539468 - Message list does not scroll to show new message until you scroll

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[Not interested in Mozilla any more]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20091221 Firefox/3.5.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091204 Thunderbird/3.0

If I'm sitting with the latest message displayed on the message list and a new message arrives the list does not scroll to show that new message. Thunderbird 2 did do this and it's was very useful.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Scroll the message list to the most recent message
2. Have someone send you a new message or send one to yourself

Actual Results:  
The message arrives but you cannot see it without scrolling the window.

Expected Results:  
The new message should become visible on the message list without me having to do anything, as with TB2.

Comment 1

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Xref bug 508859  bug 497348

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

is this not a dupe of bug 497348?

Comment 5

[Bob Lord]

(In reply to comment #4)
> is this not a dupe of bug 497348?
It is similar (both are annoying experience issues), but different.  That bug is about the message list rendering, and then jumping to another area of the list. This bug is about the need to scroll whenever you get a new email because the incoming message shows up just off the message list pane.

Comment 6

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

While this is a regression of sorts, I'm not entirely convinced that the new behavior (which provides visual stability to a part of the UI at which the user may be looking) is actually worse than the old behavior (which provides more info about the thing that just showed up).  

Based on that, marking blocking-.  That said, if a significant number of users are upset by this change, we could reconsider.  Adding roland to find out if he's seen complaints about this.  

clarkbw, if you feel differently, feel free to override.

Comment 7

[Not interested in Mozilla any more]

If it's a matter of the number of complaints then I wish to add 100+ users complaining almost daily about this. Thanks

Comment 8

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

Numbers are worthwhile, though they tend to require a fair amount of context in order to base decisions on.  Some questions that would be helpful to know the answers to: 100 users out of how many total?  How do they frame their complaints?  What is their typical level of technical expertise?  Are these mostly long-time Thunderbird users?  If not, what clients have they been using?  How does compare to other things they find painful about the Tb2 -> Tb3 switch?

Comment 9

[Not interested in Mozilla any more]

100/100 ie all of them. There have been a lot of complaints about TB3. One of them is the fact that the new message doesn't come into view when it arrives (this bug). Another is the new 'large' or 'absolutely huge' options for the header. They frame their complaints as can't we go back to the version that worked. They are not technical users they just know what they like and this isn't it.

These are people who've been using Thunderbird for a very long time, they used Mozilla Suite before TB existed. They're not liking this version at all, some of the reasons stated above. They're not keen on the buttons in the header and the lack of buttons in the toolbar. I've been able to fix this for them, but it's a pain to do for over 100 users. A common phrase we get it why have you tried to fix things that aren't broken.

Comment 10

[Not interested in Mozilla any more]

Getting back to how this could perhaps be made better. The situation I see is when TB is in the background, even behind another window, and a new message arrives. I can quickly press command-tab (alt-tab on windows) and I used to be able to see the new message and decide there and then if I needed to read it. Now I have to tab and grab the mouse to scroll the window, it's a pita. Perhaps it could scroll if it isn't the front most window, that would do it for me.

It's also the case that the list didn't used to scroll if the last message was off the screen, only if the final message was at the bottom (or top if you work that way) of the screen. Again perhaps options that could offset the thought that people working on their message list don't get upset.

Comment 11

[Bob Lord]

FYI: The requested behavior is how Apple Mail works.

Comment 12

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

(In reply to comment #9)
> 100/100 ie all of them. 

Is it possible that this is hyperbole?  I'm wondering because I never even noticed the problem until you pointed it out.  If so, it would be helpful to know what the actual approximate numbers are.  While I understand that it may be a very frustrating behavior to some people, hyperbole actually makes it harder for us to make the right decision, not easier.

The rest of the feedback was very helpful; thanks!

I think clarkbw is the right person to make the call on whether this blocks.  Renominating.

Comment 13

[Not interested in Mozilla any more]

Different things annoy different people. Our people are busy with real work and need to quickly check mail when it arrives. They take a quick glance at the subject and sender and get back to what they're doing unless the email is urgent. This is very very difficult with this version. It's a real problem for us and I'm fed up with the complaints which are very real.

Comment 14

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

As far as I understand this problem we have an issue of ensuring that we don't just scroll the list when you're looking at it [*].  However I'm wondering if we could easily add something that first checks to see if the Thunderbird window is in focus and if not scrolls the new messages into view (assuming the scroll is already at the top).  Assuming we could get an easy fix implemented then I think this would be worth blocking.

Do we have an idea what kind of work it would be to make something like that happen?

Otherwise, as Wayne said, I think we're looking at bug 497348 for the real fix and I'm not sure that is going to block the 3.1 release but will be a priority for post-3.1.

[*] in bug 497348 we've talked about the common behaviour that scrolling windows use where you lock the scrolling to the edge (top or bottom) and new items automatically come into view; otherwise we don't auto-scroll.

Comment 15

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

I suspect that checking the focus and scrolling into view should be straightforward, but I don't actually know.  I bet sid0 or philor would, though...

Comment 16

[Bob Lord]

I think focus is not an issue.  I think the logic is: If the Message Pane is scrolled to the bottom, and new messages come in, stay scrolled to the bottom (allowing the new messages to be seen).

That would apply if the window was minimized, on top, or not on top, or what elements had focus.

Comment 17

[David :Bienvenu]

right, what Bob said. And I don't think it should be hard; we used to do it.

Comment 18

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

It'd be great to get this bug fixed for 3.1.  That said, I don't think we'd hold the release for it if it were the last bug standing.  Marking blocking-, wanted+.

Comment 19

[James]

This effects Thunderbird in all platforms (I noticed it said Mac up top...if someone can fix that). I too agree that this is a bug as its one of the most common features in mail applications. I have used a series of applications from platform-based to web-based and they have always done that. 

I use Thunderbird for many purposes including business (switched about a couple of months ago) and I have missed a handful of time-sensitive emails already. I am constantly getting mail and I can't babysit the screen to manually scroll it down every 5 minutes. That may be ok for a obsessive compulsive-type person but I need the application to be as reliable as any other of it's kind. I need to be able to glance at it while I am speaking to someone on a conference call and see from a distance if I have new mail of importance. 

IF those few people still believe they would rather keep to the way things are, then at least make it a configuration option. Something you can enable/disable. 

I have spent 2 month with Thunderbird trying my patience with it, and although it has a few things that bother me, that is the only one (as of now) that could determine if I keep it or go back to Outlook.

Comment 20

[Kelly P]

I second that! ...or third...fourth (wherever I fall into the mix). I was wondering if I was the only one that noticed this feature missing. I don't know if I should call it a missing feature or a bug. I asked everyone here who feels this has bothered them to stop by and share!

Comment 21

[Adam Wellsworth]

I agree Kelly. I myself have switched back and forth and as of now I am using Windows Live Mail now because I lost interest in Thunderbird. I disliked this problem as well as the fact that the calendar doesn't feel fluid enough. Windows Calendar (Vista) and Windows Live Calendar (Windows 7 or other) for some reason feels so much more fluid and friendly when dragging dates onto the calendar. That's another issue though. This reason has to be high on my list. Two thumbs up and a donation from me of Mozilla can fix this. If I find this feature added, I don't see why I wouldn't come back. I can "live" with the calendar issue for now, but as James said, some of us like to leave it on screen and be able to simply look with our eyes to see if there is any mail and move on. Having to manually scroll the window is just as user friendly as having to open a website to check your mail or constantly click on "inbox" to see any updates. Google Mail! ....now it's web-based and even it scrolls with the incoming mail. I am a QA guy so things like this really stand out to me. I shall pass on the word and let people know to come and say something if it involves them.

Comment 22

[Terry Schube]

This is what I have been thinking of. The accounts at the office all run on various applications but you always see the new mail coming in as it does. When I bring my laptop into the office though, or if I am ever working mobile, I notice mine never does that. I have also missed emails because of this. 

I am running Thunderbird 3.1 on various machines, Windows XP, Vista and 7 between them all. 

I have used Firefox for many years and this is why I had chose to use Thunderbird, but I have almost switched a few times. If this feature is solved, it would make my life a lot easier and I would not hesitate to stay. 

Please look into this. Thanks.

Comment 23

[:aceman]

Is this a dupe of bug 218935 ?

Comment 24

[Sum Yung Guy]

Is this really a regression? With regards to the desired behavior, the original report says "Thunderbird 2 did do this and it's was very useful."

In comment 10, he gives a detailed description of how he used to interact with Thunderbird 2, and how it changed; and also says he has 100+ users complaining daily about the change.

However, this is contradicted by bug 218935, showing the bug going back to Thunderbird 0.3 in 2003, with multiple reports of it still happening in Thunderbird 2, and no evidence of it ever being fixed.

It may be possible that the reporter's sort order was changed when he switched to Thunderbird 3, since this bug only ever showed up with newest messages at the end of the list, not at the top. I don't have Thunderbird 2 to check. 

I think this bug should not be marked as a regression, and should be closed as a duplicate, so we can direct everyone's votes to the same place. I'm off to vote for bug 218935 now...

Comment 25

[Not interested in Mozilla any more]

What can I tell you that I haven't already done. It worked perfectly for me and everybody else in my department on both PC and Mac until TB 3 was released, then it stopped working. At this point I'm pretty much past caring what happens to a 2+ year old bug that no body has even taken a stab at. I know 2 years is pretty young for a Mozilla bug, I have one that's entered it's second decade.

Comment 27

[James]

It shouldn't be that hard to add something to the Tools>Options screen to allow the user to chose if he/she would like the current folder to scroll to the most current message within the current "sort" setting when new mail arrives. It should be a simple "refresh" option. I don't understand why so much time has passed now and it has gone unresolved. Our offices have already moved away from using Thunderbird because of this. So many excuses for late meetings and other similar problems because someone didn't "see the memo" (email). Thunderbird was a preferred application around the office but this "issue" simply became a show stopper forcing them to enforce a new approach (outlook once again....)

Comment 28

[Not interested in Mozilla any more]

How do I get my name off this report. I'm no longer using TB.

Comment 29

[siriusb]

With ThunderBird 17.0.5 I found that when a new mail arrives it got inserted to the other end of the message list like it would be the oldest. My list is order by date, descending, so the topmost message is the newest. Now, when a new message arrives and ThunderBird is running, it can be found at the bottom of the list, however after changing folders list is reindexed and displayed correctly, with my new message at the top.

Comment 30

[yannik]

The same thing annoys me ALOT after switching to thunderbird. When sorting my by descending date (means the newest message on bottom not on top), thunderbird doesn't automatically show the newest message when already being at the before newest message but instead adds it under it being hidden..

This is very annoying for everyone sorting their mail like this and needs a fix ASAP  in my opinion.

Comment 31

[yannik]

(In reply to yannik from comment #30)
> The same thing annoys me ALOT after switching to thunderbird. When sorting
> my by descending date (means the newest message on bottom not on top),
> thunderbird doesn't automatically show the newest message when already being
> at the before newest message but instead adds it under it being hidden..
> 
> This is very annoying for everyone sorting their mail like this and needs a
> fix ASAP  in my opinion.
One thing I got to add is that there is a configuration value called 'mailnews.scroll_to_new_message', but even that does not help with this bug. (it should, definately!)

Comment 32

[jaffeb]

I'm in a state of disbelief. Just started using Thunderbird, everything-Mozilla seems to be so well designed. But wait! I can't see my latest emails without scrolling! and scrolling is a pain, the scrollbar is so skinny. And just pressing down arrow doesn't do it, you have to already be in the list, so that would require a different click. This seems like such a small thing to fix! Really, everyone puts up with this?

Thanks.

Comment 33

[Bruce Chastain]

(In reply to jaffeb from comment #32)
> I'm in a state of disbelief. Just started using Thunderbird,
> everything-Mozilla seems to be so well designed. But wait! I can't see my
> latest emails without scrolling! and scrolling is a pain, the scrollbar is
> so skinny. And just pressing down arrow doesn't do it, you have to already
> be in the list, so that would require a different click. This seems like
> such a small thing to fix! Really, everyone puts up with this?
> 
> Thanks.

Not a day goes by that I'm not irritated by this.

Bruce.

Comment 34

[dtren]

I work in computer engineering at the University of Florida. I just started using Thunderbird again a few months ago when we went to a centralized mail system. This bug has annoyed me every single day since the day I installed it! I am dumbfounded that this string was started four years ago and no one has fixed this issue. This is so irritating to me that I've decided to switch to another email interface. I'll check back in 4 years and see if it's been fixed by then.

Comment 35

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to David :Bienvenu from comment #17)
> right, what Bob said. And I don't think it should be hard; we used to do it.

Comment 36

[Vadim Kin]

I am rather shocked this has been ignored for 4 years. I don't think I held a job I would not have been fired from if I had let something this bad go for one release.

Comment 37

[Roman Smid]

Please correct this bug. It annoys everyone I know and they keep asking me how to do it. I'm sure this small change would improve the user experience A LOT. I have seen many people leaving Thunderbird because of this bug/missing feature. The worst thing is that this bug kicks you as the first thing every time you run Thunderbird.

Comment 38

[martin_bures]

My words, please add this feature.

Comment 39

[rodney]

Still a problem, in 2015.  Yes I'm adding my voice to the vote count.  In my opinion one could have both ways of doing it (do not scroll and do scroll) with an option.  I'm seeing this in Thunderbird 31.5.0, installed in March of 2015.

Comment 40

[asudduth]

For what it is worth, I have been using Thunderbird for many years and to my knowledge I just started experiencing this bug within the last week and I went searching.  I am not sure if I started seeing this behavior when I hit 31.7.0 or if something else triggered it. (number of messages in inbox, etc).
Anyways, a fix would be appreciated as this week has been annoying!

Comment 41

[smarkow10]

I am adding my 2 cents to the thread.  Just updated to version 38.0.5 and still no change to this issue.  Yes, it is very annoying.  I can come back 2 hours later and it looks like I never received any new messages.  I agree with everyone else in this thread.  It was brought up as an issue years ago, you would think it would have been addressed by now.  Can someone please give a reason to everyone here who has complained why it seems our concerns are falling on deaf ears?

Comment 42

[Cy 'kkm' K'Nnelson]

If anything please make this an option. I have recently switched back to Thunderbird, and am finding this new behavior quite unintuitive.

Comment 43

[chad]

I don't know how many times this bug has popped up - just about every other update it seems. Can we please add this to the regression testing? 

I just upgraded to 38.2.0 and my inbox no longer automatically scrolls up as new emails come in. That was the behaviour until recently. But as I say, it's been broken on and off for years (I've been using Thunderbird at my company since 2005). 

I have my email inbox on one screen and I glance over at it to see how many emails ahve accumulated. I've always got new mail but I don't interrupt myself to answer them until there's 6 or 7 at least. Now I have to actively scroll down the list to check.

If there are those that feel that the consistency of the UI should not scroll then please add it as an option or only enable scrolling when the inbox is scrolled all the way to the bottom.

Comment 44

[Bruce Chastain]

For me the bug has been in every version going as far back as I've been a user.  Every single version.

Comment 45

[LNXnut]

Yep, would really like to see this old bug fixed for good.

Comment 46

[Erreu Gedmon]

This bug is still present in 38.3.0

Comment 47

[Luca Ferrario]

A good workaround while the bug gets fixed is to sort ascending instead of descending (so the last message is the first on the top). Since Thunderbird does not modify the position of the scrollbar, if you keep it scrolled to the top, as new messages arrive you'll see them on the top ;-)

Comment 48

[diggest]

Appeared again in 45.1.1

Comment 49

[sgreenblatt]

Seeing this in 45.2.0

Comment 50

[sgreenblatt]

And in 45.3.0

Comment 51

[7stars]

still in 52.3.0 ...

please, create an option: when set to yes (or flagged) if you click on a folder, it needs to autoscroll to the newest message.

Thank you

Comment 53

[robert.charusta]

The same bug occurs in Thunderbird version 60 beta 10
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/60.0

Comment 54

[Anje]

This issue continues to get mentioned in the Support Forum.
User has Windows 7 OS. Thunderbird version: 60.6.1.
Auto scroll to new message in list fails when using 'Sort by': 'Date' & 'Ascending'

New mails are not seen and require a manual scroll or manual filter to locate new mail.

Could someone please look into this.

Comment 55

[Paul]

It's important, i've been waiting for this since forever, & all the time the bugzilla staff offers to invert the arrival of emails,
which isn't traditional & inserts a gap of already received emails to the view between the top of the list & email content.

Please fix this, it's not complicated to slightly scroll down after any email's arrival

Comment 56

[tim]

Anyone know what's up with this issue and #218935 currently? My mail usually scrolls to the most recent message automatically, but when a new message comes in and filters then move it to a folder, the inbox view scrolls itself to the very top of the view (last message), which seems like a bug but not sure if it's a dupe of this issue or not..