455715 - Implement adding an email address to an existing contact from the message header view

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, defect, P3)

Description

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

See the URL for the background details, in summary:

When a person emails you from an email address that is not in the system, however they have a name that matches what is in the system we need to offer the ability to append data (i.e. the email address) to an existing contact.

This bug is for tracking the work to implement it.

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

pushing to b2, since it's a p2.

Comment 2

[David Ascher (:davida)]

I wonder what the right UI should be for this -- a special interaction that happens on starring, or do we want to indicate that such emails are "almost-contacts" through some sort of modification of the star?

Comment 3

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

I tried a couple different interfaces because I wasn't sure exactly what we wanted people to do and when the best time to get them working was.  I'm still a little unclear what the best steps should be.

Besides just for those people who want have a pristine address book listing for various reasons, device syncing becoming an important one.  Having multiple contacts merged properly also allows our searching for conversations with people to perform correctly.

The conservative thing to do would probably be to only present cases TB is fairly sure are the same person from different emails; if they have a very similar display name.  Presenting these cases to the user might just mean a half star or other icon indicating we found something they could fix.  This tends to create a task for the person and one that's problematic; I'm not sure that's what we want.

Event if we don't indicate that an address was a "half contact" we could always present the question when someone actually stars the contact.  At this time we know they are at least a little interested in working with the address book.

In addition to this we should also think about having an action present for any address that isn't a contact which obviously starts the merge process.  Something like ( Add to Existing Contact... ) might be the right phrasing.


The indication for "almost contacts", whatever form it takes, would be an attempt to get the person's attention that TB thinks (right or wrong) this contact should be merged with another.  If we're wrong and the person doesn't add the contact to the AB then we'd at least have to mark that email or the matching contact as no relation; otherwise TB will continue indicating the incorrect "almost contact" match to the person every time.

TB automatically adds a contact as a collected contact after a reply.  I don't see a good time to interact with the user about merging in that scenario.  Indicating a possible merge seems like it might have the same peril as above; maybe it's worth working through.

Comment 4

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

As much as we'd love this, we could live without it for Tb3; switching from blocking to wanted.

Comment 5

[klonos]

Just an idea on this one... in iPhone whenever there is a call from a new number you can select 'Add to contacts...' and that takes you to a screen with two buttons. A 'Create new contact' and another one 'Add to existing contact'. I think it is the most proper way to do implement it.

Comment 6

[Ibrahim]

Attachment: This patch adds a panel for a contact node with similar display name stored in the address book. It allows the user either to add it as new contact or to update the existing one.

Hi all, please try the patch and tell me comments about the design.

Comment 7

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Ibrahim: you need to ask review for the patch - see https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Getting_your_patch_in_the_tree#Getting_the_patch_reviewed

Comment 8

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Comment on attachment 417153 [details] [diff] [review]
This patch adds a panel for a contact node with similar display name stored in the address book. It allows the user either to add it as new contact or to update the existing one.

My review queue is quite loaded and I've not had time to look at this yet (although I'd like to).

I'm going to pass you over to Bryan for a ui-review which will probably be the better first option anyway as you can fine-tune the UI side before we look at the back-end in detail.

Comment 9

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

Attachment: screenshot

just wanted to have a screenshot available for future reference

Comment 10

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

Comment on attachment 417153 [details] [diff] [review]
This patch adds a panel for a contact node with similar display name stored in the address book. It allows the user either to add it as new contact or to update the existing one.

I'm going to review the screenshot

Comment 11

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

Comment on attachment 431777 [details]
screenshot

As far as UI goes we need some changes to this dialog but overall I really like this.

Right now we look a little too "form like".  

We need to have this dialog look more like we're prompting you to append a new email address to an existing contact.

I'm not yet sure if we should be repurposing the existing panel/dialog with this update or using a new dialog like this one.

I feel like a different, intermediate dialog is going to work best so we can have different buttons that make more sense.

(!) Similar Contact
    Person
     <email>
    <new.email>
( Add as New ) ( Cancel ) ( Update )

With a little bit of styling I think we can make it obvious that the <new.email> is the one to be added.

I'm assuming that clicking update brings you to the edit contact dialog where the new email address is shown.

I think we need to show second email addresses in the edit contact dialog if it exists, I'm not sure we do that currently.  Without it I think we'll have an odd flow of updating and arriving at nothing.

I'll try to get some mockups done for this to help explain some more.

Comment 12

[Shriram (irc: Mavericks)]

(In reply to Bryan Clark [:clarkbw] from comment #11)
> Comment on attachment 431777 [details]
> screenshot
Unless updating an existing dialog breaks consistency or makes it more complicated, new dialog looks fine. From code reuse perspective, repurpose existing panel/dialog  could be useful with the update. Highlighting the outline of the Second Email works

Comment 13

[rbliven4]

Attachment: email invasion of privacy and contacts.

File 455715 - email invasion of privacy and contact info. - Patch add-on request.

Comment 14

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Comment on attachment 579046 [details] [diff] [review]
email invasion of privacy and contacts.

This looks like a firefox exectuable and not a patch. Please make sure you've attached the right thing and provide a full description when you do so. Flags shouldn't be set to + unless you are a reviewer.

Comment 15

[Ruben]

please be aware, that also chat-buddies should be added this way to the address-book: bug 799854

Comment 16

[Ruben]

Will this still be added? Or is there a new Addressbook on the way being finished?

Comment 17

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

The message reader is being largely rebuilt for version 115. So this issue is will not be fixed for the current version 102.

When 115 becomes available in July please file a new bug if the problem exists in version 115. You can also evalute the changes in 3-4 weeks by trying a beta build.