Make SmartTemplates compatible with Thunderbird 115 (SuperNova UI)

[RealRaven2000]

let's use this issue for uploading test versions for Thunderbird betas.

This first one is for Thunderbird 105:

smartTemplate-fx-3.14pre5.zip

Installation: download zip file. drag zip file into Thunderbird Add-ons Manager.

[RealRaven2000]

here is a version that can be tested with the current beta THunderbird 110.0b4.

smartTemplate-fx-3.16pre21.zip

To do: fix the template popup menus on the write / reply / forward buttons.

[RealRaven2000]

So I am just looking again at the dropdown menus (for the attached external templates). I found that clicking the dropdown chevron doesn't display the dropdown menu with attached Smart Templates. Comparing with the built in "Get new messages" button I find the following differences:

<toolbarbutton id="button-getmsg" class="toolbarbutton-menu-button"
  is="toolbarbutton-menu-button"  type="menu" .. />

<toolbarbutton id="button-reply" class="toolbarbutton-menu-button"
  is="toolbarbutton-menu-button"  type="menu-button"  wantdropmarker="true" .. />

Sure enough, just changing type to "menu" makes the dropmarker work and generate the menu. So this will be my next task: change the attribute type to make the menu work again in 110.0b4

[RealRaven2000]

To compare I am looking at the rendering of these toolbarbuttons in Thundebird 102.8 ESR - and apparently there it's type="menu-button" for all these buttons with (working) dropdowns. So the type definitely has been changed in 110 (and possibly officially for the next ESR 115)

[RealRaven2000]

Here is a version that fixes the dropdowns ion 110.0b4:

smartTemplate-fx-3.16pre86.zip

It think this should also be compatible with 102, at least it worked in a quick test. I only patch the buttons that do not already have the type="menu" set to avoid double patching on the forward button,

[RealRaven2000]

I am currently working on concrete versions that are compatible with the new Thunderbird SuperNova user interface for quickFilters here - there are some versions that that run (partly) with Tb beta 113. One of the biggest problems with SuperNova compatibility is the toolbar button integration. I successfully created a button with a dropdown menu using a mix of mx technology (browser action) and experimental code, so I am hopeful that I can recreate the template dropdowns for the various write / reply / forward buttons.

However I may have to create these as separate buttons which have to be added by the user manually to replace the existing ones. Obviously I want to have the update from 102 to 115 as smooth as possible, so I will look into alternative ways to do this. One might be to have everything in one SmartTemplates button which then gives the option to either Write / Reply or Forward and then select the template in one operation, but it needs to be an acceptable workaround that doesn't add unnecessary extra work / actions on the side of the user. To be discussed below.

[RealRaven2000]

Created new branch ESR115 for all SuperNova related development. This work will not be backwards compatible with ESR91 / ESR102 due to the dramatic internal changes of this year's version of the Mozilla code base.

[RealRaven2000]

Here is a build that can be installed in beta 113.0b1; based on all the latest changes committed to the basic functionality of ESR91, it supports applying account templates when writing emails and editing (some) SmartTemplates settings (From Add-ons Manager). The additional icons for changing template, insert smart snippets and cleaning up variables are also displayed from within Composer:

This goes to show that the actual functionality of selecting a template from a drop down button could potentially stil be supported in Thunderbird SuperNova.

The status bar icon is also still working, but by default the bar is not displayed anymore. It may be a good idea to add a toolbar button for the unified toolbar first because it could serve as a starting point for both settings and selecting templates...

smartTemplate-fx-4.0pre1.zip

to install in Thunderbird beta, download the zip file and drag into Add-ons Manager (do not extract contents).

Next steps:

• add a browser_action button (possibly create a svg version of the icon for this)
• fix layout problems in settings dialog
• test functionality (change template, insert snippet) from composer