459641 - Tabs and tab shortcut buttons should perform as drop target to convert events tasks, e-mail messages

Status: NEW

(Calendar :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Christian Jansen]

Due to the removal of the mode buttons the ability of converting tasks, events, mails got lost. I suggest to use the tabs as drop target instead.

Comment 1

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

Does the conversion via context menu entry still works? Or was it regressed too?

Comment 2

[Przemyslaw Bialik]

Conversion via CM is not affected.

Comment 3

[David Ascher (:davida)]

Bryan, do you have UI thoughts?  Christian?

Comment 4

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

Also might want to consider the tabshortcuts

Comment 5

[Daniel Boelzle [:dbo]]

Will the shortcuts open without clicking them?

Comment 6

[Przemyslaw Bialik]

accel+3 and accel+4 switches to the calendar and tasks tabs respectively (even if they are not opened).
accel+1 no longer switches to the mail mode/tab because it was switching to the main TB window and now with tabs not modes it does nothing so it would have to be changed but this is rather out of scope for this bug (same with accel+3 and accel+4 not working from the AB window).

Comment 7

[Przemyslaw Bialik]

It's not clear from the description but IMHO new tabs AND new calendar and tasks tab-buttons should perform as a drop target.
Related / possible follow-up Bug 247764

Comment 8

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

Some things to consider with this.  The old drag and drop method that the mode buttons provided won't be the same if we just use the tabs.  As written in comment 7 you'd need to do both the tab shortcut and tabs such that there was always a drop target available.  If a calendar tab wasn't already open then there would be no way to drop a message into the calendar tab.

I'd recommend setting down the priority on this and making sure that something like the "Other Actions" menu provides a way to convert a message into a calendar or task item.  That will at least make sure that the action readily exists, the drop targets are fairly obscure anyway.  The design for the "Other Actions" menu item is pretty simple, there may be other designs that we could also do to help make these actions more readily available.

Comment 9

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

The current "convert to task" context-menu item opens up and pre-populates the event/task dialog, and that dialog feels awfully heavyweight for this usecase.  I wonder if something like the OmniFocus quick-entry popup would be better for this situation...

Comment 10

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

<http://www.grabup.com/uploads/fdba36ce2489f03b253b7ab4ccd88f5f.png> has a picture of the omnifocus dialog.

Comment 11

[Berend Cornelius]

Talked to Christian about this topic. Catching up the idea of Bryan in comment #8 we came to the conclusion to implement the behaviour as in firefox where the tabs are opening during "dragover" so that the user can continue the dag session in the new tab. As I found out the potential drop-targets in the calendar views are not yet ready to accept message objects and there is still something to do.

Comment 12

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][☁️📆]]

I think we should take this for 1.0, at least partially.

* Make the buttons serve as a drop target
* Make the tabs server as a drop target
* If the user hovers the tabs, then the tabs open and the user can continue.


The first two points should be doable for 1.0, the third is optional.

Comment 13

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][☁️📆]]

mschroeder, do you have any wip code that changes calendar-dnd-listener to the new drag api? That would probably make fixing this bug easier.

Comment 14

[Martin Schröder [:mschroeder]]

(In reply to comment #13)
> mschroeder, do you have any wip code that changes calendar-dnd-listener to the
> new drag api? That would probably make fixing this bug easier.

Philipp, I have some wip code that I'll try to attach to one of the dnd bug reports over the weekend. I just have to check if it still applies.

Comment 15

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][☁️📆]]

mschroeder, did you have a chance to attach your code? Could you reference the bug you've attached it to?