On 16.10.23 16:19, Bob Henson wrote:
> VanguardLH wrote:
>
>> Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> Ed Cryer wrote:
>>>
>>>> How do I increase the size of the message pane in Classic view beyond
>>>> what is allowed by the double-headed arrows?
>>>
>>> I don't know, the minimum size of the message list pane doesn't feel too
>>> large to me.
>>>
>>>> I would gladly reduce the size of the barrier between that and the
>>>> message threads.
>>>
>>> Have you tried Compact Headers addon?
>>>
>>> It gives you a "twisty" to expand/contract the message pane header and
>>> options on which fields to include, or to compress it to a single row.
>>
>> According to:
>>
>> https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/compact-headers/
>>
>> it says:
>>
>> Works with Thunderbird 102.0 - 106.0
>>
>> Does it still work with Tbird 115?
>
> Compact Headers 5.1 works fine with Thunderbird 115.3.2.

Perfectly so and on all OSs.

--
Manus manum lavat

Ed Cryer wrote:
> Thunderbird 115.3.2
>
> How do I increase the size of the message pane in Classic view beyond
> what is allowed by the double-headed arrows?
> I would gladly reduce the size of the barrier between that and the
> message threads.
>
> Ed

Before and after.

Tbird 102
https://tinyurl.com/yw3mbsde
Tbird 115
https://tinyurl.com/ysdcume4

Ed

Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> wrote:

> Ed Cryer wrote:
>
>> Thunderbird 115.3.2
>>
>> How do I increase the size of the message pane in Classic view beyond
>> what is allowed by the double-headed arrows?
>> I would gladly reduce the size of the barrier between that and the
>> message threads.
>
> Before and after.
>
> Tbird 102
> https://tinyurl.com/yw3mbsde
> Tbird 115
> https://tinyurl.com/ysdcume4

My guess is the dev group moved the buttons to their own line to prevent
them from overlapping the From field which could be very long. Some
e-mail address are horrendously long, like:

contact-admin-hello-webmaster-info-services-peter-crazy-but-oh-so-ubber-cool-english-alphabet-loverer-abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz@please-try-to.send-me-an-email-if-you-can-possibly-begin-to-remember-this-coz.this-is-the-longest-email-address-known-to-man-but-to-be-honest.this-is-such-a-stupidly-long-sub-domain-it-could-go-on-forever.pacraig.com

Yep, that was a valid 345 character e-mail address to win the longest
e-mail address award back in 2010. Didn't bother to check it if is
still active.

They also add more whitespace between the fields (From, Newsgroups,
Subject). The date field looks a little lower, too, but not a full line
height. Most of that is just more whitespace reducing how much of the
body can be viewed.

In other threads, someone mentioned the Compact Headers add-on. Tried
that yet?

https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/compact-headers/

In the button row for the message view pane in 115, click on the More
button, and select Customize. That lets you select what objects are
displayed in the header block, like:

Show senders's profile picture
Always show sender's full address
Hide labels column
Large Subject
Show all headers

For the Button Style option, there is a drop-down listbox to the right
to select: Icons and text, text only, icons only. I doubt any selection
will make the buttons smaller, or move the From and buttons to the same
rows as with Classic view in 102, but it could give you a cleaner look
based on what you want to see.

As for the added whitespace between the From, Newsgroups, and Subject
fields, I suspect you're screwed unless a userchrome.css setting can
alter how Tbird displays the header block. I never tweaked a
userchrome.css file, so others will have to tell you if there are CSS
settings you could define to affect line-height spacing in the header
block. What I've seen in snapshots is the header block in the message
preview pane is the same whether using the vertical 3-pane view or the
classical 3-pane view (like back in OE, the one you're using). With a
taller preview pane in the vertical (columnar) 3-pane view, guess the
devs figured they had more space to waste on the header block.
Personally I find the classic/OE 3-pane layout more efficient than the
vertical 3-pane view.

3-pane vertical (columnar) layout 3-pane classic layout
.------------.---------.---------. .------------.---------.
| | | | | | headers |
| newsgroups | headers | message | | newsgroups |---------|
| | | | | | message |
'------------'---------'---------' '------------'---------'

Unlike my posts, Usenet posts are often short. Having an entire
vertical column to show the message wastes space on a lot of whitespace
after the message. E-mails are often longer than Usenet posts, so more
space for the message is perhaps preferred. Alas, since Tbird is a
combo client, the same layout has to be use for e-mail as for Usenet.

Another difference is you are using fixed (monospaced, non-proportional)
font in 102, but proportional font in 115 in the body of the message
when viewing. With the windows shown in your screenshots having the
same size (for height and width), the proportional font you use in 115
has wider kerning (more space between characters), so line-wraps would
occur more often along with more text on the wrapped lines which could
result in more lines for the same content. The proportional font you
are using in 115 to view the message is consuming more space, so you'll
likely have to do more scrolling.

Ed Cryer wrote:

> If Mozilla have planned so far ahead, why don't they incorporate this
> functionality, rather than leave it to some add-on artist?

If MZLA added every user requested feature, it would end-up bloated, at
a time they're trying to streamline it; by allowing add-ons people can
choose what they want to a certain extent.

I see you're a bit against add-ons, but you started asking about the
message pane header, in particular it being "too big", well using the
compact headers add-on and the message header toolbar customise add-on,
you can tweak that header in lots of ways, e.g.

The standard three line header with toolbar icons enabled
<https://andyburns.uk/misc/tb-header-three-line.png>

If your window gets too narrow to fit the toolbar, it will insert an
extra line and float the toolbar above the text fields
<https://andyburns.uk/misc/tb-header-three-line-narrow.png>

I prefer not to have the header toolbar shown at all, just using the
main toolbar at the top for replies, marking junk etc
<https://andyburns.uk/misc/tb-header-three-line-no-toolbar.png>

Or you can click the ">" twisty to shrink to a smaller two line header,
which is my preferred option
<https://andyburns.uk/misc/tb-header-two-line-no-toolbar.png>

or indeed a single line header
<https://andyburns.uk/misc/tb-header-one-line-no-toolbar.png>

That's only a fraction of what can be done, individual icons in the
toolbar can be hidden, or given text labels, the order changed, etc.

Andy Burns wrote:

> you can tweak that header in lots of ways, e.g.

apologies, my screenshots stored on amazon S3 buckets, appear not to be
synced properly, suggest retying them later if they don't load properly
yet ...

Andy Burns wrote:

[repost with http:// instead of https:// URLs]

> you can tweak that header in lots of ways, e.g.
>
> The standard three line header with toolbar icons enabled
> <http://andyburns.uk/misc/tb-header-three-line.png>
>
> If your window gets too narrow to fit the toolbar, it will insert an
> extra line and float the toolbar above the text fields
> <http://andyburns.uk/misc/tb-header-three-line-narrow.png>
>
> I prefer not to have the header toolbar shown at all, just using the
> main toolbar at the top for replies, marking junk etc
> <http://andyburns.uk/misc/tb-header-three-line-no-toolbar.png>
>
> Or you can click the ">" twisty to shrink to a smaller two line header,
> which is my preferred option
> <http://andyburns.uk/misc/tb-header-two-line-no-toolbar.png>
>
> or indeed a single line header
> <http://andyburns.uk/misc/tb-header-one-line-no-toolbar.png>
>
> That's only a fraction of what can be done, individual icons in the
> toolbar can be hidden, or given text labels, the order changed, etc.