Fri, 10 Apr 2026 02:21:28 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038 Hybrid preview There are two options for message preview in dynamic mode at the moment: 1.) Preview is shown This is very cool and fast way how to work with emails. Unfortunately preview is too small so reading long messages is a pain or it is taking too much space when no message is open. 2.) Preview is hidden Working with emails is slower but you can see lots of them on one page in message list. In other words - both options has it's disadventages. What about to make another option, some kind of hybrid preview: It will be hidden when no message is open, so you can see lots of message on one page. Preview will be opened only when you click on any message (and will hide again when no message is selected). What do you think? I think there's no need for preview to be shown when it is not displaying any message. Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:36:55 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038#t76682 I have zero interest in maintaining a third view. And I don't see how this proposal is any different than the popup view of the message, other than the fact it is not in a different browser window. The better solution is what has been planned for many many years, but nobody has stepped up to fund yet: a tabbed view that does away with popup windows for messages (popup compose windows are tremendously useful, however, and would remain). Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:23:13 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038#t76686 I wasn't talking about the new view/mode but only about message preview in dynamic mode. Difference is that popup window is much slower. Ok, what about to only make a configuration option which will change behavior of current message preview? Something like 'show preview only when message is selected'. Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:27:18 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038#t76687 I think this idea has some charm. It's not a different view, just some automatic preview toggle. Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:47:12 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038#t76688 I stand by what I said before: I really don't want to see this. A tabbed interface is the way to go instead. No need to waste effort when this is not an ideal solution. And speaking from a coding point of view - this *is* an entirely different view. viewport.js would have to be heavily reconfigured to support. Tue, 12 Feb 2013 22:00:22 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038#t76689 It would look like this (attaching images). Tue, 12 Feb 2013 22:10:45 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038#t76690 Michael, so what about to change current behavior to one suggested here? What is the point of empty message preview part anyway? (=when no messages are selected) Tue, 12 Feb 2013 22:14:36 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038#t76693 > Michael, so what about to change current behavior to one suggested > here? What is the point of empty message preview part anyway? (=when > no messages are selected) Toggling between no preview screen and a preview screen every time you select/deselect a message? That sounds like terrible UI. At the very least it would give you a headache. This is a *VERY* jarring UI transition. Having this transition happen every time I delete a message or switch a mailbox? Yikes. Not to mention that what happens when the message you select is in the area where the preview should be? The message list should never be scrolled because that is very confusing - the user doesn't know where they are in the list (automatically scrolling a list when an item is selected is a sure fire way to make users angry). But the alternative is that now the message that is selected is nowhere to be seen, so the user doesn't know where they are in relation to the rest of the mailbox (or a thread) - part of the benefit of a split-preview view (the ability to relate the current message to the context of the mailbox). And I don't see the benefit of having a longer message list. Not only is it harder to process - as the number of rows visible increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to pick out individual rows - but there is very little gained to the user by providing them this list. Almost all messages that a user typically is interested in appear at the beginning/end of the mailbox (i.e. new and/or recent messages). So you are essentially showing more messages, that users are not normally interested in, while making it more difficult to read. The blank preview space is not a major issue since the majority of the time the space is not empty - there is a message loaded. It's not about packing the maximum amount of data possible on the screen. We've learned in the past (and I have been guilty of this) that this is NOT what users want. There's a reason why our new UI utilizes more whitespace and has less information displayed on any given page. As I mentioned previously, the correct solution would be to implement a tabbed interface that would allow people like you to view a message fullscreen in the current window at the maximum possible size. This should be the goal we should work towards. Wed, 13 Feb 2013 06:45:14 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038#t76697 Using tabs should by cool but, as you already said, it's not going to happen in near future. Your argument "feature X is bad because feature Y is better but it will never be implemented" is really not convincing me to fotget about this. Why not implement something small (i don't believe such a change will be much work) which will get at least little benefit to users until final solution is created (which we know is not going to happen any soon, maybe in several years) ? Wed, 13 Feb 2013 08:46:00 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038#t76700 > Not to mention that what happens when the message you select is in > the area where the preview should be? Very easy solution - create a button in preview part which will close the preview and deselect the message (in simple words a standar close button). It will just call the same JS as is called when you deselect the message in the list. Wed, 13 Feb 2013 09:15:18 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038#t76704 Attaching example of close button on the preview part (upper right corner of the preview). Wed, 13 Feb 2013 09:20:16 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038#t76705 > Not to mention that what happens when the message you select is in > the area where the preview should be? By the way, this can happen also now (it just happened to me): I opened a message and while reading it, several new messages arrived. Opened message ends down so it wasn't in message list. The close button in preview should be added anyway (in current implementation, it will just close/deselect the opened message not the whole preview). Fri, 15 Feb 2013 11:25:27 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038#t76741 Why it was rejected? :( Tue, 19 Jan 2016 08:08:43 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038#t89484 Because of Michael's reasoning. Tue, 19 Jan 2016 08:57:28 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038#t89487 Hm, didn't know he's still a developer of Horde, no commits from him for really long time. Tue, 19 Jan 2016 09:03:46 +0000 https://bugs.horde.org/ticket/12038#t89488