512666 - No "forwarded and replied" arrow in Mac OS classic theme

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Gero Zahn]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X; U; de; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061208 Firefox/2.0.0 Opera 9.63
Build Identifier: 2.0.0.23 (20090812)

The classic theme for TB for Mac OS X lacks an arrow icon: It has a forwarded icon and a replied icon, but unlike the Windows version there's no "forwarded and replied" icon.

Basically there's no .png file showing two arrows at once, so of course it's not implemented in mailWindow1.css.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Forward a e-mail to somebody.
2. Reply to the same e-mail.
3. It should show "forwarded and replied" but it does not.



I recommend to add those two icons (regular and selected) to the chrome://messenger/skin/icons/ folder - I've whipped up those files - if I have the chance I'll attach a file containing both the Photoshop file as well as the two .pngs.

Besides that mailWindow1.css needs to be patched. I've also created a diff file that will do the trick - I'll attach this as well.

Comment 1

[Gero Zahn]

Turns out I can't attach files here ... However: Please have a look at

http://www.gerozahn.de/scratch/Thunderbird_Bug-512666.zip

It contines the .psd, the two .pngs, the .diff and a screenshot as it looks when applied correctly to /Applications/Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/chrome/classic.jar.

Comment 2

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Turns out I can't attach files here ... However: Please have a look at

What was the issue ?

The issue is still present in Tb3b4pre.

Could you take the time to write a proper patch to fix this ?

Comment 3

[Gero Zahn]

I'd love to. Though, I'm not familiar with the devel tools here - I simply created a diff file with diff that can be used with patch on UNIXoids ... probably only on the mailWindow1.css on of 2.0.0.23 (20090812).

If you could hint me which kind of diff/patch toolset is prefered, I'd redo the file patch on that. ... However, it still requires unpacking, patching and repacking classic.jar.

Comment 4

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

I can help out with creating a proper patch out of this that will apply on trunk. Will update shortly.

Comment 5

[Gero Zahn]

Thanks, man!

One more thing: Someone please check with the art department (?) if the double arrow I created is OK or not ... probably not - not only artistically, I also noticed it's a slightly different shade of gray. Even though I used the original .png files for "replied" and "forwarded" to create the combined double arrow ... perhaps some .png gamma issue, d'oh!

Comment 6

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Andreas is the art department :-) So he'll tell you.

Comment 7

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: first stab at the patch

Here is a first stab at the patch. Will look into the graphics tomorrow and see if the color issue is fixable.

Comment 8

[Gero Zahn]

The color issue should be fixable. I took the original .pngs and stacked them on top of each other in Photoshop. After exporting the selected and the unselected .png which probably had the same color as the original ones, as a web worker I routinely pushed them through pngout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNGOUT - to save space and to to avoid varying color rendering (wasn't there some similar issue in FF3.5?). I guess I shouldn't have done that.

Comment 9

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: vista and linux reply-forward icons

Could you try and make the arrows slightly smaller and place the forward arrow on top? That could help making them feel less like one object. Attaching examples of what we currently do on Windows Vista and Linux (and friends).

Comment 10

[Gero Zahn]

Attachment: Smaller arrows - screenshot

Comment 11

[Gero Zahn]

Attachment: Smaller arrows - .psd and .pngs

Comment 12

[Gero Zahn]

Oops ... Sorry for sending three messages at once - I wasn't aware that attaching would create such clutter.

What do you think of those? ... BTW, I'm not a graphic designer - creating the original double arrow was more of a proof of concept if I could get TB/Mac behave like TB/Win in this. :)

Comment 13

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: updated patch

Thanks! Here is an updated patch.
I think the arrows looks good, great work on this!

Comment 14

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Comment on attachment 397299 [details] [diff] [review]
updated patch

Looks good, except the blank line between the two added rules in the CSS has a trailing space (which could almost be called the style-of-the-file, but we still shouldn't add even more).

Comment 15

[Gero Zahn]

Question: Will this patch go "just" into TB3, or will it be in the next TB2 update as well?

Comment 16

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

(In reply to comment #15)
> Question: Will this patch go "just" into TB3, or will it be in the next TB2
> update as well?

Not that I know of. Updates to TB2 are only for security stuff (if I understand things correctly).

Comment 17

[Gero Zahn]

OK. So my copy of TB 2.0.0.23 (20090812) is pretty much the only patched one around? ;)

Anyways: The .pngs are here for download, in case my original patch file does not work on future TB2s (in case there will be more) I'll just post an updated one here - assuming I'm still using it, ie. as long as I haven't updated to TB3.

Comment 18

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: patch without trailing space

This should remove the trailing space, but I can't tell for sure.

Comment 19

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Comment on attachment 397601 [details] [diff] [review]
patch without trailing space

There are lots of ways to see trailing whitespace, but probably the easiest is to just enable http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/ColorExtension - one line in your .hgrc, and every time you hg diff/qdiff it'll stand out in bold burning red :)

Comment 20

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

Comment on attachment 397601 [details] [diff] [review]
patch without trailing space

the icon is a little hard to decipher.  Because it doesn't involve color I think we need to be a bit simpler and clearer than that.

Perhaps a single vertical line with reply and forward going opposite directions coming out of the single vertical line?  I'm not sure I have the right answer but I don't think this is it.

Comment 21

[Gero Zahn]

As I already said: I'm not a graphic designer, I'm more of a craftsman than an artist.

Who created the original Mac Classic Theme originally? Perhaps he or she would be willing to create a comprehensible, yet "in-style" icon that hasn't been just hammered together by a graphic layman like myself by simply stacking the two original icons on top of each other.

Comment 22

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

Gero, I like the work you did. The icon is well done, I just think we need a different kind than that one.  Do you think you could try a different style?  It might help to try sketching it on some paper first.

Comment 23

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: here is another take on the icon

How about this one?

Comment 24

[Gero Zahn]

I kind of like it. The most important arrow for replied messages (I more often reply than forward) transports the correct information.
The only thing I'd criticize is: The "forwarded" arrow changes its look from the one with the bent arrow to the one with a short straight tail as soon the message becomes "forwarded and replied". That's a bit awkward.

In that case I'd think we could got the whole nine yards and replace the "forwarded" arrow entirely with the short one. You know - I for myself have difficulties anyways to tell the two arrows apart: In Windows and Linux they have different colors, but both being gray in Mac OS X gives me little indication to see if I just forwarded a message or if I actually replied to it without looking very closely.

So a different icon for "forwarded" wouldn't be too bad I guess: The "turning arrow" to have given a top-spin reply, and a short straight arrow to have it pushed straight to somebody else.

... Anybody has got an opinion towards this?

Comment 25

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Fully agree, that would also make it consistent with the one in the message header. If Bryan is ok with this new symbol, I'll do a proper patch that fixes the regular forward icon as well.

Comment 26

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

(In reply to comment #25)
> Fully agree, that would also make it consistent with the one in the message
> header. If Bryan is ok with this new symbol, I'll do a proper patch that fixes
> the regular forward icon as well.

That looks really good to me, nice work.

Comment 27

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: patch with new graphics

This takes care of the icon in the toolbar and makes use of the new forward/reply icon.

Comment 28

[Gero Zahn]

Today I updated from TB2 to TB3. Aside from the "teething pain" (kind of hating changes that affect my workflow) -

Guess which feature is not in it. Forwarded/Repied is not, repeating _not_ in TB3 for Mac.

Comment 29

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Comment on attachment 413363 [details] [diff] [review]
patch with new graphics

whups, missed to ask for review on this one.

Comment 30

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

"Guess which feature is not in it. Forwarded/Repied is not, repeating _not_ in
TB3 for Mac."

Gero: sorry that this missed a request for ui-review and checkin. Together, lets make sure this don't happen again and hopefully it can get into the tree soon and land in 3.1 or 3.5

Comment 31

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Let's ask that for 3.0.1

Comment 32

[Gero Zahn]

D'uh! :)

OK - if it's not too much to ask, 3.0.1 would be really nice. I can't find a reliable roadmap for 3.1 or even 3.5 -- but I'd probably kill myself if I'd have to re-patch the classic.jar again and again for another year or so.

Comment 33

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

Comment on attachment 413363 [details] [diff] [review]
patch with new graphics

cool, thanks!

Comment 34

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

assuming this still applies cleanly we can mark it for checkin

Comment 35

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Applied it on my tree today and seems to work without any complains.

Comment 36

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Checked in: http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/06d1235b1488

Comment 37

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Checked into branch: http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-1.9.1/rev/e8dd1d1cab03

Comment 38

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

V. Fixed Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20100107 Shredder/3.0.1pre

Comment 39

[Gero Zahn]

Errm ...

Yeah, it's in. But - it doesn't look too good. It's similar to my original draft: The new arrows have a different shade of gray than the others.

I checked: The old "forwarded" or "replied" buttons are #bebebe on the "middle pixel" (assuming they're displayed on white background).

The new double arrow is somewhat different: The small "forwarded" arrow is #b3b3b3, the "replied" replica is #b4b4b4 (again - on white background).

That should really be fixed. (Also see comment #8.)

Comment 40

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to comment #39)
> Yeah, it's in. But - it doesn't look too good. It's similar to my original
> draft: The new arrows have a different shade of gray than the others.

Gero, this bug is fixed as originally reported and is in a released build - we now have forward and replied arrow. If you have issues with the result please file them in a follow-up bug where we can track them better moving forward. Thanks.