714340 - hide the words "quick filter" from the quick filter bar when in icon mode

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Attachment: a mock up of what it could look like. see, so much better.

The quick filter bar moves to icon mode when there's not enough horizontal space but for the vertical view, it's not enough space. The search box gets cut off too much. To fix this, we should simply hide the "quick filter" label when in icon mode (or when in both modes, I don't think it's particularly useful.)

Comment 1

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

Comment on attachment 585019 [details]
a mock up of what it could look like. see, so much better.

Yeah, that makes way more sense.  Removing some of the padding between the icons and the text box would be another good idea in this low-width environment.

Comment 2

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

We apparently can't remove that padding. It's the space where the message count appears when you do a search. I'd like that removed or moved but I don't know where else we could put that information.

Comment 3

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

Dupe of bug 592248?

Comment 4

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

What do you all think about collapsing the message count area when there is no message count (and possibly also when the text box is focused)?

Comment 5

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

(In reply to Blake Winton [On vacation until Jan 9th] (:bwinton - Thunderbird UX) from comment #4)
> What do you all think about collapsing the message count area when there is
> no message count (and possibly also when the text box is focused)?

I'd just get rid of it. Why is it there? What's the use case it's solving? Or put in the status bar or something. I can see from the size of the scrollbar thumb whether it's a huge list or a small list. I don't need a precise count for anything, ever, honestly.

Comment 6

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

You'ld have to ask Bryan (cc-ed, cause surely he doesn't have anything better to do than review three-year-old UI decisions ;).  I suspect it's there for ux-feedback and, uh, something I'll call ux-locality (which is related to ux-visual-hierarchy, but different in that it's not about important controls).

Putting it in the status bar isn't a bad idea…  (Well, until we get rid of the status bar.  Just kidding!  Don't shoot me!  ;)

I could see changing the status bar from:
Unread: 0  Total: 7
to:
Unread: 0  Shown: 4 Total: 7
or some such.

And it seems to me, based on the complaints I hear when we remove things, that many of Thunderbird's users relish the amount of precise data we give them, so you (and I, since I totally agree with you) might not be representative of the people who will be affected by this.

Thanks,
Blake.

Comment 7

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Here's my thinking.  I love the count for things like "find in page" where I can't see the whole page and it's nice to know there are [some small number] of offscreen hits. But with a message list, it's either some small number I can see (fits on the screen) or some large number I can't see with many offscreen. I can take a look at the scrollbar thumb and get an idea if it's a 100 or 10000. If they all fit on screen, whether it's 20 or 40 doesn't seem to help me any. If they spill offscreen, knowing if it's "just a few offscreen" or "pages and pages of messages" is sort of useful in helping me decide if I want to try to narrow the search some.  Still, I don't think that case is worth the extra UI. 

I run with the statusbar hidden and so I'm cool with that bit too. There's rarely any info I need there. It shows me the "unread" count which is redundant with the server/folder pane telling me the same thing and it tells me the total message count which is some thousands or tens of thousands that really doesn't help me solve any problem.

Comment 8

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

I disagree "quick filter:" isn't useful. I don't think it's clear what it is otherwise.

Comment 9

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

(In reply to Blake Winton [On vacation until Jan 9th] (:bwinton - Thunderbird UX) from comment #6)
> You'ld have to ask Bryan (cc-ed, cause surely he doesn't have anything
> better to do than review three-year-old UI decisions ;).  I suspect it's
> there for ux-feedback and, uh, something I'll call ux-locality (which is
> related to ux-visual-hierarchy, but different in that it's not about
> important controls).

For the quick filter text I'd agree that in icon only mode it's likely excessive and a responsive design would hide it.  Perhaps for the count you could just trim it down to the number only and lose the text "messages" to save some space.  The indicator has some value even if it could be better designed that's often not the reason you want to use to throw it all out.

Comment 10

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to Asa Dotzler [:asa] from comment #5)
> (In reply to Blake Winton [On vacation until Jan 9th] (:bwinton -
> Thunderbird UX) from comment #4)
> > What do you all think about collapsing the message count area when there is
> > no message count (and possibly also when the text box is focused)?
> 
> I'd just get rid of it. Why is it there? What's the use case it's solving?
It tells me how much emails I have in my selection (ie filtered) which helps me when I'm reading bugmail for instance.

Comment 11

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

(In reply to Asa Dotzler [:asa] from comment #7)
> But with a message list, it's either some small number I can see (fits on the screen) or
> some large number I can't see with many offscreen. I can take a look at the scrollbar
> thumb and get an idea if it's a 100 or 10000.

Unfortunately, this isn't true if there are collapsed threads in the results. That said, I *think* threads get expanded when the quick filter is active, but I'm not totally sure.

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

no longer relevant in version 115, in fact WFM