Bug 110384

Summary:	"Remove recipient" button is too far off to the right
Product:	[Unmaintained] kmail	Reporter:	Oded Arbel <oded>
Component:	composer	Assignee:	kdepim bugs <kdepim-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED
Severity:	normal	CC:	jtamate, kollix
Priority:	NOR	Keywords:	triaged
Version:	1.8.2
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	unspecified
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments:	Screenshot showing the issue on KDE 4

Description Oded Arbel 2005-08-08 10:22:17 UTC

Version:           1.8.2 (using KDE 3.4.2, Mandrake Linux Cooker i586 - Cooker)
Compiler:          gcc version 3.4.3 (Mandrakelinux 10.2 3.4.3-7mdk)
OS:                Linux (i686) release 2.6.12-8mdk

When using large composer windows (I usually use a composer which is half my screen width - about 600 pixels. some people use even larger windows.), the "remove recipient" button on the far right of the window is too far from the text of the email address and when having multiple recipients it quite annoying to remove some recipients but not others - I actually have to track left and right with the mouse to make sure I don't remove required recipients by mistake.

The fact that the "remove" button is on the far right is also inconsistent with all other incarnations of a "Remove"/"clear" button (a button with the black X arrow icon) - most notable is the address selection dialog which is just a push of a button away from the compose - but also Konqueror's location bar, KMail's quick search bar, and others - all have the button on the left pointing right. 

I suggest relocating the button and putting it to the left of the recipients email box - either before or after the "address type" pull down.

Comment 1 Jaime Torres 2008-09-18 09:55:03 UTC

In kde4.x, the clear button is always at the right, inside the widget.
Also, every recipient is alone in one line, and new recipients are added vertically.

Comment 2 Oded Arbel 2008-09-18 20:26:29 UTC

Thanks for the update :-)

I don't think this resolves the original problem - the "clear" button is still very far off to the right and it is not comfortable to figure out the correct "clear" button when its 600 pixels to the right of a rather short email address.

Regardless of consistency with other implementations for "clear" buttons, I think usability can be enhanced by having the clear button closer to the content. It might be a good idea to have the clear button on the left side in all implementations, I'm not sure of that, but it mostly problematic in the KMail composer use case where you have multiple lines with "clear" buttons and the text in each line is usually very short - with a normal screen and a decently sized composer window (one where you can write long texts in) the content of the address widget can easily take up only 10-15% of the width of the widget or even less.

Considering the subject of this ticket and the content of the description I don't think this bug report should be closed "FIXED" as there was no change in the behavior against which the report was filed. I'm reopening this bug report, and if there is no intention of changing the described behavior, then this ticket should be closed as "WONTFIX" or possible "INVALID".

Comment 3 Oded Arbel 2008-09-18 20:31:15 UTC

Created attachment 27474 [details]
Screenshot showing the issue on KDE 4

This is how it currently looks in KMail for KDE4. the highlight of the address widget when you mouse over it is very helpful in determining the correct "clear" button, but its still too far away to the right, making it hard to discover and less usable then if it was closer (Fitt's law - a small target which is far away is harder to hit).

Comment 4 Martin Koller 2009-09-25 21:02:00 UTC

I agree. And in general I think the "clear" button in the KDE line edit fields should be where the first letter appears (in left-to-right languages at the left border and vice versa).
I also dislike the far right position.

Comment 5 Laurent Montel 2015-04-12 10:14:54 UTC

Thank you for taking the time to file a bug report.

KMail2 was released in 2011, and the entire code base went through significant changes. We are currently in the process of porting to Qt5 and KF5. It is unlikely that these bugs are still valid in KMail2.

We welcome you to try out KMail 2 with the KDE 4.14 release and give your feedback.