Thunderbird:Folder Pane

This page is for exploring the Thunderbird Folder Pane, the left most pane in the standard Thunderbird interface which currently holds the different account and folder information.

	THIS PAGE IS A WORKING DRAFT
	The page may be difficult to navigate, and some information on its subject might be incomplete and/or evolving rapidly. If you have any questions or ideas, please add them as a new topic on the discussion page.

Objective

Simplify the folder pane view from an account centric layout to mailbox centric layout.

Add the Thunderbird:Message Archive special folder.

Add Thunderbird:Smart Folders that span accounts.

Current

The current folder pane breaks up mail by the different accounts, each with their own set of special folders: inbox, sent mail, drafts, and trash

For example:

+---------------------------+
|                           |
| [+] account@example.com   |
|                           | 
| [-] account@example1.com  |
|  |--Inbox                 |
|  |--Trash                 |
|  |--Sent                  |
|  |--Folder 123            |
|  +--Smart Folder X        |
|                           |
| [-] Local Folders         |
|  |--Inbox                 |
|  |--Trash                 |
|  |--Unsent                |
|  |--Sent                  |
|  +--Drafts                |
|                           |
+---------------------------+

Each account duplicates at least an Inbox and Trash folder, plus possibly other duplicate special folders.

Paneful Steps

Here are the incremental steps that build towards a finalized version of the new folder pane. Because we know now that we don't know everything we need to know we are building in steps to learn as we progress.

Step 1

First we begin with email.

We need a list of special folders with their accounts as child objects.

• Inbox
• Drafts
• Starred (icon)
• Sent Mail
• Junk
• Trash

Each special folder is a cumulative of all the accounts. If you have three accounts, each with 1 new message in the Inbox then your special Inbox will have 3 new messages.

This view also requires a list of accounts in order to display the sub-folders for each account. The account listing should be in a separate tree spaced below the special folders list. Each Account expands to show all the folders available that are not special folders.

Accounts listed are not cumulative totals, meaning they don't add up the unread messages in sub-folders and display the total. When expanded each fold may show a count of the unread messages contained within the folder.

+----------------------+
| [+] Inbox            |
| [+] Drafts           |
| [+] Starred          |
| [-] Sent Mail        |
|  |--¤ Gmail          |
|  |--¤ Mozilla        |
|  +--¤ Rogers         |
|                      |
| [+] Junk             |
| [+] Trash            |
|                      |
|                      |
| [+] Gmail            |
| [+] Mozilla          |
| [-] Rogers           |
|  |-- My Folder (1)   |
|  +-- My Other Folder |
|                      |
+----------------------+

Step 2

Next step? Lets learn from our first iteration.

Smart Folders

At some point we're going to want to add our new cross-account smart folders.

+----------------------+
| [+] Inbox            |
| [+] Drafts           |
| [+] Starred          |
| [-] Sent Mail        |
|  |--¤ Gmail          |
|  |--¤ Mozilla        |
|  +--¤ Rogers         |
|                      |
| [+] Spam             |
| [+] Trash            |
|                      |
| [+] Gmail            |
| [+] Mozilla          |
| [+] Rogers           |
|                      |
| /Clever Bird/        |
| » Mail from David    |
| » Mail from Dan      | 
| » People I Know      |
| » Recent Mail        |
| » Last 5 Days        |
| » All Mail           |
| » Has Attachments    |
|                      |
+----------------------+

Archive

This is a future step that requires our new Thunderbird:Message Archive to be partially implemented. At such a point which there is a special Archive folder then we will be adding the Archive special folder to our list.

+----------------------+
| [+] Inbox            |
| [+] Drafts           |
| [+] Starred          |
| [+] Archive          |
|  |--¤ Gmail          |
|  |--¤ Mozilla        |
|  +--¤ Rogers         |
|                      |
| [-] Sent Mail        |
|  |--¤ Gmail          |
|  |--¤ Mozilla        |
|  +--¤ Rogers         |
|                      |
| [+] Spam             |
| [+] Trash            |
|                      |
| [+] Gmail            |
| [+] Mozilla          |
| [+] Rogers           |
|                      |
+----------------------+