101891 - attachment list box lacks info to know what will happen if opened

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

There needs to be a way to see the MIME type and size of an attachment without
attempting to open it.

The attachment list box shows only a "name", which is useless in predicting
what will happen if I attempt to "open" it.  There's no way for me to look and
see what is the mime type of the attachment, or its size, before opening it.  
The only info I have is the useless name.  I may not want to open the 
attachment if it is a PDF file, or some movie file, even if it is "safe" to 
do so.  But with N6 the attachment list lacks any reasonable basis upon which 
to make such a decision.

Communicator used to show attachments as links in little tables in line.  
The right side of the table included MIME information such as MIME type, 
and other relevant info.  So, it was possible to know at a glance whether 
there was any risk in opening the attachment or not, and to predict what
the attachment was likely to do (e.g. to start real player or a PDF viewer).

Comment 1

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

With Communicator, I never feared any unexpected behavior from opening an
attachment because I could predict what would happen.  With N6 I cannot.

I feel no safer opening attachments with N6 than with MSOE.  Both N6 and
MSOE claim to have features that will protect me by putting up dialogs
before doing "dangerous" things.  I prefer to trust my own judgement about
that, based on MIME type, than to rely on same bits in a registry somewhere
that might not be what I expect them to be.

Comment 2

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

No action in 6½ years, not blocked by another bug.
Setting HW/OS to All/All.
QAContact is not reading bugmail, resetting.
AFAICT, this bug is still valid.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9pre) Gecko/2008052801 SeaMonkey/2.0a1pre

Comment 3

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

Maybe the problem is that this bug is filed against SeaMonkey instead 
of against core/mail or Thunderbird.
As a SM user, I never know when a mail problem is rightfully filed against
SM or against core/mail or against TB.  I expect the mail or SM experts to
help sort that out.  

I wish we could have ONE product against which ALL mail bugs were filed,
regardless of SM, TB, or what program it's bundled in.

Comment 4

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

The problem is that most of the front-end code is forked.  So Thunderbird has this problem as well, but it's very likely to be fixed separately.  :-/

Comment 5

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

I spun off a more general Thunderbird version: bug 436555.

Comment 6

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

Attachment: screen shot of message header pane with attachments pane

The attached small screen shot shows an email message header pane 
with the attachments pane present.  The attachment pane says the 
attachment is a file named "scan0001.jpg".  But we know that email 
attackers who try to infect systems often put false file names on
the files they send.  Sending executables or other dangerous types
disguised as images is very common.  SM decides what to do with the
attachment based on the MIME content type, if I'm not mistaken, but 
that information is not present in this display.

This RFE says: give me enough info that I can tell what's really going
to happen with the attachment if I "open" it.