mailnews AccountCentral Page

[bhuvan]

Hi All,

AccountCentral page, a single place from where user can perform various account related activities, is landed today as fix to bug 63251.

* Bug 63251 - http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63251 - Need to display something in Thread pane when Account is selected

Today (prior to the fix), in the messenger application, when the user selects account folder in the folder pane, threadpane and messagepane on the righthand side are just cleared. We just don't do anything. So, this place is now loaded with a page that has links to several activities like read, search and compose messages. Those links bring up the Wizards and Windows which perform those actions directly to the user. That page is the AccountCentral page. Say if the user selects a mail account named 'foo' in the folderpane (left window), in place of emptied thread and message panes, AccountCentral page with links to Read, Search, Compose and other actions that are relevant to this account are shown. When user clicks on Read, the Inbox of the account 'foo' is opened and user can read mail from there. Similarly, if the Search link is clicked, Search window with folder 'foo' preselected for searching is opened. So, all the actions are account sensitive (or in the context of the account 'foo'). You can see the (action) items in the page getting expanded and collapsed based on whether you are on mail or news account. Whenever user clicks on any of the message folders, the thread pane message panes (with splitter) will come back into the picture displaying the messages list and message body as chosen by the user.

The hope is that this page is going to provide great user experience with messenger application. It will be much easier now, for many users, to look at the properties of account or to create an account and to do several other things without having to find the corresponding action item from menus. Please visit the bug (60668) and have a look at the couple of screenshots posted to get picture of this page.

There are plans to expand this feature further and polish this page with appropriate styles.  A new bug 66376 (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66376) is opened improve this further. Please add yourself to the cc list and start contributing with ideas and feedback, if you are interested in this one.

Your questions and comments are welcome.

thanks
bhuvan