545499 - Mail checking status should not be limited to the status bar

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Konstantin Svist]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20100107 Fedora/3.5.6-1.fc12 Firefox/3.5.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20100120 Fedora/3.0.1-1.fc12 Lightning/1.0b1 Thunderbird/3.0.1

I have 9 mail accounts in TB. When I press Get Mail to check for new messages, the status for each shows up in the status bar.
sub-issue 1: it's often unclear which account is being checked at the moment from a message like "Host contacted. Sending login information."
sub-issue 2: if there's any user activity (e.g. switching folders), the status bar easily loses the current status of mail checking. In other words, if the mail check is stuck at "Connecting to ..." but the user switches folder, status bar becomes blank because of "Loading Message..." followed by a clear.


Suggestion: move mail checking status to Activity Manager. If possible, internal status of the task should be updated inline.
MS Outlook does something like that, and for a good reason. See http://www.stanford.edu/services/emailcalendar/desktop/outlook/images/d_outlook_install_06.gif

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Nathan Tuggy (:tuggyne)]

Confirming based on general strategy of moving as much as possible to Activity Manager.

Comment 3

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

We already have an activity manager under Tools > Activity Manager, and checking mails process and results get listed therein.

What if we were to pop up activity manager when user clicks on status bar message (lower left corner)? And/or add a permanent icon for opening activity manager to status bar?

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #3)
> We already have an activity manager under Tools > Activity Manager, and
> checking mails process and results get listed therein.
> 
> What if we were to pop up activity manager when user clicks on status bar
> message (lower left corner)? And/or add a permanent icon for opening
> activity manager to status bar?

I think that's where bug 476487 was left unattended...