated?


> which btw uses just a whitespace to separate tags which themselves can contain
> whitespaces. It's not great trying to figure out if that message was tagged as
> "read" and "stuff" or just "read stuff".

That's a reasonable complaint, altho that header now also color codes each individual label.  Still, not every tag has a distinct color.  Please open a bug for that specific issue.


> And please don't miss my request for automatically creating new search folders
> when a tag is created. I supposed that should have been broken out into a
> separate bug :-/

I know I've seen this idea floated before, but I don't think there's an RFE open for it yet.  One problem with this scheme is that search folders don't automatically update the list of folders when new ones are created.

Comment 4

[Steve Chadsey]

(In reply to comment #3)
> 
> > and it would be nice if i could see a list of them on the screen somewhere.
> 
> What?  The only way I can envision this "feature" seems something that would be
> utterly worthless.

No.  This is, in my opinion, one of the strongest usability features
for Gmail.  Once you've created a tag ("label" in Gmail), the label
is added to a list of existing labels on the left panel of the page.
Clicking any label will bring you to a list of messages that have that
label associated.  I find it hard to believe that anyone would find this
"worthless".  If Thunderbird is going to have tags, why not provide the
user with a convenient way of using them?  

Comment 5

[Andrew Sutherland [:asuth] (he/him)]

> And please don't miss my request for automatically creating new search folders
> when a tag is created. I supposed that should have been broken out into a
> separate bug :-/

bug 425359 covers this.  I think this is also roughly the feature that Steve mentioned in response to Mike's omnipresent-tag-display-is-silly comment.

> Anyway, I'm just looking for an easier way to apply new tags, and it would be
> nice if i could see a list of them on the screen somewhere. This could also
> eliminate the need to have a Tags: section in the displayed message header,
> which btw uses just a whitespace to separate tags which themselves can contain
> whitespaces. It's not great trying to figure out if that message was tagged as
> "read" and "stuff" or just "read stuff".

Perhaps bug 370076 (create/apply tags using the keyboard) would be sufficiently easy?

If keyboard isn't your thing, then I think bug 395985 has mock-ups that sound very similar to what you are requesting...

Comment 6

[ovidiu]

I'd say, 
First issue, easy search is very much related to bugs in comment #5

-also see Seek extension, for ease of search/view..
Second issue, easy apply is doable by use of
-keyboard 123.. key expendable by MailTweak extension to use 12,55,80 etc numbers
-tag toolbar extension, for visual approach and management of many tags 

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

It seems the search issues are adequately covered in other bugs.  Do we morph this to the tagging issue?  Or is there another bug that covers that?

Comment 8

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

As per comment #5 to comment #7, I'm morphing this bug into the "omnipresent tag list" for easy application of tags issue. Remaining issues are covered elsewhere (see below). Looking at googlemail, I'm actually wondering if there might be a way to use the same panel both for applying tags and filtering messages with a certain tag.

- cross-account virtual folder for tags is Bug 379928, which was duped against bug 425359. We'll have to keep the cross-account aspect in mind when fixing bug 425359.
- omnipresent tag display is similar to bug 381961 (tag cloud for easy tag application), but not the same. The general idea is the same, but this one merely calls for a plain list to choose from.
- "just a whitespace to separate tags" in header pane tags display is a problem that will hopefully disappear one day when bug 370076 gets attention (apply tags by typing with keyboard, as with Firefox bookmarks).

Comment 9

[thE_iNviNciblE]

there is an extension called "tag toolbar" easy to install and use. Is Showing the important tags directly under the main menue. http://hogi.sakura.ne.jp/en/ttb/ttb.rhtml