605652 - Make the "main" (first) tab a pinned-like tab.

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Toolbars and Tabs, enhancement)

Description

[Nicolas Mandil (:NicolasWeb)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.4; fr; rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100914 Firefox/3.6.10
Build Identifier: 

As main tab (the accounts and folders tree tab) stand for ever in the primary UI, and it is the only one where the user can access the acounts and folders tree, make it a pinned tab to give more area to the messages-opened-in-tabs tabs.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Nicolas Mandil (:NicolasWeb)]

Attachment: Mockup of expected result

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Nicolas, I don't see the difference between bug 605651 and this bug. IOW, fundamentally they seem to be the same end result. Do you agree?  If not, please screen shot the difference.

Comment 3

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

Nicolas, please, could you answer to comment #2?

Comment 5

[Nicolas Mandil (:NicolasWeb)]

Sorry to be so late (I found a job...)
bug 605651 do not say anything about "pinning the main tab", that's it ;-)

Comment 6

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.4; fr;
> rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100914 Firefox/3.6.10
> Build Identifier: 
> 
> As main tab (the accounts and folders tree tab) stand for ever in the primary
> UI, and it is the only one where the user can access the acounts and folders
> tree, make it a pinned tab to give more area to the messages-opened-in-tabs
> tabs.

The only one? As soon as I click "Open in a new tab" on a folder in the left pane, I have a second 3-pane tab. By doing it repeatedly, I can have any number of them. Why not rearrange them at will? *My* choice would be to move the Lightning tab to the far left (preferably have it always there, or failing that use d&d, or failing *that*, open Lightning, duplicate the main tab to open it right of Lightning, and close the left tab) and have tabs other than the leftmost one be 3-pane tabs, each used for some particular folder or set of folders.

I suggest WONTFIX or even INVALID.

Comment 7

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0.1pre) Gecko/20110413 Thunderbird/3.3a4pre

Tony, currently the main three-pane tab cannot be closed (I'm using trunk version). If you want that to change, please file a new bug.
If you want changes for the integration of lightning, please file new bugs for that.

This bug is certainly not invalid, because it requests an enhancement that is technically possible and applicable to the current UI. Neither do differing personal preferences alone make this bug wontfix. What we need is well-founded arguments why this enhancement would or would not be beneficial for an assumed majority of users. The bug reporter has a strong point that the main tab is currently permanent and taking horizontal space that might be used for other tabs by making the 3 pane tab a pinned, iconic application tab (like FF App tabs). 

This rises the general question if TB could benefit from the "Pin as App Tab" feature that FF4 has. Probably yes, as it allows the user to keep a number of often used tabs (folders, searches, lightning) permanently open without wasting much space on the tab bar. Implement "Pin as App Tab" for TB probably needs a new bug. This bug does not necessarily depend on that as it could be realized as a standalone solution.

So far I don't have strong opinions on this, but it certainly deserves more thought and should be kept open.

Comment 8

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0.1pre) Gecko/20110413 Thunderbird/3.3a4pre
> 
> Tony, currently the main three-pane tab cannot be closed (I'm using trunk
> version). If you want that to change, please file a new bug.

Did you try to close it *after* opening a second three-pane tab by "Right-click → Open in New Tab" on a folder in the left pane? I could, and it was not a no-op because there was a non-three-pane tab in-between (with Lightning in my case, but it could have been a message-display tab) which thus came to the far left.

> This bug is certainly not invalid, because it requests an enhancement that is
> technically possible and applicable to the current UI.
[...]

I don't call this an enhancement because it forbids *me* to do what I like on the grounds that *the reporter* doesn't like it. Mozilla is all about choice and freedom, or so I thought.

> So far I don't have strong opinions on this, but it certainly deserves more
> thought and should be kept open.

Well, the reporter and I both have strong (and opposite) opinions on this, but by all means let's keep the debate open. Maybe in the newsgroups rather than in the bug though.

Comment 9

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0.1pre) Gecko/20110413 Thunderbird/3.3a4pre

(In reply to comment #8)
> (In reply to comment #7)
> > Tony, currently the main three-pane tab cannot be closed (I'm using trunk
> > version). If you want that to change, please file a new bug.
> Did you try to close it *after* opening a second three-pane tab by "Right-
> click
> → Open in New Tab" on a folder in the left pane? I could

Interesting. I tried in current trunk, as referenced above, and even after opening a second three-pane tab the first main tab cannot be closed. So maybe the behavior has changed. Does anyone know the bug number where this changed?
 
> > This bug is certainly not invalid, because it requests an enhancement that > > is technically possible and applicable to the current UI.
> I don't call this an enhancement because it forbids *me* to do what I like on
> the grounds that *the reporter* doesn't like it. Mozilla is all about choice
> and freedom, or so I thought. [...]
> Well, the reporter and I both have strong (and opposite) opinions on this, but
> by all means let's keep the debate open.

True, user choice is a high value.
So forcing the lightning tab default to be the left-most tab may not be in the best interest of users, either. Instead, user should probably be able to choose/rearrange which tab he wants to be the left-most. For most users, this will probably be the three-pane.

Nicolas (reporter), and Tony, would the following cater for your needs?
Please read *all* points carefully before commenting.

1) By default,
a) let the three-pane main folder tab be the leftmost
b) do not allow closing that tab, even after duplication (I suppose Bryan wants that to avoid confusion where people close the leftmost three-pane and then forget where the duplicated one is, as it can be buried between loads of other tabs, which doesn't make much sense).
c) do not allow having other *non-app/full-title* tabs to be the leftmost (same reason as in b; before crying, read 5! Not 100% sure about this one, maybe important extensions like lightning could be an exception).

2) By default, do not have the main folder tab iconized (it will be easier to identify with a proper title, and not everyone has loads of other tabs).

3) By default, include the main folder tab in tab scrolling (This seems to be the most normal behaviour. I am not 100% sure about this one, but to pin it to the left with a full title might waste more space than wanted, but we do want the full title (2), and then how to iconize it while it's already pinned?

4) Allow pinning any tab as an iconized App tab (which stays on the left and doesn't scroll. So Tony can make Lightning an app tab. Or Nicolas can make the main tab an app tab. Tony can also make the main tab an app tab, and have any other non-app tabs be leftmost in the scrollable tab section. The feature "Pin as App Tab" probably needs a new bug.)

5) Allow rearranging the sequence of App tabs (So Tony can have the lightning app tab leftmost!).

6) Even when the main tab is an iconized app tab, do not allow closing it (reason in 1b). Of course user can unpin.

Comment 10

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0.1pre) Gecko/20110413 Thunderbird/3.3a4pre
> 
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > (In reply to comment #7)
> > > Tony, currently the main three-pane tab cannot be closed (I'm using trunk
> > > version). If you want that to change, please file a new bug.
> > Did you try to close it *after* opening a second three-pane tab by "Right-
> > click
> > → Open in New Tab" on a folder in the left pane? I could
> 
> Interesting. I tried in current trunk, as referenced above, and even after
> opening a second three-pane tab the first main tab cannot be closed. So maybe
> the behavior has changed. Does anyone know the bug number where this changed?

Looks like (unlike what I expected) SeaMonkey is "better" than Thunderbird here. I tested with:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:6.0a1) Gecko/20110417 Firefox/6.0a1 SeaMonkey/2.2a1pre ID:20110417003006

Note that this is "trunk" as the term is used on Firefox and SeaMonkey ("trunk" Thunderbird is actually built on comm-2.0 + mozilla-2.0 at the moment).

Comment 11

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

I think this would be beneficial.

Comment 12

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

The thing that worries me about this is that you wouldn't be able to see the current folder name for the main 3pane tab. But making it non-scrollable would be an ok stopgap.

In the future, I'd love to see the first tab be a "start page" tab, with a summary of all your mail accounts, and appropriate hooks for Lightning to add in upcoming events and such. If I ever land Mail Summaries in TB proper, it would make a good starting point for that work. That's quite a bit more work, though.

Comment 13

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

(In reply to Jim Porter (:squib) from comment #12)
> The thing that worries me about this is that you wouldn't be able to see the
> current folder name for the main 3pane tab. But making it non-scrollable
> would be an ok stopgap.
> 
> In the future, I'd love to see the first tab be a "start page" tab, with a
> summary of all your mail accounts, and appropriate hooks for Lightning to
> add in upcoming events and such. If I ever land Mail Summaries in TB proper,
> it would make a good starting point for that work. That's quite a bit more
> work, though.

I worry about that a little bit, but if the tab is non-scrollable I think it will be okay. I might also change the icon to a simple "home" icon that doesn't change, just to make things easier for our users.

Comment 14

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

I'm extremely busy, so I'm un-assigning myself, at least for the time being.

Comment 15

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

We won't implement any "pinned tab" feature as it doesn't make sense for Thunderbird.
And with the spaces toolbar in place, switching back to that space with click or global shortcut is optimal.