518897 - Proposal UI design: Zones concept

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[IagoSRL]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.3a1pre) Gecko/20090923 Minefield/3.7a1pre
Build Identifier: 

This it's a mozconcept redesign for Thunderbird 3 UI: 
 The idea is have only one window but separate actions/options. The user can change the active Zone that has their own toolbar, search, group of tabs, main static tab, sidebar and status bar.
 The Zones that exists are:
 - Mail
 - News
 - Address Book

 The Zone selector is in the toolbar at left differentiated from the other tools. The selector is like a collection of buttons and only one can be active.
 The design is easy scalable adding new zones: this is key for Lightning extension (and another similar future extensions) that now have a bad integration (it's my opinion, testing lightning 1.0pre at 20090924). Lightning would add the new zones: calendar and tasks.

 One key is that each zone have their own group of tabs: the tabs showed in the tab-bar are only the tabs opened in the zone.

 I will upload the first screenshots, that are a poor design but describe the idea.

 What do you think?

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[IagoSRL]

Attachment: Mail Zone (1 of 3 first concept screenshots)

Mail zone: in the 'Tree' of folders the mail and 'news and blogs' are separated, in this zone only the mail folders are showed.

Comment 2

[IagoSRL]

Attachment: News Zone (2 of 3 first concept screenshots)

News zone: in the 'Tree' of folders the mail and 'news and blogs' are separated, in this zone only the news and rss are showed.

Comment 3

[IagoSRL]

Attachment: Address Book Zone (3 of 3 first concept screenshots)

Address Book zone: in the main static tab is showed the current content of address book window, with the list of address books in the sidebar. In the tabs are opened the contacts details and editing options (the same for lists).

Comment 4

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Possibly a reasonable idea (cc'ing Bryan, our user experience guy), but this won't get implemented in the Thunderbird 3 timeframe as we have released our last beta and we're not implementing any more major new features.

Comment 5

[IagoSRL]

Ok, I understand it. Maybe for TB3.1 ;-P? Time at time. 

I will continue working in the idea. One of the mayor advantages of this design is thinking in integrate better the calendar options from Lightning extension (I thought that TB3 that would integrate calendar by default without extensions, but I see now that no)

Reading Philipp Kewisch article 'How to save Sunbird' (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/calendar/2009/08/how_to_save_sunbird.html): 'make Lightning modify Thunderbird so far that starting from a new profile gives you the option of either a calendar or mail account (or both). If you choose Calendar, then you will be presented with only calendar relevant UI'.

I think this proposal from Philipp is no posible in the current development in a easy way or require too much additional work in Lightning to change integration when the only-calendar is active in profile. I say this because the mail relevant UI are too much and enable only-calendar require hide all mail options, and change Lightning integration because now their options are added in the tab-bar and no in the toolbar.
With Zones concept, are no problem, the calendar and tasks are new zones and mail others zones. When Thunderbird open only the configured zones in the profile are showed, this means that Thunderbird hide mail zones (mail relevant UI) and not additional work in Lightning is required: if only calendar zones are enabled, the UI only contain calendar elements (like Sunbird, but not like current Sunbird UI). And all combinations are possible: only News zone interface; only Address Book (more like a PIM app); Mail and Address Book; only calendar; only tasks; calendar and tasks; calendar, tasks and mail; calendar, tasks and news; and more... in an easy way.

I will upload new screenshots with the desired Lightning integration; and I add 'calendar-integration' keyword to the bug, Is that correct?

Comment 6

[IagoSRL]

Attachment: Lightning integration - Calendar Zone

A screenshot of the desired integration of Lightning extension in Zones concept.
No icons are added to the tabbar (Lightning 1.0pre) or sidebar (Lightning 0.9). Instead, two new Zones are created: Calendar Events and Tasks.

Comment 7

[IagoSRL]

Attachment: Lightning integration - Tasks Zone

Comment 8

[IagoSRL]

Attachment: Lightning - Activing only calendar and tasks zones, replacing Sunbird?

Enabling in Thunderbird configuration the possibility to activated/deactivated zones, we can have a Thunderbird running only the calendar and tasks zones, that can be the perfect replacement of Sunbird (minimizing the current work).

Note: the current graphical design of the zones-bar is poor and need too much restyling. With a proper design, the zones-bar must be enough relevant when there are few elements (in this screenshot only two elements, and the bar seems low important) but share space with another elements like toolbar and search box (minimal height space spent).
Maybe, if the elements increase too much (in future add-ins?) change it in a similar way to a listbox with buttons instead simple text elements -all this with an elegant/distinguished design-.
Maybe merge the button with the main static tab, and in a future, the menu-bar can dissapear and be merged with the active zone button.

Note 2: an easy configuration window, to active/deactive zones, configurate accounts, filters, and more, could be added in another static tab 'the home tab' like is planned for firefox 3.7 and 4.0: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Projects/Windows_Theme_Revamp. This can be an entry point for Thunderbird, and can be used to expose textual help of use too.

Comment 9

[Paul [pwd]]

Isn't this essentially the ribbon concept?

Comment 10

[IagoSRL]

Is not ribbon concept, but have similarities.

Ribbon is about tabbed-toolbars (with generic toolbar-tabs and some context toolbar-tabs), this is about context toolbars with grouped tabs (tabs of content, like browsers and like thunderbird 3+) per 'zones' (or 'modules').
Zones can seem ribbon toolbar-tabs but is not, when in ribbon you select a tab you have differents tools in the toolbar, here you have differents tools and different content, different application behavior too (instead read mail, you change to see a calendar, to manage tasks, to see news, or read mail again); at ribbon, the content (a document being editing) is the same when you change the selected ribbon-tab.

On other hand, I'm thinking in change this idea now, simplifying it: create app-tabs (or pinned tabs) for each 'zone' described here (and removing the 'zones toolbar' I include in the screenshots).
At detail, it will be 'on demand' tabs, ever openeds on the left, but the content will not be loaded until a tab is selected first time (this is a feature included at Gecko I think since version 7 like optional for some tabs, or something similar). With this, Application will not be overloaded if there is app-tabs you don't use.
The general toolbar must be contextual, like in the screenshots, because the tools you need in a calendar tab (the app-tab or some tab opened from here) are not the same like you need in a mail tab. Some tools can be selected by the users like ever available, for example the 'get-mail' or 'write' (maybe creating two toolbars zones, in the same row, one contextual and one fixed, that can be customized).

I hope I have correctly expressed the idea, without misunderstandings.
And I think this new idea is more realistic to be implemented in a short time.