Thunderbird content doesn't adjust to window size. (Solved it myself!)

[Howard]

I've just updated and switched my PCLOS2009.2 installation to KDE4 as instructed by Tex.  All worked well - now I'me trying to find out where everything has got to, and slowly working it out.  Not sure about Dolphin, too much space for too little information compared with Konqueror is my first impression, but I'm still learning.  (This is still in the testing stage, I have fully working versions of Minime 2009 with KDE 3.59 and PCLOS 2007 to fall back on as needed.)

But I have hit one problem.  The Thunderbird window is too wide for my screen, I'm missing an inch or two on the rhs.
(See follow-up posting below for more detailed explanation.)

[Howard]

Here's a bit more on this. 

My screen size is 1024x768.

The Thunderbird content and toolbars overflow the window on the rhs even if the window is not full screen.  I.e. TB seems to think that the window is wider than it is and material just disappears off to the right.

I installed TB 3.0 onto my working Minime09 KDE3.5 installation on the same computer and everything is OK.

Therefore It seems to be a KDE4 problem.

[Was_Just19]

Have you tried dragging the side of the TB window into the display and then hitting the Maximise button for the window?

Usually it is just a matter of manually resizing and then using the max button ...

To drag the window to where you can see the edge .......  hold the Alt key and drage with the mouse .......

[Howard]

Thanks JohnBoy but I don't think I can have explained the problem clearly enough.

It's not the TB window that's the problem, I can adjust and move that around as usual, but the TB content that doesn't adjust itself to its own window.  If I move the right hand edge of the TB window in more and more of the content disappears.  By content I mean everything that's in the window, toolbars, messages, the lot they all behave as though the window is much larger - larger even than my display.  Even the re-positioning vertical bar on the right is off screen.

The title bar at the very top does adjust properly, but everything below that doesn't.

If I move in the right edge of the Firefox window in which I'm typing this, the content adjusts, I can still see it all.  This doesn't happen in Thunderbird, it just ignores the change.

I tried re-installing TB but it didn't make any difference.  The same version of TB  under KDE3.5 on the same computer behaves as it should.

[Was_Just19]

OK, gotcha!

Check what you describe again .....  while displaying some text ......  and you should see that you lose text up to a certain width, and if you continue to widen the TV window the text from the line under will come up and be added to the line above.

That is as I see it here, and always assumed it was because of the setting for the length of a line being typed before an automatic LF/CR is introduced.

Something about 72 characters wide for the lines as default?

[Howard]

No! You still haven't got it I'm afraid.  I'm familiar with the line length behaviour, and that doesn't lose any actual text, just gives you uneven line lengths.

Let me try again.  When I move the right edge of the TB window it's like drawing a curtain over a blackboard, everything on it stays exactly as it was, you just cannot see behind the curtain.  This applies to the toolbars as well as the message text.  In the KDE3.5 installation the stuff in the toolbars shuffles up so that it still all fits into the visible area, not so with my KDE4, that is static, the items on the right disappear behind the curtain.

If I knew how to do window captures I could show you - but I don't.

[Was_Just19]

Seems I do get it.
That is what I described I thought.
I have the same thing happening here.

When the TB window is narrowed the text to the right side disappears until the window is widened again.
This is KDE4

[Howard]

OK then, if it's KDE4, is someone trying to fix it?  

As far as I'm concerned it makes TB almost unusable, as the width of the "blackboard" is more than the 1024 pixels on my screen and I can never see the words at the right hand end of the lines or what ever is at that end of the toolbars.  (Do I have to buy a new wide screen computer to read my mail?)

I have discovered a temporary work around: if I copy and paste my messages into another window - e.g. the "write" window, it justifies to fit the actual window as it should, so I can read it all.  But that's not practical in the long run.

Why is the main TB window the only one that exhibits this  that I've come across - so far?

And why am I the only one who seems to find this a problem?

[Was_Just19]

Cannot answer your questions .......  but I expect it will be fixed with an update ......  whether the problem is TB or KDE I do not know.

[wayne1932]

I have a similar problem with kmymoney on my laptop under kde3.  My laptop is not capable of greater than 1024x768 but kmymoney shows up as if it were on a 1280x960 display (which is my desktop resolution).  That's why I'm looking at homebank for the moment.  Unfortunately it has another problem.   

[Howard]

I've found time to look at this some more - using some of JohnBoy's suggestions.  I see I can widen a downsized window as much as I like and using the ALT+mouse method see the whole message, albeit in parts.

Maybe it's a line wrapping issue, but I cannot find how to change a setting for that.

[Howard]

I stumbled on a solution this morning.  The "content width" is determined by the amount of space needed to display all the material in the mail toolbar.  When I updated to KDE4 and TB3.0 Tb picked up all the icons from my earlier installation, 'icons + text', this made the toolbar very long.  When I switched to 'icons only' it all behaves as it should.  Just updating TB in KDE3 behaved differently, just giving the minimum basic icons, as options like "delete", "forward" etc now appear at the top of the message sub-window, so there was plenty of room.  The problem with this is that you cannot do bulk operations - like junking a dozen consecutive spam messages - this way, but you can put the icons back.  (Right click on the toolbar and select 'customise'.)

I think there still may be an issue here, I think the Toolbar should adjust to window width as they do in most other applications, but it solves my immediate problem - I can now read all my messages in full!

[ThirdOfSix]

Howard,

Well, I responded to your original post last night but wrote it in an editor window so that I would not lose it if it did not appear on the forum.

Then, I fell asleep before sending it.

I see that you have found a solution. But I'll send what I wrote anyway, it may help with some more clues.



I believe that this situation will be affected by choice of font and size.

So, for those of us who use a very large font it can be a real problem.

I used to have an add-on that allowed me to adjust this on the fly using the scroll wheel. But, it does not work with the latest version of Thunderbird.

Also, if this happens a lot, try changing the default layout to "Wide View"

You do this in view > layout.

That will give you a content pane that is the full width of your display.

Also, this can be affected by the format of the document that you are reading.

In View > Message Body As, you can change Thunderbird to show a letter as  Plain Text and sometimes get one that wants to disappear off the right side of the screen to wrap and display so that you can read it.

Most of the time I have mine set on Simple HTML which makes text come out as expected but gets rid of a lot of the other HTML crap that you don't want.

This can come in very handy on some forums that display oddly due to people posting in HTML complete with advertisements.

In general, the text on your content pane will wrap as you decrease the width of the pane until you reach a certain built in minimum. On both my Windows and PCLOS installs with the display set at 1024x 768, that happens at anything less than a 480 pixel width for the content window.

Now, as for the menu bars etc;  because you can customize the menus, you just have to rearrange and re-size things on the menu bar until everything that you want to show will fit in your preferred screen width.

The top bar that has the window control boxes on the right side will always automatically change position to match the window size that you drag to. Therefore, you do not have to worry about making things too small and losing the ability to recover.

Also, this is affected by the theme.

The menu bars can be customized to use smaller icons etc. and or to put the labels under the icons rather than beside them.

You do this by right clicking on a menu bar and selecting custom.

Different releases of Tbird have set different defaults for these things. So, that may be why you are seeing a difference between machines.

[Howard]

Thanks ThirdofSix, that's really useful.  Even though I'd discovered the solution to my immediate problem there's more there to play around with.  I'm glad you decided to post it.

Actually I was comparing the same version of TB on the same machine, but with different versions of PCLOS.  I have three: the current working one, the last working one, and the next one I'm trying out - at present these are 2009.2/KDE3.5 (don't touch anything that works), 2007 (frozen) and 2009.2/KDE4.3 (fully updated.)   I have to use 2007 sometimes as there's a minor sound problem with later versions that I haven't sorted out yet.