119594 - Preserve message background images and colors in reply

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Composition, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

When replying to an e-mail where a background image was used, the 
reply should use that background image of the original message as its 
own background.  In addition, any embedded pictures should also be 
included with the original message.

Comment 1

[Sheela Ravindran]

reporter,
are you using recycle compose window? If so then this is a dup of bug 115855
Give more details like build id and steps to reproduce.

Comment 2

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

I am using build "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC; en-US; rv:0.9.7) 
Gecko/20011221".    I will add four attachments showing screenshots of 
the issue.   [OriginalMsg.jpg] -- The original message, sent using 
stationery in Outlook Express for Windows, is displayed in Mozilla.  
[ReplyInComposeWindow.jpg] -- The reply to the message, shown in the 
Compose window of Mozilla reached by clicking Reply on the toolbar.   
[ReplyAsReceived.jpg] -- The reply, sent from Mozilla, as displayed in 
Mozilla when the reply is received.    [ReplyOE.jpg] -- The reply sent from 
Mozilla as displayed in the Macintosh version of Outlook Express, also 
noting that the original font "Trebuchet MS", which was used to compose 
the original message in OE for Windows, did not display in Mozilla at all 
but did display again in OE for Mac.  Trebuchet MS is not the default font 
for HTML in either OE for Windows or for Mac so there really is a HTML tag 
specifying that font... which Mozilla did not read.

Comment 3

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Attachment: Original message, displayed in Mozilla

Comment 4

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Attachment: The reply sent from Mozilla, as received in Mozilla

Comment 5

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Attachment: The reply, as shown in the Compose Reply window of Mozilla.

Comment 6

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Attachment: The reply sent from Mozilla, as viewed in OE for Mac.

Comment 7

[Sheela Ravindran]

Confirming based on the screen shots attached by the reporter. We do have some
known issues in displaying background color and images with mail messages in
general.  
Nominating this bug. We should preserve the background color and images on mail
messages.

Reporter,
Have you edited your pref.js file to include to use recycle compose window?

Comment 8

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Not fixed yet in 0.9.8 -- does anyone know the target milestone on this 
bug?   

Comment 9

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

No, I am not using Recycle Compose Window.    All my settings in Mozilla 
are those set in the Edit>Preferences panel; I have not modified any .js 
files.

Comment 10

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Any way this can make 0.9.9 or 1.0?

Comment 11

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Why is this marked "nsbeta1-" in keywords?    Can someone explain this?

Comment 12

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

I think this should be included in Mozilla 1.0 and the next releases of 
Netscape.

Comment 13

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Changing OS and platform to All (from Macintosh and Mac System 9.x).   
Any explanation on why this has a nsbeta1- keyword?    

Comment 14

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

It's not a trivial problem. The solution is not to set the body background image
or colors as of the original message but rather to set the property of just the
quoted text. I don't know if I'll have time to do that for 1.0

Comment 15

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

It would also be acceptable to let the background image of the original 
message be used as the background of the reply.    In my opinion, this 
would be preferable.

Comment 16

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Does the nsbeta- indicate this will not show up in any Netscape builds or 
just the next release?

Comment 17

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

it means it's unlikely it will make it for 1.0

Comment 18

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Should I remove the 1.0 keyword?   Is 1.1 or 1.2 a better milestone to enter?

Comment 19

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

One other issue I noticed that fixing this bug would also fix...  If I click 
Reply to a message with a background that uses white text, the background 
doesn't show up (the reason for filing this bug).  However, unless I change the 
color of the text in the outgoing message, it will be white.  White on a white 
background means the recipient thinks I sent a blank e-mail. 

Comment 20

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

May be dependant on bug 97092 (Compose HTML mail WYSIWYG).   Without 97092 
fixed then the background (and other components of the rich HTML message) may 
not display correctly in the compose window.

Comment 21

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Using "Edit Message as New" preserves the background image.    If there was some
way to copy some of the code used to generate the Edit Message as New window
then fixing this bug would be easier.  

Also, most e-mail backgrounds are actually tiled small images.

Comment 22

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Another comment on this bug...
   I get a good deal of e-mail from people who use background images in e-mail.   
Sometimes when they use light-colored text it doesn't show up well on a white 
background when I reply (since the background isn't preserved).   Other times my 
message is indented heavily for no apparent reason (because the stationery file the 
sender used had a wide left banner).   Preserving the background would make my 
replies look MUCH better.
    Wouldn't this be as simple as programming the Reply button to check for a background 
on the original message, and if present, save it to the user's system TEMP folder, then 
apply that image to the new message as its background image?    Or would it not be that 
simple to program that procedure?    

I'm looking forward to 1.2 alpha!

Comment 23

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Add some code to the process that occurs when Reply is clicked:
   Click Reply
     Check message source for background images
          1. Is message text/plain?  If Y, create compose window.  If N, continue...
          2. Are user's preferences set to compose mail plain text? If N,
continue, if Y, draw plain text compose window.
          3. Is there a background color (e.g. bgColor=3D#000000)
          4. Is there a background picture or stationery?  
 <BODY style=3D"BACKGROUND-REPEAT: repeat-y" text=3D#ff8080 =
bgColor=3D#000000=20
leftMargin=3D110 =
background=3Dcid:004401c2290a$832a8990$010432d1@computer>

     If Yes to 3, prepare to apply background color to message.
     If Yes to 4, save background image to temp folder.
  If Yes to either 3 or 4, display dialog "Do you want to apply background from
original message to your reply?" Yes   No   (also available as an option in
Preferences "Preserve background in replies").
    If No is clicked, create compose window.
    If Yes is clicked, apply background color to message and use image saved to
Temp as background for new message.

  ** If no temp folder exists then create Temp folder in Mozilla subdirectory or
in browser cache **


    
 

Comment 24

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Background colors aren't preserved either.

Still on target for 1.2?

<<revised summary>>

Comment 25

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

1.2 alpha freeze date is very soon -- need to either land this patch or else
postpone to 1.2 beta or later.

Comment 26

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Marking as "4xp" because Communicator 4.8 has this feature.   Target milestone 
changed to 1.2 beta; can we get this accepted for Netscape (nsbeta1+) and landed for 
1.2 beta or 1.2 final?

Comment 27

[Michael Lefevre]

Joel - you shouldn't change target milestone or priority unless you are the
owner of the bug, even if you think they're wrong.  those settings are for
the owner to prioritise their work - you don't get to decide what
people are working on (unless you're employing them...)

Comment 28

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Goodness me, no. If someone is crass enough to send me some coloured, styled,
bloated, fontified rubbish purporting to be an email (it's about the information
content, people), I definitely don't want my reply to them to be similarly infected.

Just my view. And no, I don't have time to hang around in this bug and argue
about it. :-)

Gerv

Comment 29

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Sorry to say this, but this is probably the most desperate bug report I have
ever seen. There are 22 comments from the reporter himself, ouf ot a total of 28
comments! That's pretty amazing. 

Comment 22:
> Wouldn't this be as simple as programming the Reply button to check for
> a background on the original message, and if present, save it to the
> user's system TEMP folder, then apply that image to the new message as
> its background image?

Maybe. Why don't you try it yourself? ;)

> I'm looking forward to 1.2 alpha!

It's already out! Enjoy!

In comment 25 you talk about landing "this patch". What patch? I don't see a
patch in the attachment list. If you have a patch waiting for review, then
please attach it to the bug report. Or are you waiting for someone else to fix
this bug for you? Also, as Michael pointed out, you should never change the
target milestone unless you are the assignee to this bug.

Gerv says he wouldn't want this to be fixed. That's his strong opinion, but I
think many people will agree that this is not an important bug to fix, which is
why no one have fixed it yet. Complaining about it won't make the volunteers
work faster.

Just my two cents.

Comment 30

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

In reply to Comment #29 -- 

Many apologies.  I would hope that it would be fixed at some time but will let
the programmers determine the schedule.   No more bug spamming.  ;-) 

-Joel

Comment 31

[Samir Gehani]

Mail triage team: nsbeta1-

Comment 32

[nebigredfan]

This "feature" would not likely be used at all in business/corporate settings
and when added should have an option to be disabled.   On the other hand, when
communicating with family/friends this might have a place.   I would be for
adding this but making it an option to disable the feature.   This could be done
just as in 4.7x with the addition of the preference to disable rich-content replies.

Comment 33

[Joel Nelson (don't send email)]

Switching RFE to Thunderbird
Best as extension rather than in program code (to reduce bloat)

Comment 34

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Per reporter's comment 33, changing this to an enhancement request.
Moving to Core -- a fix for this would by default be part of both TB and the 
suite.

See also bug 204974, which is about preserving original message's font in a 
reply.

Comment 35

[Rachel]

I'd like to add my comments to this bug.  Using Thunderbird 1.5.

I received an HTML message which has a background image - it was specified something like this (using brackets just to make sure this doesn't format as HTML):

[head]
[style]
  body { background-image:url('http://www.domain.com/myimage.gif'); }
[/style]
[/head]

When I did a reply/forward, my message composition window kept the background image, but as soon as it was sent, it lost it (confirmed by viewing the message in my Sent Items folder).  When I did a Message Source on the Sent Items message, the code looked more like this:

[head]
[style]
body { background-image: url('<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.domain.com/myimage.gif">http://www.domain.com/myimage.gif</a>'); }
[/style]
[/head]

So, it seems that Thunderbird is processing the "http" text as a link, which is incorrect in this case.  If you can just fix that, that should solve my problem of why the background image isn't showing up.

Comment 36

[Rachel]

One more thing - keeping the background image as part of the reply is how Outlook works, and not that Thunderbird has to be exactly like Outlook, but for those who design HTML emails (like me), it would be nice for them to be compatible with something like this.  Thanks.

Comment 39

[Jacckma]

Thankyou for this post it is working great For me