474708 - Need a way to distinguish all of the various Thunderbird windows - Main panel, compose window, mail view window - in order to be able to PLACE them on-screen using compiz rules.

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: General, enhancement)

Description

[deano-mozilla]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008121623 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.5
Build Identifier: version 2.0.0.19 (20090105)

Right now every window that Thunderbird puts up has the same WM_TITLE and WM_CLASS, as seen by xprop.

WM_CLASS(STRING) = "gecko", "Thunderbird-bin"
WM_NAME(STRING) = "My Email - Thunderbird"

That means that compiz plugins can't distinguish between the various windows.  Any rules that are set up apply to ALL thunderbird windows.  This makes it impossible to place the main Thunderbird app window in one place, the viewing window in another, and the compose window in yet another.

If thunderbird could give each window type a different classname, then we could easily set up rules to place all of the windows wherever we want.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
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Comment 1

[Charles]

Since there is now discussion for a possible 'Thunderbird:NG' (NG=Next Generation), I would suggest that in addition to this good idea, the same thing should be done for the various major sub-components of each window class.

For example, for each of the Main Window Layout (and other windows)components as described here:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Window_layout_-_Thunderbird

assign each its own 'WM_CLASS_SUBCLASS'.

This would make it very easy for Addon devs, or plain users, to modify the UI to their liking (heck, you could even make them movable by drag-n-drop).

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Is this of any use in a post-XUL world?

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Not related to that.
But I think as such, lets close. I think the details of whats may be wanted have changed.