3

if you have replied to a message already, there is the replied icon visible:

this icon should be clickable, leading to the message, that you sent as the reply

It certainly makes sense to offer that information to users, especially less experienced ones. You have a good point there.

However I disagree that the icon should be clickable for this. Use a tooltip instead, a tooltip being a more passive tool.
There is a general pattern of how things work in a desktop: when clicking something you want to start an action. Merely giving an assistant information about something you already see is not an action, it is a hint or an explanation. And hints and explanations don't belong in separate dialogs, but in tooltips. This would match the current look and feel.

So: should that information be offered ? YES !
But: should that be activated by a click ? NO !
Instead: bind that information to mouse hovering and a tooltip ? Yep, that is perfect.

It might be helpful in certain cases to offer more detailed information about that reply (or multiple replies). The icon itself (whether it is the replied icon or the standard version) only depends on the 'replied' flag inside the message. Additional detailed information would ahve to be fetched, that is nothing you want to make for a whole list of messages, it makes the gui slow without reason. This might actually be something like an action, so:

1.) hovering the icon gives a tooltip stating the fact that this message has already been replied
2.) clicking the icon opens a small dialog where additional details are presented: when replies have been send, maybe to what addresses. Perfect would be a thread like view: so all replies and re-replies (so the threads) offered, so that you can select those messages.

arkascha wrote:Instead: bind that information to mouse hovering and a tooltip ? Yep, that is perfect.

No, it is not.
First, KMail offers tooltips already (they provide detailed info about message). Putting text of reply in the same box where info about message is shown doesn't make much sense.
Second, I tend to send long e-mails (>15 kB of plain text). I would need HUGE screen to put this into tooltip, and it won't be readable anyway. In such case tooltips are useless.

Your second proposal makes more sense, though. We could use some kind of "Threaded" view where both messages and replies are visible. But I wonder if this is even possible - for IMAP accounts, it would mean putting outgoing messages into inbox directory. Kmail may do things right, but other clients will perhaps display one huge mess.

Both sounds cool to me.

The only important thing for the user is, that he/she can get to the messages that were the replies.

Have a look at Thunderbird 3! There you can right-click the message and select "open message in conversation view", which shows all messages with that Subject and all Re's and Fw's (like the Gmail conversation view, see viewtopic.php?f=215&t=99371&p=214352&hilit=conversations#p214352 )

But maybe, if that is too hard to program, just a "jump to reply" functionality would suffice for a start.

Any progress on this?