Bugzilla

(In reply to Henry Wilkes [:henry] from comment #53)
> The "ask" dialog was only shown if the user set `mail.default_html_action` to "ask" (or for newsgroups). But the discussion here has been about users who have set `mail.default_html_action` to "plain". Such users would not be effected by the loss of the "ask" dialog, and never had a safety mechanism in place. Users that had set "ask", will now send both html and plain text unprompted.

I know. The safety measure was (orignally) that the Ask dialog was the default, and users would have typically been going through that dialog. And then get annoyed about the dialog. And then set this preference, to always make this choice. But having seen the dialog, they would have been warned multiple times. That was the design. And then somebody went and didn't understand all that and changed the default from "Ask" to "Both". What we should have done instead was to keep the default at 0 = Ask, and add a "[ ] Remember this decision" checkbox in the dialog, which then sets the preference. So, users would see the warning once before making a choice.

Today, this is accessible only via preferneces. Users who change this preference know exactly what they are doing. Hey, it's even in the word: "Plain text" implies that colors cannot show. So, when you explicitly and deliberately go into preferences and set this option, you know what you are doing and that you cannot make your text blue nor set the font.

(In reply to Henry Wilkes [:henry] from comment #53)
> The "ask" dialog was only shown if the user set `mail.default_html_action` to "ask" (or for newsgroups). But the discussion here has been about users who have set `mail.default_html_action` to "plain". Such users would not be effected by the loss of the "ask" dialog, and never had a safety mechanism in place. Users that had set "ask", will now send both html and plain text unprompted.

I know. The safety measure was (originally) that the Ask dialog was the default, and users would have typically been going through that dialog. And then get annoyed about the dialog. And then set this preference, to always make this choice. But having seen the dialog, they would have been warned multiple times. That was the design. And then somebody went and didn't understand all that and changed the default from "Ask" to "Both". What we should have done instead was to keep the default at 0 = Ask, and add a "[ ] Remember this decision" checkbox in the dialog, which then sets the preference. So, users would see the warning once before making a choice.

Today, this is accessible only via preferences. Users who change this preference know exactly what they are doing. Hey, it's even in the word: "Plain text" implies that colors cannot show. So, when you explicitly and deliberately go into preferences and set this option, you know what you are doing and that you cannot make your text blue nor set the font.