Robert Bamler Reporter
	Description • 20 years ago

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla Thunderbird version 1.0 (20041206) (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) Gecko/20041107

An e-mail that is printed on paper is probably the first thing that most
non-thunderbird-users see of thunderbird (eg. when a friend or colleague passes
them a paper with a printed e-mail). Unfortunately, thunderbird prints e-mails a
bit uglily and printed e-mails look complex. I will attach an example (pdf) in a
minute.

Where is the layout of printed e-mails managed? Is there a *.css-file for this?
If yes, I could try to fix this.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

	Robert Bamler Reporter
	Comment 1 • 20 years ago

- Headers are not arranged in a table.
- The subject line is not highlighted.
- Headers that wrap over more than one line are not indended.
- If an e-mail has several recipients, it is difficult to distinguish where 
  the headers of the mail end and the body begins.
- Attachments look as if they were not alligned anywhere at all

	Gervase Markham [:gerv]
	Comment 2 • 19 years ago

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

	Gervase Markham [:gerv]
	Comment 3 • 19 years ago

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.

	zug_treno
	Comment 4 • 17 years ago

Related to Thunderbird bug 323138? 

(In reply to comment #0)
> Where is the layout of printed e-mails managed? Is there a *.css-file for this?
> If yes, I could try to fix this.

See Thunderbird bug 330670 comment 3.

	Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]
	Comment 6 • 16 years ago

confirming

	Jim Porter (:squib)
	Comment 7 • 13 years ago

I'm going to resurrect this bug, since I agree with comment 0: we should try to make printed emails a bit prettier. Attached is a quick HTML mockup of an email. Some of these changes (notably the attachment list) are already in Thunderbird, though I made the font size a bit smaller for said list in this mockup.

Generally, the goal here was to de-emphasize the headers and attachments, since the body of the email is (usually) the most important part of the message.

In addition, I think it would also be useful to evaluate what should go on the header/footer of the page when printing. Currently it defaults to subject, url, page number ("M of N"), and date (of printing, not of the message). The only one of these I think we really need is the page number; maybe the subject would be useful too.

	Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)
	Comment 8 • 13 years ago

Comment on attachment 537259 [details]
Sample layout for printing

That seems like a step up, although I wonder about just including attachments inline that we know how to display?

And I'm interested in how the layout works with really long from addresses, and lists of to and cc headers…

Oh, and the set of things we display in the header and footer are in "File » Page Setup » Margins & Header/Footer".  We can change the defaults there, I believe.

Thanks,
Blake.

	Jim Porter (:squib)
	Comment 9 • 13 years ago

Ooh, incidentally I figured out how to make the text print out in gray instead of black: set the CSS opacity instead of the color (but use color for borders). That'll let me make the printed results look a bit nicer. :)

	Thomas D. (:thomas8)
	Comment 10 • 12 years ago

Jim improved the print layout of the attachment section a lot, so the ugliest part is gone. Improvements of header section might still be desirable, although I actually appreciate the simplicity of current design (no fancy formatting). It's also very space-saving currently, but better alignment of headers might still be something to try.

Interestingly, we no longer print URL (which might be a good default: not to print it), but it's still selected in page header setup, so it's a bug.

	Thomas D. (:thomas8)
	Comment 12 • 12 years ago

This what message printouts currently look like on Trunk (TB15.0a1).

	Thomas D. (:thomas8)
	Comment 13 • 12 years ago

Blake, this layout (proposed by Jim for nicer printing of messages) already has your ui-review+ from comment 8.

I changed a little detail to avoid layout sins that were tried and failed miserably in the past (after lots of user screaming):
-> do not use lowercase for mail header captions and titles

Requesting ui-review+ for that little tweak.

	Thomas D. (:thomas8)
	Comment 14 • 12 years ago

Note: We really want this formatted printing for composition, too! (Bug 297702)

(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #10)
> Jim improved the print layout of the attachment section a lot, so the
> ugliest part is gone. Improvements of header section might still be
> desirable, although I actually appreciate the simplicity of current design
> (no fancy formatting). It's also very space-saving currently, but better
> alignment of headers might still be something to try.

With the little tweak of comment 13, attachment 627636 [details] (to weed out lowercase captions) I really like Jim's proposed layout! Much neater, clearer, and more professional.

And we'll not loose a lot of space for average cases by aligning and indenting headers because we also save a line by moving the date to the right.

	Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)
	Comment 15 • 12 years ago

Comment on attachment 627636 [details]
Improved sample layout for printing (#2)

Yeah, that seems consistent with the changes we've made since Jim's proposal.

As a side note for the testing when we get an implementation, I would like to see how the layout reacts when we have a lot of Tos and Ccs, and/or really long filenames in the attachment area.

Later,
Blake.

	Jim Porter (:squib)
	Comment 16 • 10 years ago

I'm unlikely to work on this any time soon, but I'd be happy to help an enterprising contributor who wants to.

	bgaurav015
	Comment 17 • 8 years ago

Created this attachment, as an improved layout for printing e-mail.
The changes in this attachment, include, a ThunderBird heading (it can be the logo as well), on the top, having date alongside. Some changes in text-color have also been made depending upon the priority of fields.

	Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]
	Comment 18 • 8 years ago

Comment on attachment 8782098 [details]
Sample Layout for printing (Improved)

Unfortunately this is not a patch. A patch is what you get when you clone the hg repository, do necessary changes and then e.g. "hg diff".

(I think I like that the fields a bit more prominent like this though, but you shouldn't add "Thunderbird" on top of the mails.)

	Devika Sugathan Assignee
	Comment 19 • 6 years ago

Hello,
I'm an absolute beginner and would like to take up this bug if it's still open. Can you also point me on where to start?

	Jim Porter (:squib)
	Comment 20 • 6 years ago

Devika: Bug 544984 (and its attached patch) might help you get an idea for how to make changes to the print layout for an email message.

	Thomas D. (:thomas8)
	Comment 21 • 6 years ago

Comment on attachment 8782098 [details]
Sample Layout for printing (Improved)

ui-r- / obsolete

- as Magnus said, we don't want Thunderbird word mark to be printed on top of every email (although we could offer that as one of the optional page headers, off by default, for users who'd like to spread the word about TB)
- without TB word mark, the top line would remain with only the date - unwanted, wasting space
- We probably want From header on top, followed by subject: only from header may be short enough to accomodate date on same line; From is equally important as subject; same as screen layout, so users benefit from having a single layout between screen and print
- according to the intention of this bug, we want to get away from emphasizing the header names, which do not have much informational value; the real value is in their contents.
- so this proposal gets it all wrong: unique/relevant content de-emphasized (sender/recipient in grey), header names over-emphasized.
- wrong font style; we want sans-serif (probably depending on user settings)

	Thomas D. (:thomas8)
	Comment 22 • 6 years ago

Comment on attachment 537259 [details]
Sample layout for printing

Obsoleted by attachment 627636 [details], we want headers with initial capitals, same as on-screen.

	Thomas D. (:thomas8)
	Comment 23 • 6 years ago

Comment on attachment 627636 [details]
Improved sample layout for printing (#2)

Hmmm. I have just printed this and I can't say that I'm happy. It looks much better (bigger) on screen than printed.

I propose the following adjustments:
- normal font size for headers; esp. From and Subject are important information and they shouldn't print in micro-size. Similarly for attachments, I don't think it's nice to torture users eyes with micro-print, and what about accessibility?
- My color printer printed the grey header names in black, and I think that's good. Grey might be fancy on screen, but it's actually not practical for printouts. What if the printout needs to be copied, or even just generally legible. I think it's better to skip the grey and just keep things black.
- Let's use short date pls. If headers are printed in normal size, just having a simple Bugzilla@Mozilla <bugzilla-daemon_@_mozilla.org> will use most of the space in that line, so long dates won't work. (But having the short form of the weekday would actually be helpful, maybe in another bug.