Not so new addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird

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CatThief
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Re: New addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird 3.0

Post by CatThief »

jmozmoz wrote:
The link to my themes is in my sig. Click on FAQ at the top, then find the link to the theme for Tb3 listed at the top of the FAQ page. I haven't tried 1.1.1 yet. Keeping fingers crossed.


This is what is written on the FAQ page:
Mostly Crystal theme for Thunderbird 2.0
Right-click on the link and select "Save Link As...", then "Install" the file with Thunderbird's Add-ons Manager.
mostlycrystal_tb_20.jar

If you click on the link, you get the file mostlycrystal_tb_30.jar

Beside this it looks good!

P.S. In the add-on manager the ratings (number of green "+") of the add-ons seems to be displayed incorrectly.


Sorry, jmozmoz. Tb3 became the final release today and I updated the site. The theme for 2.0 was archived to the FAQ page and the theme for 3.0 was moved from FAQ to the main Thunderbird page. I apologize for the confusion, wanting to come here sooner to edit the info, but this is the first time I was able to load the MozillaZine site (server problems?) since I made the site changes earlier this afternoon.

Good catch with the ratings. (I never noticed the changes in Classic.) The correction was just made. Darn, sure wish I knew about this earlier. Thanks for telling me about the buggered link, too. That's fixed now as well. I really shouldn't be working on this stuff when I'm sleep deprived. :|
Still passionate for Mozilla themes and extensions, just not actively developing them for public release anymore.
jmozmoz
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Re: New addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird 3.0

Post by jmozmoz »

Diazruanova1 wrote:Hi jmozmoz,

I love your add-on, thank you very much!!! ...and maybe this was asked before, but since it is a very long thread, so I´ll ask again: Have you contemplated the possibility of adding a new option for including the "buttons" when the "single" line is selected (Display two lines in compact view UN-ticked)?

I know you´ll have to do some compromises in order to do this, but for some of us, once you select a mail for viewing, you already know who sent it and if you are not managing many accounts at the same time, you know who the recipient is, so maybe jut the date and hour info, the subject and of course the buttons.

Thanks again :D

Enrique Diazruanova

At the moment I would say that CompactHeader has reached its feature freeze state - at least for TB 3.0.

For TB 3.1 (which will be released next year) I might add an extra vertical toolbar left or right of the message pane. Something like the All-in-One Sidebar for Firefox (most displays nowadays have (much) more space available horizontal than vertical).

But my first priority after calming down the development of this add-on for TB 3.0 is to supply a patch for TB 3.1 adding the customization dialog for the header pane buttons to TB itself.
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Diazruanova1
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Re: New addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird 3.0

Post by Diazruanova1 »

OK,

Thanks, anyway ;-)
Nazgulled
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Re: New addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird 3.0

Post by Nazgulled »

Excellent extension, however, here are my comments about it:

1) The little expand/compact button as a weird outline when the mouse is over it. TB interface is not that good and that outline makes it uglier. Is it possible to improve this somehow? Make it look more OS native maybe?

2) I have no idea how Mozilla overlooked all the lowercase text in the header, either in the buttons and the header labels. Please don't tell me this is by design, it looks so unprofessional... Anyway, is it possible that maybe you could "fix" that with your extension? For instance, some of the buttons (that we can now configure thanks to your extension) are camel case as the main toolbar, some of them are lowercase, which looks weird. The same can be said to the "other actions" menu. This is very inconsistent and looks horrible.

3) Maybe a button could be added to the header toolbar customization to star the message? I know this may be a little redundant since all the messages in the messaging pane have a column for that (someone could want to disable it though) but the "other actions" menu has an option to star the message so it would be consistent to at least provide a button for it.

That's it, other than that, the extension is very nice indeed, congrats :)
jmozmoz
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Re: New addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird 3.0

Post by jmozmoz »

Nazgulled wrote:Excellent extension, however, here are my comments about it:

1) The little expand/compact button as a weird outline when the mouse is over it. TB interface is not that good and that outline makes it uglier. Is it possible to improve this somehow? Make it look more OS native maybe?

This will be fixed in 1.1.2

2) I have no idea how Mozilla overlooked all the lowercase text in the header, either in the buttons and the header labels. Please don't tell me this is by design, it looks so unprofessional... Anyway, is it possible that maybe you could "fix" that with your extension? For instance, some of the buttons (that we can now configure thanks to your extension) are camel case as the main toolbar, some of them are lowercase, which looks weird. The same can be said to the "other actions" menu. This is very inconsistent and looks horrible.

The buttons using the camel case are the ones copied from the main message toolbar. The other ones are the original buttons from the header pane (see this discussion on bugzilla). What I could do relatively easy is to convert every label into lower case.

3) Maybe a button could be added to the header toolbar customization to star the message? I know this may be a little redundant since all the messages in the messaging pane have a column for that (someone could want to disable it though) but the "other actions" menu has an option to star the message so it would be consistent to at least provide a button for it.

This button will also be added for the main toolbar and the header pane toolbar in 1.1.2. (if it does not break themes).
Last edited by jmozmoz on December 10th, 2009, 4:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
jmozmoz
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Re: New addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird 3.0

Post by jmozmoz »

CatThief wrote:Sorry, jmozmoz. Tb3 became the final release today and I updated the site. The theme for 2.0 was archived to the FAQ page and the theme for 3.0 was moved from FAQ to the main Thunderbird page. I apologize for the confusion, wanting to come here sooner to edit the info, but this is the first time I was able to load the MozillaZine site (server problems?) since I made the site changes earlier this afternoon.

Good catch with the ratings. (I never noticed the changes in Classic.) The correction was just made. Darn, sure wish I knew about this earlier. Thanks for telling me about the buggered link, too. That's fixed now as well. I really shouldn't be working on this stuff when I'm sleep deprived. :|

I have created a new version (1.1.2) which includes a new button (Flag Message) for the main toolbar and the header pane toolbar. It looks like the icon (which is a standard TB icon) is not displayed when your theme is activated. Do you have to correct this or can I do it? I would prefer if I do not have to supply the icon for the button in the add-on but can recycle an icon of TB.
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CatThief
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Re: New addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird 3.0

Post by CatThief »

jmozmoz wrote:This button will also be added for the main toolbar and the header pane toolbar in 1.1.2. (if it does not break themes).

I only had to fix the image location and make a little margin adjustment.

Do you anticipate making many more changes? I'm just asking because each time the extension changes, a new version of the theme needs to be released. I try to keep this to a minimum since users get a little upset if it happens too frequently. For now, maybe I'll just hold off until things quiet down then include everything that is new inside a single update.
Still passionate for Mozilla themes and extensions, just not actively developing them for public release anymore.
jmozmoz
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Joined: August 3rd, 2009, 12:28 pm

Re: New addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird 3.0

Post by jmozmoz »

CatThief wrote:
jmozmoz wrote:This button will also be added for the main toolbar and the header pane toolbar in 1.1.2. (if it does not break themes).

I only had to fix the image location and make a little margin adjustment.

Do you anticipate making many more changes? I'm just asking because each time the extension changes, a new version of the theme needs to be released. I try to keep this to a minimum since users get a little upset if it happens too frequently. For now, maybe I'll just hold off until things quiet down then include everything that is new inside a single update.

I just removed the last point of my ToDo list. Before TB 3.1 I will only do bugfixes. This last button was just too easy to implement to resist.
Nazgulled
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Re: New addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird 3.0

Post by Nazgulled »

jmozmoz wrote:The buttons using the camel case are the ones copied from the main message toolbar. The other ones are the original buttons from the header pane (see this discussion on bugzilla). What I could do relatively easy is to convert every label into lower case.

Wow, what a bug report... I can't understand how absurd the reasons for the lowercase are in that bug report. It just feels like an excuse to me, so the developers can have it their way (for some strange reason). Anyway, that doesn't matter and it's not your fault. I would prefer the other way around (making everything camel case) but if that ain't possible, than I guess converting every label into lower case would be more consistent to what Mozilla is doing.

As for all other points, updated to 1.1.2 and it's all good. Great work, thanks :)
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CatThief
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Re: New addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird 3.0

Post by CatThief »

jmozmoz wrote:
CatThief wrote:
jmozmoz wrote:This button will also be added for the main toolbar and the header pane toolbar in 1.1.2. (if it does not break themes).

I only had to fix the image location and make a little margin adjustment.

Do you anticipate making many more changes? I'm just asking because each time the extension changes, a new version of the theme needs to be released. I try to keep this to a minimum since users get a little upset if it happens too frequently. For now, maybe I'll just hold off until things quiet down then include everything that is new inside a single update.

I just removed the last point of my ToDo list. Before TB 3.1 I will only do bugfixes. This last button was just too easy to implement to resist.

That's good to hear. Things are coming along very nicely I must say. You put in a lot of work and it shows, and I am still indebted to you for making theme support possible. It isn't simple, but nothing worth while ever is.

Gosh, just when I was hoping things were winding down, I'm about to make a request for your ToDo list. It would be nice if the "Star" button would display the current status of the star being on or off. It's just an idea. Please don't hit me. (ducking)
Still passionate for Mozilla themes and extensions, just not actively developing them for public release anymore.
rgloor
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Joined: December 11th, 2009, 12:32 pm

Re: New addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird 3.0

Post by rgloor »

Hi

I just downloaded and installed the new version (1.1.3).

2 Things:

1) There is a strange behaviour in my installation.
While compactHeader works fine, if the message is opened in a new tab.
If the message is opened in a new window, there is a very strange behaviour.
When pressing the small + button (or - button) the whole header (everything beneath the icon bar) disappears.

2) Just an info
On official TB Add-On download site https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/13564 , there is still version 1.0.1.

Greetings from Switzerland,
Rolf
jmozmoz
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Re: New addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird 3.0

Post by jmozmoz »

CatThief wrote:Gosh, just when I was hoping things were winding down, I'm about to make a request for your ToDo list. It would be nice if the "Star" button would display the current status of the star being on or off. It's just an idea. Please don't hit me. (ducking)

I also thought about this. It wouldn't be to complicated.

But what would be the correct way to do it? Show an empty star in the header pane of messages not flagged and a solid one for flagged ones or the other way around (solid star for unflagged messages, ..., so the icon represents the action done when pressing the button)?

Beside this: There seems to be no empty star in the default icon set of Tb (which is not to small). There are these two (Image and Image) in the qute theme. At the moment I use this big on:
Image

If I use the small one and set the size of the icon to e.g. 16pxx16px it looks quite washy.
Nazgulled
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Re: New addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird 3.0

Post by Nazgulled »

I think this star would look nice:
http://www.iconfinder.net/icondetails/14056/16

In case you are looking for a replacement since that one is quite big and it looks weird resized...

But to keep with the theme, you could use the ones here:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/sou ... ontact.png
http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/sou ... tarred.png

As for the correct way to do it, here's my thoughts on the matter:
1) If the star is going to be displayed in a button, in the header pane, then it should always show the yellow bright one.
2) If you opt to use the star in the header pane itself (not in any of the buttons, like the little stars next to the contact names) then it should be just like the contact names. It's yellow if the message is starred and white if it's not. As for the mouse over, for both the yellow and white versions, there's a variation that makes the star look a little bit different to represent the mouse over and you should use those too. Where the start could be placed in this situation, I have no idea...

You either opt for one of those options or both, it's up to you. It's just the standard way to go IMO.

In another subject, something I forgot to suggest... I would be nice to customize the header pane when multiple messages are selected. At the moment, it looks weird if we opt to display only the icons without any labels and then select multiple messages and see the buttons "archive" and "delete" with labels and the "archive" one doesn't have an icon. It would be nice to keep a consistency here.
jmozmoz
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Re: New addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird 3.0

Post by jmozmoz »

rgloor wrote:1) There is a strange behaviour in my installation.
While compactHeader works fine, if the message is opened in a new tab.
If the message is opened in a new window, there is a very strange behaviour.
When pressing the small + button (or - button) the whole header (everything beneath the icon bar) disappears.

This is a real bug which has (should have) been fix in version 1.1.4 (and also 1.0.2).
2) Just an info
On official TB Add-On download site https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/13564 , there is still version 1.0.1.

Add-ons on AMO have to be reviewed. This takes quite some time (even if the reviewing process got much faster lately). The not reviewed version are called experimental and can be found in the list of the "old versions":
https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/ ... ions/13564
jmozmoz
Posts: 365
Joined: August 3rd, 2009, 12:28 pm

Re: New addon to compact header pane in Thunderbird 3.0

Post by jmozmoz »

Nazgulled wrote:But to keep with the theme, you could use the ones here:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/sou ... ontact.png
http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/sou ... tarred.png

Do you know a way to increase the size of the icons to e.g. 24x24px (for the main toolbar, normal icon size) without blurring the image? If I change the css style with height/width the icon is resized.
1) If the star is going to be displayed in a button, in the header pane, then it should always show the yellow bright one.

This is the way it is done at the moment.
In another subject, something I forgot to suggest... I would be nice to customize the header pane when multiple messages are selected. At the moment, it looks weird if we opt to display only the icons without any labels and then select multiple messages and see the buttons "archive" and "delete" with labels and the "archive" one doesn't have an icon. It would be nice to keep a consistency here.

I know it looks ugly. I willl add it to my wish list ;-)
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