408175 - disable delete in the standalone message window

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 370770

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Sergio]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; pt-BR; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11
Build Identifier: versão 2.0.0.9 (20071031)

Today, I was viewing a message, and by distraction, I selected part of the viwed text and pressed Del, I supposed I was with the composition window but in fact I was with the "Visualization Window"

The message was silently moved to Trash Window, and I simply LOST it, as I configured TB to empty trash when closing it.

Two suggestions:

1- Or Thunderbird should show a "deletion confirmation" if the user press del key while VIEWING a message.

2- Or Thunderbird could prohibit the use for the DELETE key at all, only FOR the Viewing Message Window to avoid Messages being deleted "silently".

I got very frustrated and ashamed with this occurency. How a person can ask another: Please, re-send me that message, because my Award Winning program deleted the message without my awareness.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open any received or submited message 
2. Select part of the text as you would do in the "Compose Window"
3. Press DELETE key
4. Close Thunderbird: bye bye message (if it is configured to clean the Trash bin when quited).
Actual Results:  
The message is deleted.

Expected Results:  
A confirmation should prevent undesired deletions

Comment 1

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Wow, I would absolutely loathe this. I get several hundred mails a day (lots of bugzilla spam) and would hate an extra confirm step for each one. That's why there's a trash folder, so you can root around and recover from mistakes. You could use that as your "confirmation": instead of auto-delete on shutdown you could manually inspect your trash folder before emptying it manually as a double-check.

Comment 2

[Sergio]

I am not sure if you understood my post well, maybe for my bad English.

My first "del confirmation" suggestion DID NOT MEAN to be applied in general deletion, but ONLY when you DOUBLE CLICK to open a message in that "exclusive Message Viewing Window" (that's what I called Stand Alone Window, I meant exclusive window). I believe other people by distraction could select a piece of message thinkin they are in Reply mode and press Del, causing the problem...

By the way: do you double click your SPAM messages to read in exclusive windows?  
I usually delete them by viewing the title or just in the visualization panel, I never double click to open a SPAM in a "exclusive window". As Spam is trash, they don't deserve it in my oppinion. So, to kill spam has nothing with this bug, as the problem I presented happens when you are viewing a message in a Exclusive Message Window, because in this last case the folders tree is even covered and you don't see the trash number being increased!!! 

That is the DANGER of it.

There are other ways to solve it without a confirmation:

My proposal is to prevent a user deleting a message by accident when he types del on that "exclusive message window". 

Thunderbird could allow the use of a Second key (Ctrl, shift or Alt) + Del, (or allow us to configure it in preferences). This would make Thunderbird more secure, and I think is not sacrifice to hold a key while pressing Del, better than missing messages by distraction.

I believe that for the "Exclusive Message Window" one of these (Ctrl or Shift or Alt)+ Del hit would be the best choice than only Del as is today.

It would solve the problem I presented, without having to confirm anything.

Comment 3

[Sergio]

I had another suggestion (when we argue, new ideas emerge).
You could apply another conditional to this protection:

IF KEY = DELETE THEN
... IF ( THERE IS SELECTED TEXT IN THE VIEWING MESSAGE WINDOW ) THEN
....... SHOW A MESSAGE ALERTING AND CANCEL DELETION
... ELSE IF ( THERE IS NO SELECTED TEXT) THEN
....... DELETE THE MESSAGE NORMALLY, NOW IT IS SAFE TO DO IT.
....END IF
END IF

I have given enough material and presented a real and problematic point in Thunderbird that you should ignore, or Thunderbird will carry in its  behaviour  a hidden dark stain that I have alerted you and nobody carried about to improve.

Thanks for the attention.

PS: I had given another suggestion in the past for another improvement in Thunderbird, do you know if somebody has seen it ?

I drawed a diagram to express my suggestion:
http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/2923/thunderbirdsuggestion6pa.gif 

Best Regards

Sergio Abreu

Comment 4

[Sergio]

Pardon... In my last comment, where I wrote
* you should ignore *
I meant
* you should NOT ignore *

Comment 5

[zug_treno]

Related to bug 370770, bug 330576 and/or bug 374853?

Comment 6

[Sergio]

Seems more similar to 370770.

Del + Selected Text + Viewing Window = NOT delete message !!! 

Please

Comment 7

[Sergio]

I have two suggestions both quite simple:

1- Add a confirmation dialog "Confirm deleting this message ?"
This would solve the problem in a drastic way.

2- But if you select text and hit Del key when reading a message, the best behavior would be alerting: "Sorry, this text is read only, you can not edit it"

PS: Today I fell in this bug again, but fortunatelly I know this BAD behavior of thunderbird and could catch the message back from the trash folder... 

Are you convinced the severity of this bug ? Because if you configure an account to DELETE FROM TRASH FOLDER when leaving, important messages could be delete with NO CHANCE of recovering. 

One of these dialog MUST be implemented in order to make Thunderbird a more reliable software that WARNS when the user hits delete key with the intention of EDITING the message body... 

I am disappointed since this bug is here unsolved for almost 2 years.

Comment 8

[Sean Porterfield]

I agree with comment 1.  If this is ever implemented, it needs to be an option with the default for current behavior.  Either pay attention or do not automatically empty trash.

Comment 9

[Sergio]

I don't agree with the above comment neither the "comment 1".

As I said, I - and possibly many others - HAVE LOST messages because Thunderbird doesn't have this protective mechanism. Moving the message into trash "QUIETLY" when the distracted user SELECTED SOME TEXT AND PRESSED DELETE expected to be EDITING it IMHO is a UNSAFE behaviour of Thunderbird.

A good program prevents accidents from happening specially when the user does something apparently "stupid" as selecting text and pressing delete in the message viewer window. By the way the only difference between those windows is the "Send to" fields. It is easy for a person to be in the viewing window and (because of hurry for instance) to try editing the text of the message, forgetting to press Reply or Forward before. If they press Delete expecting to edit the TEXT of the message, "BYE BYE MESSAGE", with NO WARNINGS.

Good programs have those "dangerous possibilities" predicted in the code. Mediocre programs do what you two suggest: blames the user for accidents, and do NOTHING to prevent problems like this one related with this bug.

One thing is to press Delete while reading a message that you didn't find interesting WITHOUT SELECTING ANY TEXT.
...but...
If the user SELECTED SOME TEXT in that message viewer window AND PRESSED DELETE, there is a "100%" chance that the user was distracted and THOUGHT that he was in the EDITION mode, so "IN THIS PARTICULAR SITUATION", I propose that Thunderbird should alert the user with either one of these two warnings or something alike:

1- "To edit this message, open it with Reply or Forward option."
... OR....
2- "The entire message will be sent to TRASH. Do you really wish to do it ?"

---- Agreement:

If NO TEXT is selected, the current behavior is OK.

Comment 10

[Sean Porterfield]

1.  If it's a configurable option that won't interfere with how I use the software, I'm not concerned.

2.  When you press delete, you should notice that the text did not delete.  Therefore, you know you are not in a composer window.

3.  I do periodically highlight text for copying from a message then delete the message.  I don't need confirmation that I pressed delete.  I know I pressed delete.

Good software is flexible - it lets users use it differently.  I use IMAP and prefer "mark as deleted" over "move to trash".  I have no "empty trash" because I don't use trash.  I make a conscious effort to compact my folder.  Deleted messages are readily visible in the folder.  My preference and yours (whatever that may be) are surely not the only ways to use the software.  Thus my only concern is that if such an enhancement as you request is implemented that it be a configurable option.