51153 - Inconsistency in describing the mail/news part of Mozilla

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Henrik Gemal]

There seems to be some problems in naming the mail part of Mozilla:
In "pref->appearance" it's called "Mozilla Mail"
In "pref->Mail and Newsgroups" it's called "Mail"
In "pref->Advanced" it's called "Mail and News"

Please find one term.
This bug has some other references:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46314

Comment 1

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

lisa, could someone in mailnews fix these, or should this go to UI?

Comment 2

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

wow, deja vu (after looking at bug 51154) --blake, would you like to own this,
or should this stay in mailnews (or go to ui)?

Comment 3

[Henrik Gemal]

in both mac and win32 installer the component is called "Mail & News"

Comment 4

[scottputterman]

cc'ing jglick

Comment 5

[jglick]

Adding Robin Foster from Tech Pubs.

Where ever possible, generic terms should be used.  
 - If just referring to Mail, "Mail" should be used.  
 - If just referring to Newsgroups, "Newsgroups" should be used.  
 - If referring to the combined Mail/News component, "Mail and Newsgroups" 
should be used.

If a qualifying product name is required "Netscape" or "Mozilla" should appear 
in front of the items mentioned above as appropriate.

Comment 6

[Blake Ross]

okay

Comment 7

[Henrik Gemal]

Are these the final names? So I can start making diff patch files to fix the 
inconsistency?

Comment 8

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

> Where ever possible, generic terms should be used.

Really? If we are going to rename Messenger to `Mail and Newsgroups', are we also 
going to rename Navigator to `Web', and rename Composer to `HTML'?

I can understand Netscape renaming their mailer, because `Netscape Messenger' is 
too close to `Netscape Instant Messenger'. And they have wittily decided to call 
their mail/news component `Mail', regardless of the fact that it also does news. 
Fine, that's up to them.

But the same problem does not apply to Mozilla, since we don't have an IM app in 
the suite. (And if one was included, it would have an interesting brand name, 
like `Jabber' or something.)

Ideally, Navigator, Composer, and {insert Mozilla mail/news component name here} 
will be distinct applications in future -- relying on the Mozilla base in library 
form only. And when someone asks me `What e-mail program do you use?', I don't 
want to have to say `I use Mail and Newsgroups'. They'll think I'm an idiot.

Comment 9

[Blake Ross]

Matt, what newsreader do you use? ;)

Comment 10

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

I use Netscape Messenger right now, and I hope to upgrade to Mozilla Messenger in 
the near future. :-)

If Mozilla's mail/news app is not going to be called `Messenger' any more, we 
should probably have a competition (along the lines of the one for the throbber) 
to decide on a new name which doesn't suck. And the Web pages on mozilla.org 
which refer to Messenger in relation to Mozilla (as opposed to 4.x) will need to 
be updated (I count about 110 such pages). And the `Mozilla Messenger' shortcut 
in the Mac Mozilla installation will need to be renamed. And the
chrome/packages/messenger/ directory in a Mozilla installation will need to be 
renamed (causing all sorts of packaging fun, no doubt). And so on.

Comment 11

[Henrik Gemal]

I never seen any mention about "Mozilla Messenger" inside the mozilla program...

Comment 12

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Perhaps that's because those inserting the wording have been concentrating on 
Netscape, rather than Mozilla, and (as this bug makes painfully obvious) the UI 
hasn't been inheriting product name &entities; from a single place.

Comment 13

[jglick]

Sorry if I wasn't clear before. Cc'ing Product Management to confirm naming 
conventions.

For the Commercial product the *official* names of components are:
Netscape Navigator, Netscape Mail, Netscape Instant Messenger, Netscape Address 
Book, Netscape Composer.  I'm assuming for Mozilla the same is true but 
replacing "Netscape" with "Mozilla".  So yes, someone could say "I use 
Netscape Mail" for email."

The question raised by this bug was that we should we using consist terms in 
the products menus and dialogs. Within the product's menus and dialogs, it is 
not necessary to qualify with "Netscape" or "Mozilla" in front of the component 
names since that is a given. For example, the Tasks menu just says "Navigator", 
"Mail", etc., not "Netscape Navigator", "Netscape Mail", etc.

Where ever possible, we should keep the names "Netscape" and "Mozilla" out of 
the menus and dialogs so more of these items can be shared without having to 
swap out names.

Conventions used in the product:
Tasks Menu: Navigator, Mail, Instant Messenger, Address Book, Composer.
Search Menu: Search the Web, Search Bookmarks/History, Search Mail/News Messages 
Preferences: Navigator, Composer, Mail and Newsgroups

Comment 14

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Sorry to be such a nuisance, but ... Does this mean that whenever Netscape 
decides to change the brand name of one of its applications (as it has for the 
mail/news application in this version), Mozilla will have to change the brand 
name of its own application to match???

If so, why? And if not, why are we doing so in this case?

Comment 15

[jglick]

My *opinion* would be that Mozilla can use whatever names they like, in this 
version and in future versions. 

If names can remain the same (in menus and dialogs where the "Netscape" or 
"Mozilla" qualifier aren't necessary), it just means less code changes between 
the two, if that is a concern.

Comment 16

[kmurray1115]

Jen, your recommendations are solid. [e-mail], please make it 
so...

Comment 17

[Blake Ross]

p4 for M19

Comment 18

[lchiang]

jglick/kmurray - keep in mind that blake assigned this for M19.  Netscape's UI 
freeze is before M19.  The freeze is 9/14/00, I believe, so these changes will 
not be able to be made for Netscape's commercial build.  I am not sure what 
applies to Mozilla so my comments don't apply there.

Comment 19

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

I vote for Messenger. We should bring this up in the newsgroup (.mail-news).

Re code sharing: what Matthew said. We have functions to sets the brand name in
one place. It is very important for Mozilla to actually use them everywhere, as
an important target group for it are vendors. So, having different names for in
Mozilla and Netscape helps Mozilla. I can see that this is not really necessary
for N6.00. But if you fix this bug, please use the variables instead of
hardcoding the name.

Comment 20

[Blake Ross]

I can try to look at this this weekend.  But if you want it ensure that it is 
immediately, it'll have to be nsbeta3+, as I have other, higher priority '+' 
bugs.  Sorry.

Comment 21

[lchiang]

No problem, Blake.  I thought the "+" for bugs are for helping schedule which 
bugs Netscape employees worked on.

Comment 22

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

*** Bug 52774 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 23

[Blake Ross]

No time for this right now.

Comment 24

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

cc'ing mailnews folx who might be interested.

Comment 25

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

I've seen placeholder (technically: entities) all over the product, including
pref overlays. Please use a placeholder like |&brandShortnameMailnews;|.

Comment 26

[timeless]

yes, entites eg shortname make sense.

Comment 27

[Viswanath Ramachandran]

nav triage: not a netscape beta stopper. 

Comment 28

[Blake Ross]

passing back...

Comment 29

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

-> mailnews.

Comment 30

[Håkan Waara]

So, can we make a decision here? Or will this discussion go on forever?

Comment 31

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Decide what?

What the name of Mailnews will be? If so, do that on the newsgroups. But I don't
think, we had good enough suggestions yet to make a final decision.

The main thing to do in this bug is remove any name and replace it with a
placeholder. That way, we can easily have "Mozilla Messenger" and "Netscape Mail
and News", for example. No decision on the name needed to fix this bug.

Comment 32

[Håkan Waara]

After reading this bug is seems like we've settled on "Messenger", and when we 
need to be more specific: "Mozilla Messenger".

This problem is too ugly to be in 1.0, so we gotta fix it before then.

Comment 33

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Hakan, we don't need to settle on any name in order to fix this bug. See bug 84851.

Comment 34

[Håkan Waara]

Just fix bug 84851 and then we can reconsider our choice of email client name.
The most important thing right now is that we should not hardcode a name, and it
should be consistent.

Comment 35

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Hakan, I don't understand. Bug 84851 is a meta-bug, of which this bug (bug
51153) is a part. I.e. in order for bug 84851, we need to fix this one.

Comment 36

[Philip Chee]

All three are now "Mail & Newsgroups"