532009 - Mail message buttons have random arrow displayed next to reply and reply all

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Joshua Gordon]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5
Build Identifier: Thunderbird 3.0 RC1

The screenshot shows it:
http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/3313/buttonsd.png

There's a little black arrow next to the reply and reply all buttons. When you click it, you get more or less the same options you'd get by clicking the buttons themselves. 

Seems to me these should be removed.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Do you see these when you start thunderbird in safe mode (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode) ?

Comment 2

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

It happeans also in safe-mode when option "Always show Reply to Sender" is set to true: I agree it is unnecessary.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091201 Lightning/1.0b1pre Shredder/3.0.1pre ID:20091201032021

Comment 4

[Michael A. Pasek]

Attachment: Reply drop down menu

This is either fixed or OS-dependent.  In 3.1.1 on MacOS X 10.5.8, the "random arrow" is inside the button, and clicking on it produces a drop-down menu.  I suspect this is/was intended to allow a single "Reply" button to be used for "Reply", "Reply to List", and "Reply All" -- but my drop-down only shows "Reply" (see attached).  

How DOES one add the "Reply All" button to the "Header" toolbar ?  I can only drag the button to the "Mail" toolbar...

Comment 5

[marcel]

Yes and no. The current behavior seems even more inconsistent than before. I'm using TB 3.1.2 on OS X 10.6.4.

[When I'm the only recipient]
There's on 'reply' button with a drop-down arrow on the right. Clicking it produces a drop-down with a single entry: 'reply'. This is illogical -> dump the arrow and the drop-down.

[When I'm one of several recipients]
There's a 'reply' button without drop-down. Just a single plain button. Nice. Next to it there's a 'reply all' button with a drop-down arrow. The drop-down itself contains two entries: 'reply' and 'reply all'. Again, this is illogical.
Why would one want to place a hybrid UI component like that drop-down button in a UI? To save space I reckon. Then, why are there still two reply buttons?


I think the UI designers should opt for either or. Either have a separate distinct button for each reply option (reply, reply all, reply xyz) or have a single hybrid button which offers its options in a drop-down, but only if there's more than one option to choose from. Personally I clearly prefer the "traditional" approach. I find that hybrid component hogwash.

Comment 6

[Michael A. Pasek]

(In reply to comment #5)
> [...]
> [When I'm one of several recipients]
> There's a 'reply' button without drop-down. Just a single plain button. Nice.
> Next to it there's a 'reply all' button with a drop-down arrow. The drop-down
> itself contains two entries: 'reply' and 'reply all'. Again, this is illogical.
> [...]

I was about to add another screen shot of that case, thinking that my attempt to add the "Reply All" button to the toolbar _did_ work, but I just had to restart TB first.  When I saw the above comment was when I realized the message in question did have more than just be as a recipient.

> I think the UI designers should opt for either or. Either have a separate
> distinct button for each reply option (reply, reply all, reply xyz) or have a
> single hybrid button which offers its options in a drop-down, but only if
> there's more than one option to choose from. Personally I clearly prefer the
> "traditional" approach. I find that hybrid component hogwash.

Actually, I like the single-button idea (labelled "Reply"), but ONLY if the drop-down applies to the entire button area, not just the down-arrow part.  If I was the only recipient, then it would just do the reply (no drop-down).  But that's another bug/RFE....

For the reporter's case, I'd say the arrows in the screen shot posted by the reporter are probably intended to be drop-downs like on the Mac -- but don't work that way; so the display and operation noted in the description appear to be OS-specific.