460602 - RFE: Message reader: Remove visual clutter of dropdown arrows for each address

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092417 Firefox/3.0.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.9.1b1pre) Gecko/20081006 Shredder/3.0a3

Message reader contact starring is great (the bookmarking system for adresses using yellow stars). However, I feel that having a dropdown arrow behind the star for each and every address is just adding visual clutter without adding extra functionality, since clicking on the contact's display name pops up the same context menu as clicking on the dropdown arrow. I know it's about making the dropdown menu transparent for newbies, but let's be honest: if you are not smart enough to try clicking on the contact's display name (incl. email adress for unknown contacts), you might have software interaction problems that no UI in the world can solve. Besides, the dropdown arrow is very small as a clicking target: Instead of making newbies believe that this tiny spot is where you have to click, I think you would actually do newbies a favour by NOT showing the tiny dropdown icon, thus educating them to click on the bigger target (the address display). Have a look at a message with an expanded list of, say, 50 recipients (while ignoring the unbelievable, mind-boggling, and arrogant persistence of bug 223132), and maybe you can agree with me that having 50 functionless dropdown arrows is visual clutter that could well/should be removed.

Please vote for this bug if you agree.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Receive and read an email with lots of adresses in to/from/etc. field
2. expand the header with lots of adresses
3. 
Actual Results:  
be annoyed by the visual clutter of lots of dropdown arrows (in addition to and in the midst of lots of useful stars and commas)

Expected Results:  
The tiny and therefore hard-to-click dropdown buttons after each address (behind the yellow star) should be removed, since the same functionality is much more easily accessible by clicking on the display name of the respective email adress.
Apart from the visual oddity, it's a waste of resources and screen real estate.

Comment 1

[rsx11m]

While I'd agree with much of what is said here in terms of having too many items now in the header pane, I think that this goes hand-in-hand with the necessity of being able to configure what the header pane shows. For example, some users may or may not want the star after each address either.

The configuration issue was mentioned in bug 449691 comment #22 and several following comments of that initial bug, but apparently didn't make it into its own spin-off bug (yet)...

Comment 2

[rsx11m]

xref bug 450724, which introduced the star/arrow combination.

While the star has a clear function and indicates whether or not an address is already in the address book, and allows adding/editing a contact, it appears
to me that the arrow only replicates the context menu already available by clicking on the address itself. I cannot find an answer to Bryan's question
in bug 450724 comment #13 "what do they [triangles] do?" anywhere in the following comments.

Can somebody provide some more background information or point to a discussion what the motivation for those drop-down arrows was? Would be helpful to know what they are (or will be) supposed to do before continuing here...

Comment 3

[rsx11m]

Looking at Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20081201 Shredder/3.0b1pre and the default theme, I do no longer see dropdown arrows (triangles) next to each address. Has this been resolved?

(In reply to comment #1)
> The configuration issue was mentioned in bug 449691 comment #22 and several
> following comments of that initial bug, but apparently didn't make it into its
> own spin-off bug (yet)...

That's proposed in bug 465138 now.

Comment 4

[David Ascher (:davida)]

Yes, this issue has been fixed by the patches in 456818.