459246 - Sort "Date" is alphabetical.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Tom D'Ambrosio]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092417 Firefox/3.0.3
Build Identifier: 2.0.0.17

Sorting messages by "Date" does not work because the "M/D/Y" prefix is absent from recent messages. Since the window is using a simple alphabetical sort, messages where the "hour" is less/greater than the month field of another message may list the newest messages in between older messages, making them difficult to locate.

While others seem to have noted this "bug", no one else seems to have correctly identified the cause.

The fix is simple. Simply make sure ALL messages use the same Date format in the message list. Don't truncate the M/D/Y portion from messages sent within the past 24 hours.

Also, for an alphanumeric sort to work properly, the date MUST be in the "Year/Month/Day/Hour/Minute/Second" format.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Open any folder ("Sent" is a good example) and click the "Date" column to sort messages by date.
Actual Results:  
Any messages sent before 12-Noon will be buried in between messages sent before December 1st and January (ie: A message sent at 8am will sort below a message sent last August).

Expected Results:  
The newest messages should always appear at the top/bottom of a date-sorted list.

Comment 1

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

Sort actually uses numeric date representations.

Post a screenshot of your missorted code, so we can see what's REALLY causing it.

Comment 2

[Tom D'Ambrosio]

Attachment: Screenshot. Messages posted "today" appear "between" dates following Sort-by-Date.

As requested.

Comment 3

[Tom D'Ambrosio]

Comment on attachment 342485 [details]
Screenshot. Messages posted "today" appear "between" dates following Sort-by-Date.

If the Y/M/D portion had not been truncated, the sort would have worked just fine.

Comment 4

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

It would have? The bottom message claims that it was sent in the year 2101, so either the sender needs to fix their clock, or you need to ask them what stocks were hot around 90 years in their past.

Comment 5

[Tom D'Ambrosio]

The misdated messages were the result of an "import" from Outlook. That might be another bug to look into.

I went ahead and deleted the misdated messages. I'll let you know the result after further Sent Messages are added.

Comment 6

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

The import bug is bug 216613.

Comment 8

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

Reporter the issue is still here? Or I can close the bug as a dupe of #216613?

Comment 9

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

RESO INCO due to lack of response to last question. If you feel this change was made in error, please respond to this bug with your reasons why.