891068 - Would Like More Detailed status bar information for pop activity - account name, timestamp in seconds,...

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[KitchM]

Attachment: Screenshot - 07082013 - 03:47:41 PM - Sample of Thunderbird Activity Manager.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130624104218

Steps to reproduce:

I selected to download all accounts e-mails from various servers by selecting "Get Mail".  Some information flashed by on the status bar, but nothing could be recognized because of the speed of change.

I tried Activity Manager, but it failed in a number of ways:
1. It did not show details
2. It did not show precise time
3. It fails to show the which event was for which account
4. It does not show details about the connection with a server

I would like to see more useful and accurate information, and would like to see it without having to open another window.


Actual results:

See attachment.


Expected results:

Need more detail.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

#2. which of the times is not accurate? 
#3. are these pop accounts?  is global inbox set?

Comment 2

[KitchM]

Obviously, there is a need for seconds, as they cannot be all the same time.

These are all pop accounts.

Yes, global is set for all; inbox - local folders

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

repeat :(

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I've reread the two bug reports, and the points are valid. The appear to be adequately covered by bug 516523 and bug 909089

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

> I would like to see more useful and accurate information, and would like to see it without having to open another window.

so then this is not about logging, but status bar. If you would have clarified this we'd be further along

Comment 6

[KitchM]

If you would have read the title, you would have seen this was about the status bar information.  I don't know where you got your information about logging, but you were wrong.  If you had not been, we would have been further along.

Comment 7

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

KitchM, this bug isn't actionable - in its current state it will never get any attention and cannot be addressed. It's not clear what you are really asking for, and some issues are likely covered by other bugs, as hinted in comment 4.

As Wayne has pointed out before, we really need to break this down into one issue (small aspect) per bug, and need a lot more detail on STR, Actual Result, Expected Result.

1.) Please provide complete and accurate STR:
- account types (IMAP/POP)
- your personal settings (several accounts using global inbox, please include full reference where that checkbox can be found, it's quite an edge case)
- detailed steps

2.) Please provide more details for actual result:

(In reply to KitchM from comment #0)
> Created attachment 772261 [details]
> Screenshot - 07082013 - 03:47:41 PM - Sample of Thunderbird Activity
> Manager.png
> 
> User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101
> Firefox/22.0 (Beta/Release)
> Build ID: 20130624104218
> 

> I tried Activity Manager, but it failed in a number of ways:

- The current summary claims that this bug is about Status bar, and you consented to that change in comment 6. But here you are talking about Activity Manager. So which one is it now, status bar, or activity manager, or both, or missing links between the two, or some other wish not made explicit here?

> 1. It did not show details

- Which details?

> 2. It did not show precise time

- Are you requesting time stamps for status bar messages? If yes, please file a new bug on that issue only.
- I don't think there's any value in including the seconds of the time when actions occured. The sequence of events can be seen by the order of log entries in activity manager. People don't usually check their messages more than once in a minute. What difference does it make if your messages were retrieved at 15:00:00 h vs. 15:00:01 h? I can't imagine any scenario where knowing the seconds is mission-critical or even helpful, and in most cases seconds of absolute time would not even be reliable because computer time isn't always correct, network delays, etc. So I'd think minutes are sufficient. Btw, more date information is available on tooltip when hovering the date/timestamp of activity manager entries. If at all, seconds could be included in the tooltip.

> 3. It fails to show the which event was for which account

Well, Activity manager *does* show the account, which is "Local Folders".
Maybe you mean that with your personal edge case setup, combined global inbox for several accounts/mail servers, you are seeing this:
Actual Result: Activity manager log "221 messages downloaded - Local Folders": No account/server-specific logging for combined global inbox
Expected Result: Activity manager log:
221 messages downloaded - Local Folders
- 200 messages from account1
-  20 messages from account2
-   1 message from account3

That same request as bug 909089, isn't it? Otherwise please file a new RFE for only this issue.

> 4. It does not show details about the connection with a server

Which details would you like to see, and where?
What UI are you proposing for those details?
Remember that too many details reduce overall clarity and discoverability.
Are you talking about cases where connection to one of your combined servers fails?
This needs much more detail, and a new bug.

> I would like to see more useful and accurate information, and would like to
> see it without having to open another window.

This is another issue again, which should have its own bug(s).

I think the real issue here is that activity manager (in a way, the result history of status bar) is totally disconnected from status bar primary UI. Status bar messages flash for a second, when user misses them, there's no easy and obvious way from that status bar information to figure out what actions were going on before, and if they were successful, or not.

There are several possible solutions to that problem, but just bloating status bar information as the current summary suggests is certainly not the way to go. Please refer to my bug 532646 comment 3 where some of these ideas are listed. If we want one of them implemented, we need to check for existing bugs and file new bugs if necessary (probably needs new bugs).

> Actual results:
> See attachment.
> 
> Expected results:
> Need more detail.

Exactly, we need much more detail from you, and one issue per bug. The only exception from that is meta bugs.

Finally, please check if any of the following cover some of your issues:
Bug 532646 - Make Activity Manager dockable (incl. more ideas of Bug 532646 comment 6)
Bug 909089 - Activity manager should show account name as well as folder name, ie "local folders" is not very descriptive
Bug 516523 - Activity manager unable to differentiate between similar actions taken at the same time in different accounts
Bug 66860 - [Meta] Include account name in all account-related interactions: status bar messages, error alerts, username/password prompts [POP3, IMAP, News; incl. improve status line text when sending/receiving/getting/downloading/fetching new messages]

I think this needs clearing up and then probably close this bug.

Comment 8

[KitchM]

Thomas D, you failed to define STR.  Without that I cannot move forward very much.

You wrote:
"KitchM, this bug isn't actionable - in its current state it will never get any attention and cannot be addressed. It's not clear what you are really asking for, and some issues are likely covered by other bugs, as hinted in comment 4."

Well, are they covered, or aren't they covered?  Hints don't count.

Comment 9

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to KitchM from comment #8)
> Thomas D, you failed to define STR.  Without that I cannot move forward very
> much.

Hello KitchM, STR = Steps to reproduce. They should come as a numbered list of detailed instructions:
> 1) Any special settings
> 2) Click here
> 3) do this
> 4) do that...

> You wrote:
> "KitchM, this bug isn't actionable - in its current state it will never get
> any attention and cannot be addressed. It's not clear what you are really
> asking for, and some issues are likely covered by other bugs, as hinted in
> comment 4."
> 
> Well, are they covered, or aren't they covered?  Hints don't count.

?!? Wayne wrote in comment 4:
> [Your valid points] appear to be adequately covered by bug 516523 and bug 909089.

That's more than a hint (sorry for my unfortunate wording), that's a working hypothesis that what you are asking for in this bug is already covered by other bugs, which would make this a duplicate. Unfortunately, as I tried to explain, it's not very clear what you really want, so we've asked *you* as reporter of this bug to confirm if you consider your issues covered by those two bugs.
To begin with, it's still not clear if you want changes in activity manager (a separate window showing a list with summaries of your last actions), or status bar (per your own comment 6 here which also has problems of tone), or some other way (see my bug 532646 comment 3). Please note that per current summary, this bug is exclusively about adding detail to messages in status bar (the "bottom line" of your main 3-pane window).

We're trying our best to understand your usability issues, but we're not here for guesswork, nor to entertain your bug filing ideosyncracies. This is a professional bug tracker (including requests for feature enhancements), so after we've tried our best to understand you but we don't, it's up to you to make yourself clear and fit your reports into the existing structural requirements, so that they become actionable. In that respect, your insistence to just file all of your ideas for improving activity manager in one bug (last repeated in your bug 516523 comment 12) is not helpful. Maybe you underestimate the organizational and coding requirements of a large project; even small changes like reporting all account names polled by your globalized local account may involve significant challenges and work load. There are several ways of linking bugs, reference in comments, see-also field, dependencies, meta bug. Even if there was a perfect meta bug describing all of the desired changes to activity manager, we'd normally still break that up into smaller bugs to work on. E.g. changing the format of the time stamp is significantly easier (if accepted) than adding account names of global polling. But the main problem is that this conglomerate bug of yours here is not even clear at all, with a summary about status bar vs. an actual concern with activity manager, and fuzzy expected results. That is why I was asking for clarification in my comment 7.

So here's the deal:
- From what I understand, most if not all of your points of comment 0 are covered by those other bugs which I listed in my comment 7. So from my point of view, this bug here can be closed as a duplicate of one of them, because we can't entertain bug reports which are not actionable.
- If you think there's anything not covered in those other bugs (after reading them!), feel free to file a new bug focussing on one single, small and clearly defined issue.
- Please stop whining about the structural requirement to have one issue per bug (if exceptions apply, you'll know when they apply to you), and please be aware that in the big scheme of things (between several thousands of bugs and RFEs), polishing Activity manager is not a high priority thing, even if details of polishing are agreed on. Such agreement is more likely to happen in limited, well-organized bugs.
- Please ensure that your tone of communication is appropriate. Comment 6 and comment 8 can easily be perceived as uncooperative and backfiring to the same people you are expecting to act on the usability problem which you are presenting.

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to KitchM from comment #6)
> If you would have read the title, you would have seen this was about the
> status bar information. 

You are correct. My head must have been somewhere else.

As Thomas wrote, I doubt we would do this for status bar