95525 - Resizing a column should adjust the last column, not the next one

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: XUL, defect)

Description

[risto.kankkunen]

Mozilla's current column resizing model (AUTO_RESIZE_NEXT_COLUMN in Java terms)
is not intuitive or very common in other apps. Mozilla should implement the more
common (i.e. the one used by Windows) and intuitive model (a.k.a
AUTO_RESIZE_LAST_COLUMN in Java). With the current model you cannot maintain the
sizes you have assigned to your columns, if you want to (temporarily) adjust one
column.

Steps to repeat:
1. Open Mail thread pane
2. Make sure that Subject column in too narrow, while others have proper widths
3. Try to resize Subject column to be wide enough

Expected result:
Widening Subject column doesn't shrink the perfectly sized Sender column, so the
resize can be done with a single drag.

Actual result:
Widening Subject column shrinks Sender. Widening Sender shrinks Date. Only after
widening Date column you have reached your goal. (Actually, it's not this easy
because of other resizing bugs, but that's for another report...)

Comment 1

[Håkan Waara]

This would be a XPToolkit bug, I believe.

Comment 2

[John Morrison]

Attachment: this works, but does have some drawbacks

Comment 3

[John Morrison]

Attachment: one more time with the "correct" mimetype (Thank God we nuked 'text/xul'!).

Comment 4

[John Morrison]

The functionality to do this already exists, although it's there's probably 
a slicker way to do it (including maybe the addition of a way to specify 
this in CSS, and skip the hard-coding). There's probably a few edge cases 
it doesn't cover either. 

Comment 5

[Kathleen :Brade]

Please do NOT change resizing of columns!

The current behavior is so much more intuitive than what I understand is being 
proposed.  If my mouse is between two columns, I should be adjusting those two 
columns (not adjusting columns further to the right).

The fix we should make for the current behavior is to instead drop off columns 
from the right if the resize makes the columns too small.

Comment 6

[Warner Young]

I'll bet this is another one of those things where half the people want it one
way, and half the other.  FWIW, I can't stand the current system, because I
can't get all the columns to resize to the widths I want.  With the proposed
system, I can get each column to the exact size I want.

Comment 7

[David Hyatt]

Sorry, I have no plans to change this behavior.  This is just one of those
things people are split on.  Given that most people perform this operation
rarely, it shouldn't be a big deal either way.

Comment 8

[risto.kankkunen]

With the current mode, if you want to widen the left-most column and take the
space for that column from the fifth one, you have to adjust also all the
columns in between.

In the proposed mode, you always have to resize at most two columns: the one to
grow and the one to shrink (if it's not the last). This is intuitive, since you
usually have somewhat fixed sizes for most of the columns and this mode
preserves them. The current mode just moves around the dividers...

(Having a horizontal scroll bar would let you extend one column without
shrinking another...)

Hyatt, about the frequency: I have to adjust the widths almost every mail
session, especially since the title tips aren't working. And even if they were,
I'm not sure how they would work with keyboard navigation... And since I cannot
rearrange the columns and I usually need to extend Subject column, but don't
want to shrink Sender column, this is really a pain.

Comment 9

[David Hyatt]

title tips are coming very soon (within a week).

Comment 10

[risto.kankkunen]

[e-mail]: How often you find yourself in a situation, where one of the
columns is too narrow and the next one is too wide, so that you can just move
the divider? I think that would only happen by an odd coincidence. Do you have
problems adjusting columns in Windows explorer, which works like proposed?

It would be OK to push off columns instead of resising them, if the folder pane
had horizontal scroll bar. IF there were a scroll bar the current column
resising would be even more clearly wrong...

Comment 11

[Warner Young]

I'd pretty much have to agree with the reporter's comments.  The proposed
(Windows-style) system lets you resize each column as you like;  the current
system always causes another column to resize.

Comment 12

[Kathleen :Brade]

[e-mail]--I don't use Windows.  I can say that in 4.x, I find 
it **IMPOSSIBLE** to size all of my columns to the width I want.  I know how wide 
I want the date column so I set that first.  All subsequent changes seem to 
change it.  It is quite frustrating to try to set the columns' widths to anything 
close to what I'd desire.  By the way, scenarios where I resize are all just 
temporary resizing.  It's very important to me that I be able to resize and 
easily get back to the previous widths without much tweaking.

However, in 6.x, when I want to resize to see more of my subject or more of the 
sender's e-mail address, I can simply resize between the appropriate columns and 
nothing else gets affected.  Going back to the typically desired widths is also 
very easy.

Comment 13

[risto.kankkunen]

[e-mail]: I'm _not_ proposing what 4.x did, it was even more broken!
It seems we have exactly the same goal: When resizing a column, we want other
columns to keep their sizes. However, I cannot currently get what you say you
have. I want the Date column to be fixed, too. But when I want to see more of
the sender's e-mail address, Date gets truncated!

You also say that you resize "between the appropriate columns". How can you
resize between Sender and Priority columns? Currently by extending Sender, Date,
Status and Size. In the proposed mode, by extending Sender and shrinking Priority.

If you always wanted to shrink Sender when growing Subject, that would be
possible in the proposed mode by first growing Subject then shrinking Sender
(sic!). That's the only case where the proposed mode requires a bit more work,
otherwise it requires much less adjusting.

Hyatt: Is a horizontal scroll bar out of question? It would make the resizing
logic really simple (only change the column that is adjusted without thinking of
other columns' minimum widths etc.) while still making the columns easier to
adjust to the user.

Comment 14

[Jan Varga [:janv]]

*** Bug 135390 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 15

[http://tinymailto.com/oliversl]

I would suggest adding an horizontal scrollbar in the Mail thread pane.
I use Windows(9x, me, NT, XP, etc) and Linux (gtk+, qt, etc) and the Mozilla GUI
Toolkit is the only one that does not have the option to resize one and only one
column in a list GUI toolkit.
In Mozilla GUI, you can not resize only one column. If you resize a column, the
column next to it changes it sizes too. 
I have many normal users, and all of them have trouble while resizing the
columns in mailnews. Only one of my users(that is considered a power user) can
resize all columns the way he wants.

I think fixing this bug will help all the normal users that are starting to use
Mozilla now that Netscape is gone and that Outlook is too insecure. Its my
0.02$. HTH

Comment 16

[timeless]

oliver: this bug is resolved, and there's a bug about adding support
for scrolling trees, someone's working on it.

Comment 17

[http://tinymailto.com/oliversl]

timeless: thanks for the info. I found this bug #212789