549124 - Difficult opening folder pane if missing

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 340982

(Thunderbird :: Toolbars and Tabs, enhancement)

Description

[Len]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100202 Firefox/3.5.8 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20100111 Thunderbird/3.0.1

After resizing TB window the folder pane "disappeared".  After a lot of trial and error I discovered I could restore it by dragging the vertical bar to the right by placing the cursor at exactly the right spot.  A sizeable tab needs to be put on the vertical bar right of the folder plan to emphasize this action.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Place cursor on right vertical bar of folder pane.
2.Drag cursor to left - pane disappears
3.Place cursor on left vertical bar of folder pane (not on blue line)
4.Drag to right - folder returns
Actual Results:  
Folder disappears and returns but the cursor must be on the inside left folder pane line not the blue line!


Expected Results:  
Works fine but needs a tab to show where to grab the line.

If you think this isn't a problem check Google to see how many people are missing their folder panes and see what crazy involved steps people are being told to do to recover from this problem when all they need is a noticeable tab to grab.

Comment 1

[Nathan Tuggy (:tuggyne)]

Can you capture some screenshots of this?

What themes (Thunderbird and OS) are you using? In particular, is this affected by Safe Mode (https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode) at all?

Also, please provide some specific links to webpages (ideally GetSatisfaction topics) where this is discussed; search results change over time and are less uniform in other ways.

Comment 2

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

The solution is probably the same as what's already done for the message pane (i.e. have "View -> Layout -> Folder Pane" in the menu).