add "File | Work Offline" to compose, or remove the hidden menu item. I was able to remove the onfocus hander for msg compose, and clean up the offline handling. but, to get the utitlityOverlay to work I needed to have something observe the "Communicator:WorkMode" broadcaster. in nav, 3 pane, and std alone msg window, we have a "Work Offline" menuitem. msg compose doesn't have this, so I added it, but made it hidden since it wasn't in the spec. I need to figure out a non-hacky way to get the offline indicator to work needing a menuitem like that. or, if "File | Work Offline" should be in the compose menu, can we update the spec?

reassign to varada

note, 4.x did not have "File | Work Offline" in the compose window. if we have an offline indicator, and clicking it will take you offline, should have a way (via menus) to go offline? task bar icons, which will open an application if you click on them, have menu equivalents.

I don't feel strongly either way on this one, but I guess my preference would be to leave it out of the menus in Mail Compose. I've never heard a complaint of it missing.

can you add your decision to the spec and a link to it here? then I can morph the bug into the proper problem. (right now, it is sitting on the fence). moving to future / minor for varada.

Lets leave it out of Mail Compose unless there are objections. The current Mail Compose menu spec, does NOT have the offline stuff in the File menu, that good enough for a decision? :-) http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/compose/Comp_Menus.html

jglick: that's what I was looking for. updating summary. now the problem is we need to remove that "hidden" menu item that is only there as a hack to get the offline indicator to work properly. this is really a cleanup bug. I better add a comment to the xul so that someone doesn't remove the menu item before we are ready (and break the offline indicator) no longer a bug for varada, since the cleanup will have to take place in utilityOverlay.js / .xul

personally I go offline to prevent myself from accidentally sending a message before it's really ready. But in nc4 i've always used the widget...

On Mac OS, menus should remain identical (as far as possible) between different windows of the same app. Items should be enabled/disabled, rather than shown/hidden, to maximize stability of the UI. See, for example, the `Format' menu in Outlook Express, which is always present even though only one of its items is relevant outside of message composition; and the `File' > `Get Info' item in Internet Explorer, which is always present but only enabled when the Favorites window has focus and a favorite is selected. If the `Work Offline' item was missing from the `File' menu only when a message composition window had focus, that would appear to be a bug. It would also be an accessibility problem, since keyboard-only users would have to switch to another window (assuming that there was even another window open) in order to go offline, and then switch back to the composition window. > I've never heard a complaint of it missing. Maybe that's because it wasn't missing in 4.x.

Mail Compose is a Sub window of Three Pane Mail. It is not one of the Main Component Windows. Not only are the menus available in Mail Compose vs Three Pane Mail different but so are most of the items in the few menus that are the same. Almost every item in the Mail Compose menus are specific to the task of composing a message, while the menu items in Three Pane Mail are more global to mail as a whole component. If Mail Compose duplicated all the menu items available in three pane mail, the menus would be huge and contain mostly items not relevant to the task of composing a message. 4.x Mac Mail Compose has "Offline" menu (Mac uses one shared menu bar for all windows), but Windows does not (Windows uses separate menu bars for each window).

> If Mail Compose duplicated all the menu items available in three pane mail, as they do in Outlook Express, > the menus would be huge and contain mostly items not relevant to the task of > composing a message. Outlook Express's menus are large, but not huge. E.g. the `Format' menu is present for all windows, but almost all of its items are only enabled when a composition window has focus. In the case of working online/offline, however, I think it is important to include that in the menus on *all* platforms, for the reasons I described earlier. If the composition window is the only one open, I shouldn't have to open and close another window just to switch to offline mode (so I can save the message in the local Drafts folder instead of the IMAP Drafts folder, for example).

Comment on attachment 114008 [details] [diff] [review] Proposed patch Although this patch works for me you may find you need to apply my patch to bug 179728 first.

Comment on attachment 114008 [details] [diff] [review] Proposed patch r=cavin.

Comment on attachment 114008 [details] [diff] [review] Proposed patch sr=sspitzer, assuming that you tested and the offline indicator and menu item match up. but it sounds like we need that other fix, too also, I think this can wait until 1.4 alpha, as it is code cleanup.

over to neil for 1.4 alpha

depends on #179728

/me must remember to check these in :-)

Fix checked in.

1.266 neil%parkwaycc.co.uk Sep 11 02:08 Bug 80971 cleanup the hidden menuitem from compose r=cavin sr=sspitzer (yes it's an old patch, it was marked depends on 179728?) Verified REMOVED in version 1.266 of messengercompose.xul.