404814 - Get Mail button has poor visual feedback

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Kevin Cannon]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9
Build Identifier: 

The Get Mail button has poor user feedback. Often when you click it it seems like nothing has happened if there is no mail on the server. I guess this is a symptom of faster broadband connections we have these days, but the downside is confusion for the end user.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Check your email and download all new emails
2. Press the Get Mail button and see that nothing happens except an extremely subtle text flicker in the status bar.
Actual Results:  
Nothing happens in the UI. 
The 'throbber' doesn't swirl, the button doessn't change and it appears as if nothing happens.
The only thing that does happen is an message appears in the status bar saying something like 'There are no new messages on the server'. But it flashes up too quickly to actually read, even if you notice it.

Expected Results:  
Some visual feedback:

A quick fix would be to swirl the throbber anyway for a second, and also to hold the message in the status bar for longer.

A better fix would be to make something with a larger visual feedback.
e.g. Have an animation in the get mail buton itself, so that the indication that something is happening is directly related to the user's action.

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

UI idea: Perhaps we could have something similar like the animation of the new Firefox download button which flashes a big green semi-transparent arrow for a second when ready.

Comment 3

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

This is definitely something that could worked on. I am personally against the idea of using a flashing button, what we really just need is a spinning indicator or something on the status bar that stay visible for at least two seconds.

Confirming.

Comment 4

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

Oh, and this is a problem on all platforms...

Comment 5

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

sorry - midair collision with myself ;)

Comment 6

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Josiah Bruner [:JosiahOne] from comment #3)
> This is definitely something that could worked on. I am personally against
> the idea of using a flashing button, what we really just need is a spinning
> indicator or something on the status bar that stay visible for at least two
> seconds.

There is a progress indicator for downloading messages in status bar, but you'll never really know what for and it tends to disappear quickly.

Status bar messages always disappear too quickly without trace, that's a known problem for which I hope we have bugs already.

Something like a history of status bar messages can be found in Tools > Activity manager. In fact, per bug 489588, activity manager dumps stuff into status bar. Unfortunately, there's no link from status bar to get into activity manager.
Adding that link looks like a good papercut to me - small work, big effect.

I think there were plans to that end, but they got stuck half-way (bug 476487).

Comment 7

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

So I'm going to think about this some more.

One idea I would like would be to create an animation on the Get Mail button. Essentially what I would like is for the Get Mail icon to overlay a sort of moving sonar/wave the looks like we are "scanning" for messages. The animation should last a minimum of two seconds.

This way, people without a visible status bar (like me), would still be able to observe this feedback.

I'll create some mockups when I have some time.

Comment 8

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Josiah, fyi, there's a spinning indicator (aka "Throbber") available from customization of mail toolbar ("Activity Indicator"), which also indicates when getting mail. If you place that indicator next to your "Get Mail" button, the ux is already pretty close to what you envision.

Comment 9

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #8)
> Josiah, fyi, there's a spinning indicator (aka "Throbber") available from
> customization of mail toolbar ("Activity Indicator"), which also indicates
> when getting mail. If you place that indicator next to your "Get Mail"
> button, the ux is already pretty close to what you envision.

True, although even that does not work very well. Most of the time when I press "Get Mail", the indicator never shows at all. Perhaps a separate issue though.