538094 - Focus issue when dragging from inactive (background) thread window to compose window [Mac]

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Bret Mogilefsky]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4) Gecko/20091016 Firefox/3.5.4 FirePHP/0.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091204 Lightning/1.0b1 Thunderbird/3.0

In Mac OS X Thunderbird, one of the most common things I do is start up a new message compose window, then reach over and drag a pre-selected set of messages from the message list directly onto the compose window, where they turn into attachments on the mail I'm composing.

This still works, but the focus behavior has changed subtly in Thunderbird 3 so as to make this great feature nigh-unusable for me because the initial click to start the drag makes the inactive window active.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Run with the messagelist window maximized. 
2. Start a new compose window, leaving the messagelist window inactive in the background, and the compose window active in the foreground. 
3. Drag a message from the inactive window to attempt dropping/attaching it onto the compose window.
Actual Results:  
In Thunderbird 3.x, starting to drag out of the inactive window makes that window active, and the compose window that's your intended target, now inactive, is hidden behind it and therefore not something you can drag onto. Things get thrown breakily around my office and teeth are gnashed.


Expected Results:  
In Thunderbird 2.x, starting to drag out of the inactive window left it inactive. So I can reach "around" the compose window to the selected message, and drag it to the foreground window to attach it without that foreground window disappearing on me. Great!


I discovered a workaround, which is to de-maximize the messagelist window and ensure that the compose window isn't completely overlapped by it before attempting the drag. Then it's still possible to complete the drag and drop.  

However, this is incredibly inconvenient and fiddly. Please fix it to behave as before.  

Note the section titled "background selections" in this Apple HIG note:
http://developer.apple.com/Mac/library/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGDragDrop/XHIGDragDrop.html

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

certainly does sound like a Mac HIG regression blocked by bug 449956.
can you confirm? 

my search for dups http://bit.ly/akc7kU and http://bit.ly/coYPRb turns up  Bug 515164 -  Drag & Drop attachments into mail window using Dock Expose doesn't work

related?  Bug 368214 - click-and-drag selection remains active after releasing mouse outside current window. hard to believe it is still open+unconfirmed

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Bret, you still see this in version 3.1?  (I'm going to assume "yes", and no one else commented, so dragging this bug kicking and screaming off of the UNCO list)

Comment 3

[Bret Mogilefsky]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Bret, you still see this in version 3.1?  (I'm going to assume "yes", and no
> one else commented, so dragging this bug kicking and screaming off of the UNCO
> list)

Yes, it's still very much there in 3.1.8.

(For the benefit of anyone else suffering: You can use Divvy to configure quick keyboard shortcuts for sending the compose message window and message list window to specific tiled portions of the screen so they don't overlap for the duration of the drag, then use more shortcuts to get back to a maximized message list window. Divvy is here: http://www.mizage.com/divvy/)

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Antony, does this reproduce for you?

Comment 5

[Antony]

If i get Bret's action, he has the main TB window open with the folders, mesg and detailed mail panes, opens up a compose that overlays, then wants to drag and drop a previous email to the compose email, but that is now behind the main window.
I tried this and on a mac what I tend to do is click and hold, go to launchnbar and hold mouse over the TB icon that then shows all open windows so you can then select the compose window.
However, the drag and drop does not seem to drop the msg into the compse window this way -
I have to take the main window off MAX so the compose window is also showing, then I can drag and drop from the main to compase and am then asked to attach