[imp] Highlighting Clicked Rows

[D. Patrick Caldwell]

>Some fields in the row already have purposes (e.g. clicking on various parts
>might show the e-mail, or create a reply to the e-mail address clicked on,
>etc).  So I don't think you want to make the whole row be a link to check
>the checkbox, but only some unused part near the checkboxes.

I definitely want to make the whole row be a link to check the
checkboxes, but you are right that if I click any element inside the
row that has its own relevant behavior, it should be set to preclude
the rows onclick event very easily; that is an extremely simple fix.
Thus, you could have the functionality without altering the current
behaviors.

>I agree the checkboxes are small, and it would be nice if
>"near misses" would check the checkbox.  But I don't think the whole row
>would be appropriate in most cases, as there are usually already other
>functions connected to the parts of the rows.

Those functions will not be affected at all.

>One thing I've taken to doing in my new html code is making sure I make
>"near miss" clicks have a meaning, when possible.  Making the label of
>a checkbox/radio clickable to set the checkbox/radio for example.  Now,
>in most of Horde/IMP, there is no label, but there may be "near-by"
>areas we can use, to make "near misses" act like "exact hits".

Good call.  The td around the checkbox and the td around the other
parts which have their own behaviors could be considered "near
misses," as could a click on any td which doesn't contain an element
with behaviors.  Another way to say that would be to consider the
whole row a near miss, but to cancel click events when the click is
preceded by another click event handler.

>> this would be a reasonable feature to be added to the horde IMP
>> distrobution.  I, however, don't know how to go about making that
>> recommendation.  You can find the horde bookmarklet (works in firefox) at
>> http://scripts.pcdesigns.net.  Here's the code:
>
>If I understand your code correctly, I think it would break current features,
>and hence I can't say I would endorse it as is.  But then, I could be
>misunderstanding your code, as I don't really groke javascript, and I've
>not tested your code on a live page, etc.

I agree.  I wouldn't endorse it as is.  It is, afterall, a bookmarklet
simply designed to add enough functionality to allow me to delete a
lot of emails quickly without having to really worry about whether or
not my mouse pointer is exactly on the check box.

>Having said that, I think there are _some_ places where we could definately
>make more of the row clickable, rather than just the checkbox, but this
>isn't a universal thing.  Something more universal would have a larger
>impact on  the usability.

I agree with that too.  I'd only make rows with emails in them
clickable.  If there are any rows anywhere else, they may not need to
be clicked . . . especially if they don't have checkboxes.

>> It wouldn't be implemented exactly like that in IMP.  In fact, it'd be much
>> easier and much more reliable on most browsers if we used a regex to get the
>> msgbox name from the row id (i wrote this a while ago so I forgot exactly
>> how the HTML comes out.

>It seems like you have a good usability idea, but need work on how to
>implement it consistently throughout the interface.

Thanks.  I thought it was a pretty good idea and it has made my
experience with IMP much more pleasant, but I can't really take credit
for it.  Many other webmail clients do it too.  It is, however, a
hugely popular bookmarklet on my site.  I actually programmed it
because I had so many requests for it.

>Go Longhorns!
Yessir!

Thanks again,
Patrick