For accessibility reasons, the new Views and Customize feature available from the toolbar View dropdown should be duplicated in the "View: Messages" menu as well. Related to bug 187990 - mailviews: dropdown out of sync if view set in View|Messages

Mail triage team: nsbeta1+/adt1

Isn't Alt+I, down arrow sufficient?

The View: Messages menu already has some of these items, so consistency between the two menus is also another reason to do this. Also, in recent usability testing, when users were asked about this feature, a few expected to find it in the View: Messages menu.

Unfortunately the two sets of settings are incompatible - using mail views (or indeed quick search - bug 106712) disables the View/Messages menu.

Yeah, I see in recent builds that using Quick Search or the toolbar View menu disables the View: Messages menu. I'm a little confused since that isn't the behavior originally planned. The toolbar View menu was supposed to be a quick/accessible (identical) version of the Message: View menu. Hence, picking View: Messages: Unread would cause the toolbar View menu to also switch to "Unread". So I'm not quite sure why if I have a QS visible, the toolbar View menu is enabled, but the View: Messages menu is disabled.

It's because Mail Views is a cross between Quick Search and Advanced Search, i.e. the power of Advanced Search, but quickly accessible, plus linking in with the existing quick search functions. This means that when you use Quick Search or Mail Views you are actually looking at a search result pane, not a regular thread pane. And the only way to limit search results to unread messages is to add that condition to the query. In the case of the "Unread" mail view the query consists of the unread condition, plus any quick search terms. But it's still a query. (Have I confused you enough yet?)

The items in the View dropdown menu are different from what the UI Spec specifies for the approved Option 2. The View dropdown menu currently shows: All Unread Important Work Personal To Do Later People I Know Recent Mail Last 5 Days Not Junk Has Attachments Customize When this bug is fixed will it just take what's present and place it in the View|Messages menu or will it try to match the spec as well?

Sorry, I forgot to updated that image. I'll do that shortly. Basic format is: Read Unread --------- Labels listed out ---------- Default custom views and user created custom views ----------- Thread related menu items ----------- Customize Views...

The problem is Thread related items. Should we show the Thread related items in the Main View: Messages flyout but not in the View toolbar dropdown menu? Threads -All and Threads w/Unread are Views, but Ignore is a toggle and only valid for News. Watched is only valid for News. Collapse/Expand are actions. Currently, Threading doesn't play well with Views and Quick Search. We originally planned that when you select a Threaded Mode, any existing QS is cleared and View toolbar dropdown menu goes back to "All". We might want to reconsider Option 1 because of this. Keeping the Views and Threads separate for now. http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/views/images/Menu1.gif

taking

From implementation point of view http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/views/images/Menu1.gif looks much easier and cleaner

actually I need more time to investigate

This really looks incompatible, what about adding "Message views" menuitem ? Sort By -> Messages -> Message Views -> Read Unread --------- Labels listed out ---------- Default custom views and user created custom views ----------- Thread related menu items ----------- Customize Views...

> Thread related menu items I didn't mean to include this one

jan, the spec is still in flux on this. I'll take this back until jglick and I have figure out a plan.

accepting.

We don't really need this mess at all. View -> Messages menu, the Views dropdown and Quick Search all do basically the same thing - select a set of messages to be displayed in the thread pane. It makes little sense to have two separate, mutually exclusive and incompatible ways of doing the same thing. Let's have the Views dropdown looking like this: +-----------------------------+ | All | | Unread | | Threads with Unread | | Watched Threads | | Watched Threads with Unread | |-----------------------------| | Important | | Work | | Personal | | To Do | | Later | |-----------------------------| | People I Know | | Recent Mail | | Last 5 Days | | Not Junk | | Has Attachments | |-----------------------------| | Customize... | +-----------------------------+ And View -> Messages would show the same, even if the duplication is really just for accessibility purposes, with Ignored Threads, Expand/Collapse All fitted in somewhere/somehow. The two means of accessing the views feature would behave identically and be in sync.

will work on this in beta.

Personally, I agree with Stewart's comment 17, that everything should be on the View dropdown. It also needs replicating on the View menu because the Searchbar is hideable. Whether this is implemented as a single sub-menu, or two sub-menus (comment 13) doesn't matter to me either way. However, the one thing that *must* be fixed is synchronizing the view. I use Threads With Unread for NGs and here is a situation I find regularly (several times a day) and it is a major PITA: Take 2 NGs, e.g. n.p.m.general and n.p.m.mail-news. Make sure both are displaying Threads With Unread. Select n.p.m.mail-news Select Recent Mail from the View dropdown Select a (read) message Select All from the View dropdown - View switches back to Thread With Uread Switch to n.p.m.general View is displayed as Threads With Unread Switch back to n.p.m.mail-news View has now changed to All. If you are searching for a read message but can't remember which group it is in, so search several/all this way, you can easily end up with all groups switched to All.

That's a problem with Quick Search too.

We might need to add a menuitem to accomodate the mass of submenuitems from comment #17 PLUS "ignored", "expand" and "collapse" (takes cover). View .... Sort by Messages Threads <-- this one ... I would also like to point out related bug 73562 and bug 184231 FYI.

Re comment 19: that's bug 189007.

And bug 189007 references bug 187990 which is essentially the same thing. Maybe these 3 bugs (and possibly others?) should be rolled into one since I would think that if this bug gets fixed it may well fix the other two as a side effect, or at least go some way to fixing them, so why not fix the whole lot together?

Comment on attachment 121917 [details] [diff] [review] closer, but still a work in progress. more cleanup, code reuse, xxx todo items to do has some problems, regressions, still a work in progress.

the deeper I dig, the hard this problem becomes. a) mail views are quick searches. b) db views (unread, all, threads with unread, watched threads with unread) are another beast. c) sorts (date, subject, and, threaded) and, we persist b,c per folder, across sessions but we current persist a within a session (only), but cross folder. yowsa. so I'm going to divide and conquer. for 1.4 beta, I just want this: 1) allow the user to change the message view, from the view menu (working on it) 2) keep the menu and the view picker "in sync" 3) try to keep a,b,c separate (now is not the time for a grand unification)

here's where I'm heading, for 1.4 beta (still some xxx todo items) includes fix for bug #190187

hey, what do you know. what I came up with was option 1, from the spec. see http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/views/#Menus http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/views/images/Menu1.gif updated patch, coming.

> what I came up with was option 1, from the spec. So, does this mean that the Threads options will be disabled during QS?

> So, does this mean that the Threads options will be disabled during QS? it will be enabled, and will take you out of the current QS / message view.

fixed, this has r/sr=bienvenu, a=sspitzer

The way this is written means that views aren't an extension any more?

> The way this is written means that views aren't an extension any more? that's right. from mozilla/mailnews/extensions/Makefile.in # these extensions are not optional DIRS = mdn mailviews bayesian-spam-filter but, I'm not against allowing the user to hide the UI for it. (something like View | Show / Hide | View Picker...) but that would be for 1.5 or beyond.

Err, Seth. I've just noticed on the View menu that Sort By and Threads have the same shortcut key, 't' so Alt-V,T,T (to select Threads with Unread) doesn't work.

Trunk build 2003-05-18: WinXP Trunk build 2003-05-20: Mac 10.1.5, Linux RH 8 Verified Fixed. The following works as expected, thanks! 1) allow the user to change the message view, from the view menu 2) keep the menu and the view picker "in sync" 3) try to keep a,b,c separate