Scroll to bottom of inbox when new messages received?

[roparr2]

The safest way to read email is the 2-pane view, without the Preview pane. In that case, I have room for 30-35 emails in that pane, haven't measured exactly. Sometimes I want to sort them by sender, and click likewise. I get email from my Google Group that's numbered, and I sort them in numerical order. i.e. by Subject. I have friends and clients who like the new ones on top, and must sort Outlook Express the other way.

I don't think sorting them in any manner is a horrible inconvenience to anyone

[Freee!!]

The safest way to read email is the 2-pane view, without the Preview pane. In that case, I have room for 30-35 emails in that pane, haven't measured exactly. Sometimes I want to sort them by sender, and click likewise. I get email from my Google Group that's numbered, and I sort them in numerical order. i.e. by Subject. I have friends and clients who like the new ones on top, and must sort Outlook Express the other way.

I don't think sorting them in any manner is a horrible inconvenience to anyone

It isn't really a matter of sorting though that might help the OP too.

The problem is an overflowing Inbox (which is known to cause other problems in its own turn).

[roparr2]

Overall I like it but this not auto-scrolling down as messages are received is really annoying.

Yes, but he initially asked about the lack of auto-scrolling. If your inbox has a reasonable number of messages, sorting by a click is not a problem either.

[TheSa|nt]

Now you will probably be mad at me for restarting this as well but I found it interesting. I agree with him that an auto-scrolling solution would be useful. I understand everyone's points, but the matter at hand is people will do what they want to do. I myself have a habit of keeping up to 20+ emails in my inbox at a time sometimes for various reasons (let it be, until I get around to it or something I need to focus on or keep on memory every time I look at my inbox). I am not going to stop doing this as I have been comfortable with it for a very long time. People do what they do, and sometimes aren't going to stop. If Mozilla were to say "well then don't do that", it would be almost the same as Steve Jobs telling ppl not to hold the iphone 4G to the left ear since the reception drops out. I am not going to solve a loss by losing something else (i.e., preview window).

It's funny how such simple features (like the ability to auto scroll to the new mail) can mean so much to people, and you never notice until you lose it.

So I personally do keep mail in the inbox (sometimes), and will continue to do so since that's just they way I do things. I am not about to disable the preview frame since I use that as well. I would *think* (just puting it out there) that an extension to do this would be easy (I may be wrong though).

[ranger5]

I just found this thread while doing a Google search for this very same issue which is a great annoyance to me. I missed incoming work emails because I opened my Thunderbird window to check for new mail, saw the mail I just read an hour ago still being at the bottom of the list, assumed there was nothing new, and went back to work. Then, several hours later I realized that there were 5 new messages hiding from view because the inbox pane didn't scroll down to reveal them.

I shouldn't have to click on my sort button or hit End or manually scroll the pane every time I want to see if I have new mail. I should be able to just take a glance at the pane and know.

Even though Thunderbird works great for pretty much everything else I do, this is the sort of thing that could likely cause me switch back to using Outlook the next time I'm in an irritated mood.

------
By the way, I think I'm going to save this topic and some of the other ones on this forum I saw which ask about this issue. It's a great example to highlight some of the absurdities encountered when looking for help on a tech forum.

The talk about "gravedigging" might be the most absurd. The prohibition against posting in old topics is like one of those weird religious taboos like eating kosher food, which make no sense but are taken seriously by those who take comfort in tradition. What's really the difference between 1 day, a week, a month, 5 years? If you post in a thread that was started for the subject at hand, you keep all of the discussion around a topic consolidated in one place, where guests from the Internet can easily view the entire history of the discussion without needing to hop around looking for 2009's thread, then 2008's thread, then 2007's, etc. You don't have to re-invent the wheel and repeat history every year that a problem goes unfixed and someone else brings it up anew.

I think that most of the public understands this; the moderators of most forums are in the minority opinion. My suggestion to posters would be to just continue to post in the topic that best fits your problem, giving no consideration to when the last post was made. If someone complains about gravedigging, even if they are a moderator, just ignore it and focus on your technical problem. Eventually people will figure out that it's no biggie... and tech forums will evolve into a more efficient place to get help.

[Freee!!]

The talk about "gravedigging" might be the most absurd. The prohibition against posting in old topics is like one of those weird religious taboos like eating kosher food, which make no sense but are taken seriously by those who take comfort in tradition. What's really the difference between 1 day, a week, a month, 5 years? If you post in a thread that was started for the subject at hand, you keep all of the discussion around a topic consolidated in one place, where guests from the Internet can easily view the entire history of the discussion without needing to hop around looking for 2009's thread, then 2008's thread, then 2007's, etc. You don't have to re-invent the wheel and repeat history every year that a problem goes unfixed and someone else brings it up anew.

I am afraid you are overlooking a couple of points.
- Nearly all problems have their unique points, so the solution posted may not apply to your specific problem.
- A lot of the solutions may have become outdated (or were wrong to start with).
- Most people willing to help solve problems don't like to wade through 200 posts to find that new problem.
There are more, but you will experience those if you become a regular visitor to some forum.

I think that most of the public understands this; the moderators of most forums are in the minority opinion. My suggestion to posters would be to just continue to post in the topic that best fits your problem, giving no consideration to when the last post was made. If someone complains about gravedigging, even if they are a moderator, just ignore it and focus on your technical problem. Eventually people will figure out that it's no biggie... and tech forums will evolve into a more efficient place to get help.

I am afraid you are overlooking the small fact that moderators in general are among the more experienced users of any forum. I would give their opinion some more weight than that of one time visitors. As for tech forums evolving into more efficient places to get help, that is happening already, but moving in the opposite direction you are thinking. One of the other problems with long (and old) topics is the off-topic posting making it more difficult to find the answers.

[Daifne]

The talk about "gravedigging" might be the most absurd. The prohibition against posting in old topics is like one of those weird religious taboos like eating kosher food, which make no sense but are taken seriously by those who take comfort in tradition. What's really the difference between 1 day, a week, a month, 5 years? If you post in a thread that was started for the subject at hand, you keep all of the discussion around a topic consolidated in one place, where guests from the Internet can easily view the entire history of the discussion without needing to hop around looking for 2009's thread, then 2008's thread, then 2007's, etc. You don't have to re-invent the wheel and repeat history every year that a problem goes unfixed and someone else brings it up anew.

I think that most of the public understands this; the moderators of most forums are in the minority opinion. My suggestion to posters would be to just continue to post in the topic that best fits your problem, giving no consideration to when the last post was made. If someone complains about gravedigging, even if they are a moderator, just ignore it and focus on your technical problem. Eventually people will figure out that it's no biggie... and tech forums will evolve into a more efficient place to get help.

Well, since most of the ancient topics get locked by us moderators, ignoring us won't do you any good at all.

The main reason that old topics are irrelevant is because of the changes from version to version. Even if the symptoms are the same, a problem that existed in version 1.0 may have a totally unrelated cause in version 3.1.

Now, since this topic is from 2004, six years, it is going to be locked.