511362 - Folder tabs should be re-used

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Toolbars and Tabs, enhancement)

Description

[Siva Kumar]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Thunderbird/3.0b3

In Thunderbird 3, right now, when one clicks on a folder, that folder gets opened in the current tab, even when in another tab that folder is displayed.
It will be better if instead of opening the folder in the current tab, the focus changes to the tab that already has the particular folder opened. That way, the tab feature will be better used.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open a folder 'Folder1' in a new tab. Now TB3 has two tabs: Inbox, Folder1
2. With the focus on Folder1 tab, click the folder Inbox: Now the tabs are Inbox, Inbox 

Actual Results:  
The tab list shows 'Inbox, Inbox'

Expected Results:  
The tab list should show 'Inbox, Folder1'

Comment 1

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

ask to drivers... maybe is wontfix.

Comment 2

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

I think it would be a really good experiment to try this system out.  I couldn't make any promises about that getting into Thunderbird but I'd at least like to see what could happen in an extension.

Comment 3

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

set to new per comment #2. Remove [driver: WONTFIX?] clause from whiteboard.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

variation of Bug 549684