Thunderbird Conversations : feedback wanted!
Jonathan Protzenko
My Thunderbird Conversations addon is nearing completion, and I'm
looking for feedback. This addon is about adding a gmail-like
conversation view into thunderbird, including quick (inline) reply,
contact tooltips, and other nice features that should enhance your
productivity ;-).
I've been releasing dev builds for a few weeks now on
http://jonathan.xulforum.org/files/gcv-nightlies/ and I've blogged about
it several times on http://blog.xulforum.org/index.php . This addon is
compatible with 3.3a1, which means you won't enjoy the nice interaction
with Enigmail, Contacts for Thunderbird, and other 3rd-party addons, but
still it should give you a very enjoyable experience (these addons
haven't been made compatible with Thunderbird 3.3 yet).
If you are an extension author and you wish to interact with the
conversation view, please spark a discussion on http://bit.ly/gPyUjL !
This is precisely why I'm posting now.
If all goes according to plan, a preview release with the corresponding
screencast + blog post on Mozilla Labs should be due in a few week's time.
Regards,
jonathan (:protz)
Ludovic Hirlimann
> Hi folks,
>
> My Thunderbird Conversations addon is nearing completion, and I'm
> looking for feedback. This addon is about adding a gmail-like
> conversation view into thunderbird, including quick (inline) reply,
> contact tooltips, and other nice features that should enhance your
> productivity ;-).
>
> I've been releasing dev builds for a few weeks now on
> http://jonathan.xulforum.org/files/gcv-nightlies/ and I've blogged about
> it several times on http://blog.xulforum.org/index.php . This addon is
> compatible with 3.3a1, which means you won't enjoy the nice interaction
> with Enigmail, Contacts for Thunderbird, and other 3rd-party addons, but
Where do you want the feedback ?
Ludo
--
Ludovic Hirlimann MozillaMessaging QA lead
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing
http://www.spreadthunderbird.com/aff/79/2
Jonathan Protzenko
specific bug, I have a bugtracker
https://github.com/protz/GMail-Conversation-View/issues or, for the
specific case of the API for 3rd-party plugins, adding a comment on the
blog post is fine.
jonathan
Ludovic Hirlimann
> Replying to this thread is fine for general feedback. If it's a very
> specific bug, I have a bugtracker
So I liked the assistant telling me all the things the extension was
about to do to my config.
I didn't like the reindex as that didn't go well.
Before I restarted - It didn't load any messages - they started loading
after the restart.
Sometime loading messages is really slow.
I like the hoover effect on the email addresses
I haven't tried the other goodies as loading messages was really painful
for me - so I just uninstalled the extension - and that did a very
proper job.
"(:Aureliano Buendía)"
> On 29/11/10 14:32, Jonathan Protzenko wrote:
>> Replying to this thread is fine for general feedback. If it's a very
>> specific bug, I have a bugtracker
because I can't see "send receipt" request.
Others: it seems that uninstall process has cleared my old preferences
about "reading-->automatically mark message as read" etc.
...but it's seems a great work! ;-)
Ciao.
Jonathan Protzenko
showstopper for you? (It hasn't been implemented yet).
Clearing your old preferences is not normal, can you tell me what was
their value before you installed the addon?
Thanks for your feedback!
jonathan
"(:Aureliano Buendía)"
> Do you mean that the fact that you can't send receipt notifications is a
> showstopper for you? (It hasn't been implemented yet).
Yes it's, at this moment only because my collegues have some problems
with their ISP and I must to set receipt all the time...
generally speaking, maybe isn't blocker but sure is a priority.
> Clearing your old preferences is not normal, can you tell me what was
> their value before you installed the addon?
The previous value was (on menu-->tools-->options, tab
advanced-->"reading & displaying"
[ X ] automatically mark message as read
[ X ] immediately on display
[ ] after displaying for
After uninstall I see this situation
[ ] automatically mark message as read
[ X ] immediately on display
[ ] after displaying for
And the message aren't mark automatically as read.
Ciao.
Wayne Mery
message.
I personally don't use spacebar, but I know lots do rely on it heavily.
"(:Aureliano Buendía)"
"Unified Folder"
"(:Aureliano Buendía)"
> Others: it seems that uninstall process has cleared my old preferences
> about "reading-->automatically mark message as read" etc.
Ok, now I have a STR for this issue:
1. fresh install of *.xpi file;
2. on wizard prompt select "ok, go ahead" button;
3. restart TB;
4. now I want to see custom preferences set by addon, then I select
wizard again and then I click on "let me check first" button;
5. restart TB
at this point I can see on
{"actionEnableGloda":true,"actionDisableAutoread":false,"actionDontExpand":false,"actionAttachmentsInline":false,"actionOfflineDownload":[[],[]],"actionUnifiedInboxSearchesSent":{},"actionSetupView":{"ftvMode":"all"},"actionSetupViewDefaults":[2,18,1],"actionEnsureMessagePaneVisible":"open"}
at point 3, I have being see "actionDisableAutoread":true! point 4
change it to false
I think that pref: conversations.uninstall_infos should be writed also
the first time that the wizard is runnig (if addon is installed)
I hope this can help you
Ciao.
"(:Aureliano Buendía)"
next installation the wizard don't auto-start
Wayne Mery
stuck at "loading" message. Thunderbird must be restarted
1. open error console and address book
2. close main pane
3. reopen main pane via address book
4. access a message
2010-12-05 19:06:00 Conversations.Conversation ERROR [Exception...
"Unexpected error arg 0 [nsIDOMWindowInternal.navigator]" nsresult:
"0x8000ffff (NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED)" location: "JS frame ::
resource://conversations/message.js :: KeyListener :: line 64" data: no]
2010-12-05 19:06:03 Conversations.Conversation ERROR TypeError:
mainWindow.gDBView is undefined
unclear if this is purely a thundebird bug or not - other things have
been known to break when main pane is closed. I can't find the example
bug I'm looking for in this list. bienvenu or asuth may recall what it
was about.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?chfieldto=Now&query_format=advanced&chfieldfrom=600d&short_desc=clos%20pane&field0-0-0=short_desc&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&type0-0-0=anywordssubstr&value0-0-0=3%20%20main%20three&resolution=---&resolution=FIXED&resolution=DUPLICATE&product=MailNews%20Core&product=Thunderbird
Wayne Mery
> if 3 pane is closed and reopened then conversation stops working - it's
> stuck at "loading" message. Thunderbird must be restarted
> 1. open error console and address book
> 2. close main pane
> 3. reopen main pane via address book
> 4. access a message
>
> 2010-12-05 19:06:00 Conversations.Conversation ERROR [Exception...
> "Unexpected error arg 0 [nsIDOMWindowInternal.navigator]" nsresult:
> "0x8000ffff (NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED)" location: "JS frame ::
> resource://conversations/message.js :: KeyListener :: line 64" data: no]
>
> 2010-12-05 19:06:03 Conversations.Conversation ERROR TypeError:
> mainWindow.gDBView is undefined
>
>
> unclear if this is purely a thundebird bug or not - other things have
> been known to break when main pane is closed. I can't find the example
> bug I'm looking for in this list. bienvenu or asuth may recall what it
> was about.
er, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=530779 is the bug I
remember "With main window/3-pane closed, sent email cannot be copied to
"sent"-folder and drafts cannot be saved - "There was an error copying
the message to the Sent folder. Retry?""
--
QA/bugzilla advice ...
http://www.mibbit.com/chat/?server=irc.mozilla.org&channel=#tb-qa
evangelize ... http://www.spreadthunderbird.com/aff/165/
you can help with ... http://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing
Jonathan Protzenko
I need to do a global review of the code for that issue. In the
meanwhile, I'll try to find a workaround. Thanks for reporting this,
this is typically the kind of bugs I never spot because I never close
the mail:3pane view =).
jonathan
Mark Banner
generally I think it looks good and works nicely. My wife had about a
minute of me showing her some of its capability, and she likes it as well.
I've had a quick play around and I've a few comments/possible bugs. Some
of which may just be things you haven't considered yet. Anyway, here goes:
- In the first run assistant I thought that "let me check first" was
referring to if I wanted to check in Thunderbird if there's any emails I
should read/handle before the 15 minutes of stuff that conversations
wants to change.
- The text of the first run assistant is a bit unclear wrt closing the
window, am I able to close the window whilst it is working? You also
leave the "ok, go ahead!" button enabled, so maybe change that to a
close button if its really safe to close the window and start working.
- There's no option to customise the header buttons, which is a bit of a
shame.
- If I click on the folder location in a message, it takes me to that
location, but doesn't update the location displayed on the other
messages (so I couldn't get "back" without reselecting the original folder.
- "always show remote content" isn't obvious that it is always show for
that specific user.
- There's no ability to save the contact in your address book, or to get
to their address book record.
- Where are the images for people obtained from? Are you not using the
address book at the moment?
- Adding/removing tags by typing the number doesn't work.
- I'm not sure if I like the fact that when I select a message, the
conversation view scrolls to the latest message in the thread (as gloda
sees it). For example, I just selected an old message in my inbox (left
there as I've still got to deal with it) there were several other
messages in my sent and archive folders later than that message, and I
got taken to the last one. This confused me as the message body wasn't
what I was expecting.
Mark.
Mark Banner
Yes, I use it quite a bit. spacebar functionality just seems completely
broken at the moment.
Mark.
Mark Banner
message without saving manually.
However, it doesn't seem to save the to/cc/bcc lists - the same applies
to clicking the save button.
A few more bugs:
- Attachment reminder doesn't work in the mini-compose view. Not sure
how necessary that will be though.
- If I have two messages in a thread that are both unread (e.g. like I
frequently do when processing bugmail), I select the first either via
space or some other method, it becomes unread. I then archive it.
At this stage the second message gets selected, but doesn't get marked
as unread, and hence when I archive it, it goes into the archive as unread.
This may only happen with two messages in a thread, but I think there's
something strange going on there.
- Start a reply to the message, click edit on the to: list, select a
name. Press backspace or delete to try and delete the name but find that
it deletes the message instead :-( (and loses the compose text).
Works fine if you have selected the empty space to get a box to start
typing into, then press backspace three times (the second time
highlights the name in the same was as clicking it).
- If I receive an email that gets filtered through my inbox to somewhere
else, whilst composing a reply, the scroll position gets reset to the
start of the message, and I think the save button may have got disabled.
I think this is probably a bug in Thunderbird that needs addressing,
where we perhaps refresh the view unnecessarily, unfortunately it has a
bigger impact on your extension.
Mark.
Jonathan Protzenko
> I've only been using it for a short while, but I like the ideas here
> and generally I think it looks good and works nicely. My wife had
> about a minute of me showing her some of its capability, and she likes
> it as well.
>
> I've had a quick play around and I've a few comments/possible bugs.
> Some of which may just be things you haven't considered yet. Anyway,
> here goes:
>
> - In the first run assistant I thought that "let me check first" was
> referring to if I wanted to check in Thunderbird if there's any emails
> I should read/handle before the 15 minutes of stuff that conversations
> wants to change.
I thought was clear actually isn't. Any suggestions?
>
> - The text of the first run assistant is a bit unclear wrt closing the
> window, am I able to close the window whilst it is working? You also
> leave the "ok, go ahead!" button enabled, so maybe change that to a
> close button if its really safe to close the window and start working.
there's batch gloda indexing going on, the queries that fetch
conversations will take forever to complete, and you'll get angry
anyway. Closing the window will just make sure you won't be prompted
with the setup assistant next time. If you or Bryan can suggest a
clearer, better text, I'd gladly replace mine with yours.
>
> - There's no option to customise the header buttons, which is a bit of
> a shame.
during the big 2.0 rewrite. I don't really know whether it's relevant. I
take it you'd like to be able to remove buttons? The icons / text /
icons + text setting is not really an option since there's not much
horizontal space. Bryan, what do you think?
>
> - If I click on the folder location in a message, it takes me to that
> location, but doesn't update the location displayed on the other
> messages (so I couldn't get "back" without reselecting the original
> folder.
[https://github.com/protz/GMail-Conversation-View/issues/issue/143]. We
have a smart mechanism that doesn't rebuild the conversation unless it's
really a different set of messages. But when switching folders, we
should update those tags.
>
> - "always show remote content" isn't obvious that it is always show
> for that specific user.
remote content for x...@xxx.xx"
>
> - There's no ability to save the contact in your address book, or to
> get to their address book record.
contact tooltip, so we still need to find a way to fit these actions
into the contact tooltip. It's absolutely trivial to do, I used to have
them at some point, but what's missing is good UI. Suggestions welcome =)
>
> - Where are the images for people obtained from? Are you not using the
> address book at the moment?
Shane added support for local address book photos at some point this
summer, so it should use the photos from the address book if present.
Otherwise, it's just a gravatar.
>
> - Adding/removing tags by typing the number doesn't work.
(http://jonathan.xulforum.org/files/gcv-nightlies/) although you'll have
the restriction that only the messages in the message list will be
tagged (they're a subset of the messages in the conversation view). I
explain this in the screencast [http://vimeo.com/17431719]
>
> - I'm not sure if I like the fact that when I select a message, the
> conversation view scrolls to the latest message in the thread (as
> gloda sees it). For example, I just selected an old message in my
> inbox (left there as I've still got to deal with it) there were
> several other messages in my sent and archive folders later than that
> message, and I got taken to the last one. This confused me as the
> message body wasn't what I was expecting.
individual messages, the conversation view will scroll to them and
expand them. Otherwise, if the thread is collapsed, it will assume
you're thinking "I want to view this conversation", and it presents you
with a conversation view.
In the past, I used to have one option (3 possible values) for which
messages to expand, and another option (4 possible values) for which
message to scroll to... so that's 12 combinations. I feel like the
current behavior is the right tradeoff, but I'll let others give their
two cents :-). There might be event better behaviors! Bryan, thoughts?
Thanks anyway for the feedback. I'll release tomorrow anyway, and I'll
make sure I specify there's known issues that are currently being tackled.
jonathan
>
> Mark.
> _______________________________________________
> dev-apps-thunderbird mailing list
> dev-apps-t...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-apps-thunderbird
Jonathan Protzenko
On 12/06/2010 03:27 PM, Mark Banner wrote:
> I really like the fact that you save message text if I switch to
> another message without saving manually.
>
> However, it doesn't seem to save the to/cc/bcc lists - the same
> applies to clicking the save button.
Yes it's a know issue
[https://github.com/protz/GMail-Conversation-View/issues#issue/131]
>
> A few more bugs:
>
> - Attachment reminder doesn't work in the mini-compose view. Not sure
> how necessary that will be though.
Since there's no support for attachments anyway... I doubt I'll add it
unless I also add support for attachments. There's no spell check
support either. I've filed anyway
[https://github.com/protz/GMail-Conversation-View/issues/issue/144]
>
> - If I have two messages in a thread that are both unread (e.g. like I
> frequently do when processing bugmail), I select the first either via
> space or some other method, it becomes unread. I then archive it.
>
> At this stage the second message gets selected, but doesn't get marked
> as unread, and hence when I archive it, it goes into the archive as
> unread.
>
> This may only happen with two messages in a thread, but I think
> there's something strange going on there.
There really is complex logic going on behind the scenes. Without
delving into details, let's just say that if we blindly mark all
messages in a conversation as read when we build it, we'll have trouble
when:
- the conversation is refreshed in the background (user has selected
thread A, new message arrives in thread A, nsMsgDbView.cpp refreshes the
conversation view => message is silently marked as read)
- user has expanded a thread, and clicks on a specific message in the
thread: we obviously don't want to mark all the other messages read...
So we have to be clever. However, I haven't been able to reproduce your
issue. Do these two messages represent the entirety of the thread *in
your current thread pane*?
>
> - Start a reply to the message, click edit on the to: list, select a
> name. Press backspace or delete to try and delete the name but find
> that it deletes the message instead :-( (and loses the compose text).
>
> Works fine if you have selected the empty space to get a box to start
> typing into, then press backspace three times (the second time
> highlights the name in the same was as clicking it).
That's a focus issue, the event gets fired inside the main window, not
inside the conversation view. I'll add some extra focus() calls. Filed
[https://github.com/protz/GMail-Conversation-View/issues/issue/145]
>
> - If I receive an email that gets filtered through my inbox to
> somewhere else, whilst composing a reply, the scroll position gets
> reset to the start of the message, and I think the save button may
> have got disabled.
>
> I think this is probably a bug in Thunderbird that needs addressing,
> where we perhaps refresh the view unnecessarily, unfortunately it has
> a bigger impact on your extension.
Yes, nsMsgDbView.cpp is calling summarizeThread() all the time. We're
not re-building the conversation each time (because it really fires the
refresh events like crazy), but unfortunately, we have to re-do the
scrolling and expand logic, just in case... I think I should tackle
these issues, but I have so many items on my plate right now...
Mark Banner
- If the subject changes during a thread, that doesn't get
displayed/indicated anywhere. This is worse if the thread doesn't get
expanded (which is quite frequent from what I've seen). It causes me
pain as there's various release driving emails where the subject is the
message, because the message is so simple as a one-liner.
- Clicking the '...' at the end of a list of names, doesn't expand the
list of names, clicking the details link does. However the details link
is on the opposite side of the date to the ... and I think is a bit
unclear as to what it actually does due to it being separated via the date.
- I'm currently viewing a thread and some of the collapsed emails have
the details link showing even though clicking it doesn't really do
anything (except hide the details link and give a bit more one-line room
for the subject.
- Something that may be worth thinking about later on is to be able to
forward an email in-line.
Mark.
Mark Banner
> On 12/06/2010 01:15 PM, Mark Banner wrote:
>> - In the first run assistant I thought that "let me check first" was
>> referring to if I wanted to check in Thunderbird if there's any emails
>> I should read/handle before the 15 minutes of stuff that conversations
>> wants to change.
> Ok, that's probably because English is not my native language, and what
> I thought was clear actually isn't. Any suggestions?
So I'm not good on short-clear things myself, and Bryan will probably
have some better ideas, but maybe something like "Show me the settings
that will be changed" or "View the setting changes", and maybe change
the "ok, go ahead!" button to something like "Change settings without
viewing".
>> - The text of the first run assistant is a bit unclear wrt closing the
>> window, am I able to close the window whilst it is working? You also
>> leave the "ok, go ahead!" button enabled, so maybe change that to a
>> close button if its really safe to close the window and start working.
> It's safe to start working while the reindexing is going on, but since
> there's batch gloda indexing going on, the queries that fetch
> conversations will take forever to complete, and you'll get angry
> anyway. Closing the window will just make sure you won't be prompted
> with the setup assistant next time. If you or Bryan can suggest a
> clearer, better text, I'd gladly replace mine with yours.
Well, I'd definitely suggest either disabling the button or changing its
text and making it do something different. Leaving a button active
(which I presume would kick off another settings change) is a bit
dangerous...
>> - There's no option to customise the header buttons, which is a bit of
>> a shame.
> I used to offer some option to customize them, but that was removed
> during the big 2.0 rewrite. I don't really know whether it's relevant. I
> take it you'd like to be able to remove buttons? The icons / text /
> icons + text setting is not really an option since there's not much
> horizontal space. Bryan, what do you think?
My main thought was the fact that there's no junk button. I don't
actually have the junk button turned on for the message header (I found
I kept hitting it by mistake), but I know other people may want to
customise it away. The archive button I can also see people wanting to
change.
>> - There's no ability to save the contact in your address book, or to
>> get to their address book record.
> We discussed this with Bryan, and there wasn't much space left in the
> contact tooltip, so we still need to find a way to fit these actions
> into the contact tooltip. It's absolutely trivial to do, I used to have
> them at some point, but what's missing is good UI. Suggestions welcome =)
Well, maybe its because my contacts haven't got extra data, but there's
a big space below the email address and there's also a space to the
right of the two existing buttons. Though we'd have to be careful if
this gets to be localised.
>> - Adding/removing tags by typing the number doesn't work.
> This has been fixed in recent versions
> (http://jonathan.xulforum.org/files/gcv-nightlies/) although you'll have
> the restriction that only the messages in the message list will be
> tagged (they're a subset of the messages in the conversation view). I
> explain this in the screencast [http://vimeo.com/17431719]
I think there may be a focus issue (maybe like the spacebar issue) - I
had the 6 Dec build yesterday, and the same today, but today it is working.
> In the past, I used to have one option (3 possible values) for which
> messages to expand, and another option (4 possible values) for which
> message to scroll to... so that's 12 combinations. I feel like the
> current behavior is the right tradeoff, but I'll let others give their
> two cents :-). There might be event better behaviors! Bryan, thoughts?
I think some of it is just getting used to what's there, I'm certainly
getting more used to it now.
Mark.
hvnsy...@gmail.com
Great work! Excellent!