385556 - missing a "downloading messages" progress window

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 61139

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[nrlz]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4
Build Identifier: 

I switched over from Outlook Express 6 and one feature I am dearly missing is the "downloading messages" dialog that pops up when you click on the "Check Mail" button. In OE it is pretty descriptive and helpful as it tells me which account is being checked, among other things. For those of you who don't know what I am talking about, here are 2 screenshots:

http://www.mssu.edu/infoserv/documents/gwpopscrns/scrn-outlk9-2.jpg
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/iain_noble/imap3.gif

I'm sure some of you think that the dialog is useless and obtrusive in comparison to the status bar indicator in Thunderbird, but here are the main advantages of OE's approach:

1. I have several POP accounts and I can see which one is being downloaded at the current moment. I can also identify which account is particularly slow and I can cancel the downloading, disable that account, and download the other accounts first. (My college's POP server is quite slow; especially when downloading large email attachments.)

2. The dialog can display all errors with all accounts at the same time and it is not modal. I only have one central place to look, and likewise, I only have one central place to ignore. So if I am reading an email and I get a POP error, I can hide or unfocus the dialog and continue reading my email and when I have time, I can refocus or reshow the dialog again to debug the problem.

3. In OE, I get one complete summary of which accounts worked and which didn't. In Thunderbird, I have to use my memory to remember which accounts didn't work, which is troublesome because when I fix problems I can only fix them one by one.

4. When I first used Thunderbird, my first experience was that the "Check Mail" button was not working and it caused me to click it several times, because the status bar was small and it didn't catch my attention the first time. Although this won't be an issue anymore (unlike my other points), I think the user's first experience is important.

5. The kind of information that OE's dialog gives is particularly useful:
- It gives a concrete and high-level indicator of it's total progress: ("1 of 6 tasks have completed successfully.")
- It gives helpful suggestions on errors: ("The host xxx is not found. Please verify that you have entered the server name correctly. Account:xxx, Server:xxx ...")
- The progress bar on the popup dialog is big so if I am downloading a large message, I can show the dialog on the screen and walk around the room and still be able to glance across the room to the screen and still make out the progress bar. And when I see that it is about 90% complete, I can start making my way back from across the room.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
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