619722 - default sort list of messages is ascending by time, should be descending! by time.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 481143

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, enhancement)

Description

[Piotr Pastuszka]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; pl; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101026 Ant.com Toolbar 2.0.1 Firefox/3.6.12
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; pl; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101207 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.1.7 ThunderBrowse/3.3.4

Sorry my poor english.
Is is something like Bug 604907, but only little change (i Think easy to do).
Default sort list of messages is ascending by time, should be descending! by time.
I never meet somebody who use default ascending. Everyone have to change sort of every folder/dir to descendig. Descending is natural/intuitive (?). Please change that. When I migrate from OutlookExpress I had to change sort for 50 folders. It was tired.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open first time folder. Sort is ascending by time

Actual Results:  
Sort is ascending by time

Expected Results:  
Sort will by descending by time

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

You can already change the default sort order, you need to set these prefs:

mailnews.default_sort_order
mailnews.default_sort_type

which are described at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Mail_and_news_settings.

Whilst you don't know anyone that likes default ascending, that doesn't mean it is a good idea to change the default for everyone. As we don't get many complaints about it, I really doubt that it is that bad a default setting. Therefore I'm going to mark this as won't fix, because it doesn't seem necessary to change the defaults, and if you do want something different, the preferences are there available for it.

Comment 2

[Piotr Pastuszka]

Thx. 
I understood explanation, but still don't know why default sort is ascending. I can live with that, but that "bad choices" make reputation OpenSource "not frendly". What are you use sorting ?  Remember that changing this option isn't very difficult, but isn't easy too. 

Someone make ADDON:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/57219/

To know how set
mailnews.default_sort_order
mailnews.default_sort_type

I had to read bug list...

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86845#74

OK, here's some off-the-cuff documentation:

Prefs are named as follows; first three apply to Mail and RSS folders, the
second three to Newsgroups.
  mailnews.default_sort_order
  mailnews.default_sort_type
  mailnews.default_view_flags
  mailnews.default_news_sort_order
  mailnews.default_news_sort_type
  mailnews.default_news_view_flags
In about:config  (Tools | Options | Advanced | General, Config Editor), you can
enter "news._def" to filter out all the prefs but these.

sort_order:
  byNone        17         byPriority    23      byLocation    29 
  byDate        18 *       byStatus      24       byTags        30 
  bySubject     19 *       bySize        25       byJunkStatus  31 
  byAuthor      20 *       byFlagged     26      byAttachments 32 
  byId          21 **      byUnread      27      byAccount     33 
  byThread      22         byRecipient   28      byCustom      34 
    * = commonly desired values
   ** = by Order Received (?)

sort_type:
  ascending   1
  descending  2

view_flags -- the second group of values can be added to one of the first group
to combine effects, with several limitations:
  Unthreaded       0
  Threaded         1
  Grouped         64  [mail only (?)]

  ShowIgnored      8  [news only]
  ShowUnreadOnly  16
  ShowExpanded    32  [doesn't seem to work]
ShowUnreadOnly will check the View|Threads|Unread menu; this will cause only
unread items to be seen, but doesn't force a threaded view.

Comment 3

[jwq]

Bug 481143 was pre-existing at the time this was filed and is still open. No disrespect to Mark, but changing resolution for appropriateness.