464783 - Add a Bookmarks Toolbar to accommodate view switching buttons

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Calendar :: Lightning Only, enhancement)

Description

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][☁️📆]]

Attachment: Mockup - v1

As Christian proposed, it should be considered to add a further half-height toolbar below the exptoolbar, since the  current mode buttons are very small very far away.

Christian may have planned it a bit differently (feel free to mock up!), but since I liked this idea I decided to do a quick mockup myself. Christian, is this about what you planned? If so, please reassign to Bryan to increase visibility, otherwise please update the mockup.

Comment 1

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][☁️📆]]

A few ideas of how this should work:

* The Calendar and Task menuitems should be special:
  - They should be there by default, or at least as soon as the first calendar
    is configured.
  - They should be removable. An extra menuitem like "Restore Calendar
    Bookmarks" (or something shorter) could appear to get those bookmarks back.
* It should be possible to drop folders, emails, events, tasks, calendars onto this toolbar
  - Calendar: Shows only this calendar in the current view (?)
  - Tasks/Events: Shows event in view, maybe opens dialog too (?)
* Bookmarked folders should cause a dropdown folderpicker to appear (?)
* Icons:
  - Calendar, Tasks should have the respective icons
  - Emails should have a default icon
  - Folders should use the folder icon. You could possibly allow using other
    icons, like the bugzilla folder in the mockup
* Context Menu quite similar to the Firefox context menu.

Comment 2

[Pete Riley]

I like that it's customizable.

Please also add a bookmark for the Address Book if you decide to implement this.

Comment 3

[Christian Jansen]

Like mentioned, I support the idea of having the half-height toolbar below the exptoolbar. This would make switching from one tab into another initially, much easier.

Some additional features I'd like to see:

* The default hight should be as thin as possible.

* If the toolbar is switched off, the Calendar & Tasks icons should continue of being displayed in front of the Drop Down, located on the right end of the tab area.

* "Reset toolbar" should reset to the following order: Inbox, Calendar, Tasks, Address Book

ui+ from my side for this study

Comment 4

[Christian Jansen]

Bryan what do you think? Shall we give it a try?

Comment 5

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

I'm thinking we should start off with this as an extension, there's nothing about it that prevents an extension from being written to create this and then we can test and judge it with a working prototype.  

The possibilities this toolbar could bring are really interesting, but with that also come some complexity and management; similar to bookmarking systems.  I'd be worried about entering this feature into the default build until we understand all the consequences.  The mockup does look nice.

If we want to add text to the Calendar and Tasks buttons in the tab shortcuts area to make them larger horizontal targets we can try that.  Otherwise they are exactly the same height in either area.

I'm not really concerned by the location of the buttons off to the right.  On one hand the (reply, forward, junk, and trash) buttons located on the message display will likely cause mice to be off to the right hand side more than up near the toolbar.  On the other hand we can assume that the mouse will move to the folder pane frequently, which is on the left hand side.  Either way there will be a lot of mouse travel and it seems unclear that one particular spot will be better than others.

After some possible pain of the initial tab opening I would expect people to leave tabs open and hope we can get some session restore working ( bug 459096 )

Comment 6

[Christian Jansen]

Comment on attachment 348054 [details]
Mockup - v1

ui+ for the general concept. We should create an extension for this, for testing purposes.

Comment 7

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][☁️📆]]

Extension work started at [1], although we might consider postponing this if the session restore feature is sufficient for now.


[1] http://hg.mozilla.org/users/mozilla_kewis.ch/minibar

Comment 8

[Charles]

Please also consider those of use who don't want/use tabs in our mail reader.

I'm still waiting for an option to open the Calendar in the current tab (which, when combined with hiding the tab bar when only one tab is open, and opening messages in a new window instead of a new tab, would accomplish the same thing as disabling tabs completely).

So, if you do this, be sure any buttons added to the tab bar can be moved to any of the other toolbars (unlike the current calendar buttons, which is really irritating)...

Comment 9

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][☁️📆]]

I'm going to close this one for now. If Thunderbird provides for a bookmarks toolbar at some point, we can reopen to integrate with that.