80608 - Thread pane's initial scroll position should follow date sorting

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Ben Ruppel]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9+) Gecko/20010513
BuildID:    2001051308

Okay, I'll start with some background: In mailnews, it seems more logical to
sort incoming mail so that the newest messages are on top.  This makes more
sense because the first thing you'll probably want to do it see your most recent
messages.  Otherwise, you would have to scroll down every time.

However, when it comes to Newsgroups, you have threads of replies to deal with
and new items in threads move down, and it makes more sense for all newer items
to go downward.  This is why I keep my newsgroup messages sorted so that newest
messages are on the bottom.  (right now you can change the direction of theaded
date sorting by clicking on the thread icon multiple times)

The problem: Currently the thread pane always sorts to the top of the thread
pane.  I don't think it would be an unreasonable assumption that the reader
wants to see newest messages first, and so when opening a Folder, the thread
pane should initially position itself according to the sorting direction of
date.  That is, newest messages should visible in the pane on opening.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
Open up Mailnews, select folder where messages are sorted newest at the bottom.


Actual Results:  Thread pane starts at the top

Expected Results:  Thead pane should open at the bottom, where newest messages are.

Comment 1

[Alexey Chernyak]

Confirming.

When Date sort is First->Last, would be great if initial view position of
threadpane in a folder was at the bottom of the list.

Comment 2

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> Currently the thread pane always sorts to the top of the thread pane

s/sort to/initially shows/, right?

Comment 3

[Ben Ruppel]

Yes, I'm sorry I had quite a few typos and misspellings in my original bug
description.  I meant that currently the thread pane always starts at the top,
and that if sorting is done First > Last, then the thread pane should start at
the bottom instead.  

Note that if there is a new message in the newsgroup, the pane will start around
where the new messages are (but I'm not sure exactly what the criteria is for that).

Comment 4

[Felix Miata]

Seems to me the current behavior is the desired behavior. That is, in news
sorted by thread, oldest unread is displayed first and newest last, so that it
is easy to start at the beginning of an unread thread portion, and read through
in chronological order. In a group comprised entirely of unread, the oldest is
at the top, where the display begins. When read messages are included, the
display begins somewhere around the time of the last read message that has
unread following. Unfortunately, as in Netscape 4, this means that some threads
with unread will require scrolling up in the thread window to find.

Comment 5

[[e-mail]]

Attachment: Proposed Patch

Comment 6

[Peter Lockhart]

Is it at all possible to increase the priority on this bug ? (or test/commit
neil's patch)

Its very irritating for people who sort mail by date ascending. I have multiple
mail accounts and change between them continuously, each time having to scroll
to the bottom of the list to see new mail.

This should really have mozilla1.0 attached cos its going to drive new users mad
if they have to scroll every time they open their Inbox. It's presumed UI
behaviuor to scroll to the top of the sort order automatically.

Comment 7

[Peter Lockhart]

*** Bug 127663 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Peter Lockhart]

The other irritation here is that if you scroll before mail checking is
complete, it repositions the scrollbar at the top once it has finished, meaning
you need to scroll twice to see new mail at the bottom.

Also , shouldn't severity be changed here ? Its not an enhancement.

Comment 9

[laurel]

*** Bug 147542 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Henrik Gemal]

If we (mozilla) want to migrate Outlook and Outlook Express users this bug has
to be fixed...:)

Comment 11

[Charles Manske]

It seems scrolling to show the first unread message is more useful than always
scrolling to the very bottom.

Comment 12

[Ben Ruppel]

I see your point, but my personal experience has been that I often end up
looking at some message I don't care about in a thread that started 2 weeks ago.
 In this case, I would go for consistency (being able to see the most recent
messages) over semi-random placement.

Sidenote: if I have date sorting set so that most recent messages are at the top
and I check my email, this behavior results in a screenful of unread messages. 
However, if I have some 50 messages, only the first screenfull are shown.  Now,
say I start reading messages and I delete them as I go(going top to bottom). 
Deleting moves the focus down/scrolls the messages up.  In this case, I could
(and I have) gone through what seems to be all of my messages, whereas there are
a ton of unread messages off the top of the screen.  So I guess the solution
would be to have deleting messages follow date sorting as well.  Seems logical,
but totally bucks any trends that I've seen.  Oy.

Comment 13

[Ben Ruppel]

See bug 80604

Comment 14

[copland96]

Please change the severity to normal because this is a clear usability bug, not
an enhancement.

Comment 15

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 131051 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 16

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

martinl just gave me a beating for not getting to this sooner.

testing, reviewing, and hopefully landing neils patch tonight...

Comment 17

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

it will be in 1.2

Comment 18

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

Attachment: neil's patch, plus some comments.

Comment 19

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

re-assign to neil, since it was his fix.

Comment 20

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

fixed on the trunk, r/sr=sspitzer

I tested it, and it looked good.

Comment 21

[Alfonso Martinez]

*** Bug 163678 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 22

[Alfonso Martinez]

*** Bug 175618 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 23

[laurel]

OK using jan06 commercial trunk: win98, linux rh8.0

Comment 24

[[e-mail]]

*** Bug 67581 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***