How to completely remove preview pane in Mail?

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barbaz
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Joined: October 1st, 2014, 3:25 pm

How to completely remove preview pane in Mail?

Post by barbaz »

Running SeaMonkey 2.30 for Mail (can't upgrade that atm) on this OS. I would like the Preview pane to be completely gone, so I have it deselected. However, when I first start Mail, it shows up as the splitter on the bottom of the window - and I just discovered that it's actually "there" and appears to be opening emails while in that state :shock:
(I found that out when marking an email as Junk, it popped up from the bottom with an infobar saying it thinks this message is Junk.)

It appears to be completely gone if I check and then un-check the option for it in the View menu, but on looking with DOM Inspector, I'm not sure it isn't just hidden...

Short of writing an extension, is there some way to always have it completely gone? I don't want to be opening emails just by selecting them.

TIA
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Andy Boze
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Re: How to completely remove preview pane in Mail?

Post by Andy Boze »

But then again, I may be wrong.
barbaz
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Joined: October 1st, 2014, 3:25 pm

Re: How to completely remove preview pane in Mail?

Post by barbaz »

Thanks Andy Boze for digging those bugs up. So it looks like I will need to have some kind of extension.

(Hmm... I wonder if there would be adverse effects from using an extension to actually remove the preview pane's nodes... I'll have to try that later. And I wonder, assuming it's fine, whether that will also do anything for that training.dat problem I had posted about before... :-k )
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Frank Lion
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Re: How to completely remove preview pane in Mail?

Post by Frank Lion »

barbaz wrote: :-k )
Try (in userChrome.css under namespace) -

Code: Select all

#messagepanebox { display: none !important;}
Just depends what your definition of hidden is. This 100% vanishes that pane, whereas grippys, etc. just hide it, leaving it waiting to fly out again to startle the unsuspecting at unexpected moments. For all I know, just vanishing it so that you and everybody else never see it again, might well be good enough.

As you said, you can hit the nodes, but doing that also tends to hit the fan elsewhere, in my experience.

I've left the threadpane splitter visible here, just so you can see what's going on.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
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barbaz
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Re: How to completely remove preview pane in Mail?

Post by barbaz »

Thanks Frank, I'll add that and see how it goes. 8-)
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Frank Lion
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Re: How to completely remove preview pane in Mail?

Post by Frank Lion »

barbaz wrote:Thanks Frank, I'll add that and see how it goes. 8-)
Yeah, let me know, as I can see what you mean and reproduced it -
(I found that out when marking an email as Junk, it popped up from the bottom with an infobar saying it thinks this message is Junk.)
Seriously, just how dumb is that guy inside SeaMonkey? I know it's junk, it was me that just marked it as junk!
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
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barbaz
Posts: 1504
Joined: October 1st, 2014, 3:25 pm

Re: How to completely remove preview pane in Mail?

Post by barbaz »

Frank Lion wrote:
barbaz wrote:Thanks Frank, I'll add that and see how it goes. 8-)
Yeah, let me know,
As I've just discovered when trying to read the email notification of your reply, that CSS needs to be wrapped in a @-moz-document. Otherwise it hides messages opened in a new window too.

So now I have this -

Code: Select all

@-moz-document url("chrome://messenger/content/messenger.xul") {
  /* Frank hide preview pane ..........*/
  #messagepanebox { display: none !important;}
}
Most spam filtering here is done server side these days, so it may take me a while to report back.
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Frank Lion
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Re: How to completely remove preview pane in Mail?

Post by Frank Lion »

barbaz wrote:As I've just discovered when trying to read the email notification of your reply, that CSS needs to be wrapped in a @-moz-document. Otherwise it hides messages opened in a new window too.
Yeah, this isn't a great fix and I don't think it can be done properly with just .css.

The #messagepanebox's node is the notificationbox and there is nothing conditional that I can grab hold of there. That doesn't come until further down the stack when you get this -
notification[value="junkContent"] but I can only make use of that condition further down the stack, not higher up in it. It's just how this stuff works.

That means that .css fixes are always going to be a scattergun approach that can't be made conditional on just junk passing into the Junk folder.

It seems that even if you have the Preview Pane turned off, then any notification after that, er, turns it on and it stays on.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
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