518625 - Thread Pane columns "read" and "Status" offer duplicate information; should be merged

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, enhancement)

Description

[David Nelson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4pre) Gecko/20090924 SeaMonkey/2.0pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4pre) Gecko/20090924 SeaMonkey/2.0pre

The information presented in the "read" column is a subset of that which is already presented in the "status" column.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Look at a list of messages while both the "read" and "status" columns are enabled.
Actual Results:  
"Read" column does not present us with any information that cannot already be gleaned by using the "status" column. They are largely redundant.

Expected Results:  
A single column should serve to indicate whether a message is read, unread, replied, or forwarded.

I suggest representing them all in a single column in graphic form with a left and right pointing arrow in addition to the existing read/unread dot, using conventions similar to those found in Apple Mail or the old Eudora. Alternately the icons could be integrated into the Subject column, as the attachment indicator currently is.

If it is deemed important that this information is available in textual form, there could be a preference for viewing the status column as images, text or both. But the default should be image.

Comment 1

[Rainer Bielefeld]

a) Additionally there is an Icon most left in the Summary column showing information like replied, forwarded, so currently the only really origin information in status column seems to be "New"?
I am not sure whether we should follow reporter's recommendation. There might be users
b) who are happy with a narrow column only showing "read or unread" and do not 
   want a wider column with complete info.
c) users who prefer complete info in 1 column.

d) If my (a) assumption is correct may be we should add the NEW info to the Summary icon and drop the status column? Currently it is very very unclear how a solution should look

e) I see this one as na enhancement request.

@Reporter
Seems to be the same in Thunderbird, so the question is:
* Should SeaMonkey behave different to TB?
  or
* Should MailNews Core be modified to change behavior for both?