[bkonia]

Originally Posted by phoenix

Yes, but the double-click on a conversation just opens the most recent post in that conversation. What's the difference between that and your idea?

There is a huge difference.

If you double-click on a conversation, that replaces the top pane with the messages associated with the conversation, rather than the messages associated with the folder. My goal is to be able to view the most recent message in the conversation in a reading pane, while maintaining the folder context, rather than switching to the conversation context.

Currently, single-clicking on a message in conversation view does nothing. This is counter-intuitive. When you single-click on an item in virtually every email client (including Zimbra, in the message view mode), you get a preview of the current message. Therefore, why not give the user this option in conversation view? I'm not asking for a change in any existing behavior. I'm just asking that a reading pane be made available, which would be consistent with the single-click behavior in the message view mode.

If you just want the most recent messages then the alternative is 'by message', surely one of those option is what you're describing?

The problem with viewing "By Message" is that you lose the benefit of conversation grouping. All the messages in the conversation show up in the folder view, creating a lot of clutter. I want to keep everything grouped in conversations to avoid clutter and provide easy access to previous messages in the thread. However, I still want to be able to view the most recent message in the reading pane.

The point is that most of the time you don't need to look at previous messages in a conversation. If you've been emailing back and forth with someone, you normally don't need to review the prior messages in order to reply to the most recent message. Thus, in most cases, the reading pane is the way to go. It's faster to single-click and it maintains the folder context. However, there are times when you do want to be able to view the entire conversation and if this feature request were implemented, it would leave the existing double-click behavior unchanged. Therefore, it would give you the best of both worlds!