474719 - add preview functionality (QuickLook-like) for attachments

Status: REOPENED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

John mentioned a while ago that he found himself using the QuickLook stuff in Mail.app a lot and thought something similar could be a good fit for Thunderbird.  I think we should definitely consider this, although to me it feels too big to happen in a Tb3 timeframe. 

If a Mac hacker came along and wanted to just build on top of the QuickLook APIs, that would probably be notably less work while being at least a step in the right direction.

Comment 1

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Awesome, now we'll have one with all one word "quicklook" in the summary when I search that way instead of two words ;)

Comment 2

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

I'm not sure this should be a duplicate actually. While it's true using Quicklook would be awesome on Leopard, what about all the other platforms? For at least the most common attachment types (I'm guessing at pictures) it cannot be difficult to display a floating panel with the image in it. In fact I'm willing to bet it would be easier than integrating with Quicklook for real.

Comment 3

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

Agreed; these bugs imply different code and different strategies.  That said, I think the thing that's likely to be harder about this functionality for cross-platform use is getting the various format reading code written/embedded.