Comment 180 for bug 52667

In reply to comment #127:
> That would give us a combination of [dropdown] buttons that
look something like this.

Don't rush it... ;), but yeah, "something like this [outline above]" looks very good to me. Questions:

a) In which cases, if at all, will I see "reply all" as default?

b) There are different ways of realizing the dropdown functionality. Which of the two would you prefer?

Option 1: (static dropdown menu)
Dropdowns behave like a non-changing menu, i. e. after having executed "reply to sender only" from the first dropdown (as per the previous comment #127), I will still see "reply all | v" as the default option. Users who more often than not want "the other option" as default ("reply to sender"), will cry.

Option 2: (toggle-style/sticky dropdown menu)
Whichever dropdown option I choose, will become the new default option (on the fly) for that type of msg (news message, normal mail with multiple recipients etc.). E.g. after having chosen "reply to sender only", "reply to sender only" will then stick as a default option for say, the next mail I am reading that also has multiple recipients, until I execute "reply all" once again which will then in turn become the default option again. Such behaviour is common in other applications like MS Word, e.g. for setting table borders, colors etc.: whatever you pick from the dropdown becomes your new default for the time being.

Option 2 could make both sorts of users happy:
- those who usually use "reply all" will (usually) get this as their default
- those who usually use "reply to sender" will (usually) get this as their default
Therefore, I am biased in favour of option 2.

But why would people want to have "reply to sender" as their default reply action for mails with multiple recipients? There are many usage scenarios where in spite of multiple recipients, people might (per default) wish to reply to sender only, say leaders of any kind sending out a form or some task to a group of people where answers always go back to the central sender. Always and persistently defaulting to "reply all" in case of multiple recipients might be annoying for such users.