thunderbird UI useless for message with many attachments

Created attachment 134393
Mailing list showing messages as attachments

This shows the problem. I'd like to suggest not removing the showing of
attachments, as they still are attachments just like images are and should show
up in the message, but rather reverting the display of attachments (or an
option to revert) such that they show up in the Message Info line on the right
side (in the To / From area) so they don't take up such a large amount of real
estate in the message area. Mozilla mail shows them up in that area and it
works much better for mailing lists.

I think that they should show up as thread members and sub threads in the
message selection part of the UI, and yes is should be possible to dissemble
digests by drag and drop.

Ben

The fact that the individual message show up as attachments isn't a bug, that's
because they are send as separate MIME-attachments. Some mailing list software
(Listserv for example) has to possiblity to choose between sending the digest as
a single message or as multiple attachments. Ofcourse, we can always try to find
a way to improve, for example by displaying the digest as a thread, a folder, or
in a tabbed interface.

See Mozilla bugs bug 147567 and bug 188677.

Two simple possibilities that would make this much less of an issue:

1) Default to showing 1 or maybe 2 lines of attachments and all toggle between
show all and show the first few
2) Allow resizing of the attachments window and store the resized value so
messages with attachments always show with that size attachments window

Personally, my main issue is that when I get certain mailing lists it takes up
like 1/3 of the screen vertically with the attachment area, so reading the
message is more difficult since I usually read messages in the preview pane.

Well, I 100% agree that this is an issue. I have several mailing lists
digested. I also do on occasion get several attachments to an email.

I have a hi resolution screen (1400x1200). I'd hate to see what this is like on
an 800x600 screen.

The previews on the Mozillazine forums when this feature was in the works made
sense. But there needs to be some sort of toggle, or just scroll bars to
prevent this from happening. My attachments pane takes up most of the normal
message body space.

It's more than just email digests. So the summary "Email Digest shows up as
many Attachments in Thunderbird" isn't quite descriptive enough (I almost filed
a dup)

This continues to be a major hinderance to reading of many mailing lists.
Additionally, it could probably be an issue for viewing of attached webpages
with multiple graphics. Proposing the following:

1) Don't let attachments area grow beyond showing 2 rows for default size.
2) Add resize scroll drag bar / scrolling drag to scroll through the list of
attachments to allow showing more.

If the above would be difficult or problematic, the minimal level would be to
allow clicking on the bar or somewhere in attachments to not show any
attachments for that current message.

Scott: Can we address the most basic aspect of this issue through either the
ability to resize or ability to "minimize" the attachments area in a message?
This makes reading some mailing lists extremely difficult. Thanks.

*** Bug 247332 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 263822 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Created attachment 164595
screenshot of Bugtraq Digest on a PowerBook

The problem is even worse on a wide-screen display, because this bug is all
about the vertical pixels.

xref bug 242531.

another vote .. please add some scollbars and allow us to resize panes.

*** Bug 279262 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Created attachment 173279
Screenshot of partial solution (max-height)

Unfortunately, the userChrome.css solution causes the attachments list to
overflow into the status bar. At least it's a start...

userChrome.css:
#attachmentList {max-height: 4em !important;}

*** Bug 280927 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Can anyone tell me why the attachment pane is at the bottom in Thunderbird while
it is on the right side of the message headers in Mozilla Suite? I recently
switched from Mozilla Suite to Firefox+Thunderbird, and I find the Mozilla Suite
way much more elegant and convenient.

That's better asked in:
snews://secnews.netscape.com:563/netscape.mozilla.thunderbird (set "SSL")

FYI: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html

Suggesting blocking since this makes viewing such messages unusable and a
hopefully small change could address (or greatly reduce the severity).

I just filed a dupe of this bug (290987), and wanted to add my comments to this
one, before marking it as a dupe:

We could allowed for a hiding or resizing of the attachment list (similar to the
+/- toggle of the email headers or the draggability of the preview window border
in Mozilla's email reader).

*** Bug 290987 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 223561 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

not a stopper

When viewing the attachments inline, and there are several attachments, nothing
gets viewed inline--the attachments pane is just too big. I'm adding a vote to
return to the way Mozilla handled it--a scrollable list of attachments in the
right part of the header area. It's quite likely I'll returnt to using Mozilla
until this is resolved.

Also, it seems bug 288890 is a dup of this bug.

*** Bug 288890 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 298416 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

the mozilla suite feature of handling (or rather listing) the attachments was
much better than the one of thunderbird

Changing severity of this bug. I recieved a work e-mail which I was unable to
read with Thundebird becasue the attachments pane became large enough so that
the body pane dissapeared completely. I could find no way to read the e-mail
without reverting to another e-mail client.

Not being able to read an eamil message I would think means a major feature is
broken.

I really do not understand how this can not block 1.5.

*** Bug 309891 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Created attachment 197380
A fatal example of this problem.

This is how bad this can get. Notice the complete lack of the body text pane.

Placing the attachment list to the top right (like with the suite) would make
displaying a message more consistent with the interface when composing a message
(i.e. attachment list to the right of the headers).

(In reply to comment #31)
> Placing the attachment list to the top right (like with the suite) would make
> displaying a message more consistent with the interface when composing a message
> (i.e. attachment list to the right of the headers).

I agree. And in many cases, listing a series of attachments vertically makes it
much easier to recognize their names than horizontally.

Created attachment 199063
attachment pane bug

Opening the e-mail on a new window makes it worst. Attachment pane is larger
than needed. I can't see my self with my new Firefox T-Shirt :).

This screenshot is from Thunderbird 1.5 Beta 2 on windows.

Created attachment 199900
page dump showing outbound email vs inbound email

This is a generated example of this problem. Note that the outbound copy of the
email (did ctrl-e) is properly handled by Thunderbird, so it looks like most of
the code to do this nicely is *SOMEWHERE* in the codebase.

BTW: If you'd like me to send you a copy of this email (about 16k), just email
me a request (samnospam@bcgreen)

Created attachment 199901
small sample problem email

append to your mailbox to experiment with the problem (should mess up most
screen sizes, but it's relatively small).

There is a reason this bug has its status set to NEW, and that's because it has
been confirmed. There does not need to be any more efforts to "prove" this bug
exists. This includes but is not limted to screenshots, e-mails that display
this bug, etc. Please don't comment on this bug unless you're contributing to a
solution.

*** Bug 314737 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 315834 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 317228 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 321325 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Created attachment 255004
Version 5 patch - trunk

Minimal styling, as per Mike's suggestions in comment 119. If nobody has any problems with this one, I'll mark it for review. We can tweak style in another patch later, so only worry about style issues that are actual bugs. I just wanna get this in.

I didn't have time to produce a branch version today. If nobody has any problems with this version, I'll post the branch patch in a day's time, unless someone else volunteers first.

Of note, the method doesn't use flex. With this patch, I was able to remove any visual artefacts that I could see, and with minimal code. The flex version was much bulkier and still resulted in a border vanishing some of the time.

Comment on attachment 255004
Version 5 patch - trunk

Thanks! I think you meant to mark this as ready for review from me.

I'll get to this within the next 24 hours.

(In reply to comment #126)
> Thanks! I think you meant to mark this as ready for review from me.
> I'll get to this within the next 24 hours.

Thanks. Actually, I deliberately didn't mark it for review till I was sure there were no comments. I thought you'd be sick of seeing it cancelled with each new patch.

Created attachment 255474
screen shot of a twist...

I've been experimenting with Wayne's excellent version 5 patch today and tweaked it a little bit to come up with this screen shot. I like this large icon view a lot more, it looks cleaner, I felt the attachment label was always extraneous anyway. This layout is very similar to what we used to do in Netscape 4.

Thoughts? If we went with this screen shot, maybe we can tweak the cropping on the attachment names so they aren't quite so wide.

Created attachment 255475
same idea but with small icons

and power users looking to maximize real estate can set a pref to use small icons in the attachment box like this screen shot shows.

Personally, I like the small icons better. But for the average user the large icons are probably better. I think the large icon layout might look better as a tile view (icon to the left of the filename). Much like XP's tile view actually.

I also like the version with small icons, not too fond of the one with larger ones. Just my 5c.

Created attachment 255485
large icons with the text to the right

For more comparison, put the text to the right of the large attachment icon like Windows XP does.Would be really sweet if we could show the content type and attachment size underneath the file name but I'm getting ahead of myself now.

That is exactly what I was thinking, really along the XP way of doing things. I don't know how hard it is to add content type, especially on on multiple platforms, but would file size be easier to add? How will really long file names be handled under this layout?

 I appreciate all the work everyone, Wayne in particular, has performed for this bug. I have to say, though, that I'm not so keen on a Windows-XP-style, it rather clashes with my Mac OS X decor ;-)

 I'd like to see a list view in the attachments pane, analogous to the message list pane. As space permits, the list could extend to n columns. Ideally, the list would contain a configurable set of subcolumns (filename, size, content-type, etc.) whose widths could be changed. The similarity of such an attachment list to the message list makes this layout intuitive.

I think it looks good, Scott. If I'd thought you'd be happy with the Attachments label gone, it would have saved me hours of headaches ;)

I prefer the large icon view. Aesthetically, I also prefer the label underneath the icon, though I'm not committed to that: I know that isn't the most efficient for scanning large numbers of files, but it should be the most efficient for space, with multiple rows. Label underneath is also the way that Apple's Mail app presents attachment files, though unless it's in the Apple HIG, there's no reason we have to copy the way that Mail does it on Mac (any more than copying a list view style because Outlook Express does it, I suppose ;) )

Anyway, let's just get something in, and open another bug to improve the style of the thing for future versions.

It's great to see work being done on this bug! I had been holding off switching to Firefox/Thunderbird due to this bug. My preference would be no icons, so one can see as many of the attachment names as possible in the pane.

(In reply to comment #135)
> I think it looks good, Scott. If I'd thought you'd be happy with the
> Attachments label gone, it would have saved me hours of headaches ;)

heh. Sorry about that, I wouldn't have thought to remove it until I had a chance to see your great work in action.
>
> I prefer the large icon view.

I'm going to move ahead with the large icon view, since you've put so much work into this bug.

> Aesthetically, I also prefer the label underneath
> the icon, though I'm not committed to that:

I'm going to try that for now. We can always change the behavior between platforms.

> Anyway, let's just get something in, and open another bug to improve the style
> of the thing for future versions.

Agreed! Any of these options are so much better than what we've got. I'll drive it into the tree tonight, it may not be perfect but we can tweak it together once the patch is in.

Created attachment 255521
updated fix with large icons

Wayne, if you are still up (not sure what time it is in Australia), did you want to take a quick glance through the patch one last time?

This takes the great work you did, ditches the Attachment text, uses large icons with the icon above the text and uses a min height of 55 pixels.

Created attachment 255526
mac Screenshot with version 6

Functionally, it looks good. But you stripped out all the attachmentView styling for Mac, and it now looks like a very plain white box (see screenshot). Sorry, I don't have time to produce an update to the patch this afternoon, but if you put back the rest of the styling, I think it'll look fine. I tested it out by adding the following in userChrome.css and it looked OK again:
#attachmentView {
  background-color: #E6E6E6 !important;
  border: 1px solid #C8C8C8 !important;
  -moz-border-radius: 7px !important;
  margin: 0px 6px 6px 6px !important;
  padding: 4px !important;
}

Cheers

Wayne, I don't have access to a Mac here at home, what does it look like after you added back the attachmentView styling?

Created attachment 255533
updated fix with Wayne's comments

added back the mac style rules per Wayne. Carring forward my sr for his patch.

Created attachment 255535
Screenshot with Pinstripe attachmentView styling restored

That's what it looks like with the styling back. Compare to attachment 255526. The grey background breaks up the starkness.

Created attachment 255539
Screenshot of Pinstripe with older version (version 5)

For comparison, here's what it looked like with the version 5 patch on Mac.

The latest patch looks good. Thanks Scott. Anything else can wait for a spin-off bug :)

Ok, this is checked into the branch and trunk. I've filed Bug 370792 to track styling improvements and suggestions so folks can add comments there. Thanks so much Wayne! You are my hero! :)

It has been an awesome trip to follow this bug - thanks!

Just a tiny question; what will happen to this config, if we're going for the large icons by default?

mailnews.attachments.display.largeView

sorry for noise, but which release will this make into? will it be in thunderbird 2?

thanks

> sorry for noise, but which release will this make into? will it be in
> thunderbird 2?

Yes (fixed1.8.1.x in keywords; 1.8.1 branch == fx/tb 2.0)

(In reply to comment #146)
> It has been an awesome trip to follow this bug - thanks!
>
> Just a tiny question; what will happen to this config, if we're going for the
> large icons by default?
>
> mailnews.attachments.display.largeView
>
The preference is still there and active. The patch merely alters the default value from false to true. You can set it to false to go back to small icons with the filename to the side.

Also, the code that alters the default to the large icons appears to have been checked into the trunk only, so the branch behavior has not changed.

*** Bug 242531 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Verified Fixed with TB 2b2-0219, Win2K. Thanks again, Wayne.

Note that changing the 'largeView' preference requires a restart to take effect.

*** Bug 371884 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 372362 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 374616 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Verified fixed on the 1.8 branch using Mac OS X and version 2.0.0.0pre (20070328). This was also verified per comment 151.

*** Bug 379927 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I have a mail with 5 attachments but only 3 are shown. There is no scroll bar
displayed. Even if I resize the attachment pane to make it tall enough to
accommodate the attachments, only the first row is shown. The rest is just
a gray area.

Please see the attached screen shot for what I mean.

Created attachment 281777
no scroll bar. Just a grey area. Only one row is shown.

I am using thunderbird 2.0.0.6 on Windows 2000.

Hi Kent, if this is a recent regression, you should probably open a new bug on this (and please add me to the cc list). Before you do, however, please check that you're not using any third-party themes or any other add-ons that might affect the attachments bar, and also you don't have anything related to the attachments bar in your userChrome.css file (if you've ever used that).

Right! I was taking the advice from
http://ilias.ca/blog/2005/10/limiting-the-attachment-window-size-in-thunderbird/
and added:

   #attachmentList {max-height: 4em !important;}

to the userChrome.css file. After removing this line it works fine. Thanks!

Yeah, that predates this fix. Glad that's all it was :)