134158 - "Check for new mail at startup" (POP3) causes login but no message fetching

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect, P1)

Description

[Julien Pierre]

It is really hard for me to believe that this hasn't been filed before, because
the bug has been in at least since 6.2 (when I first started looking at
seriously using netscape6/mozilla for mail) and is still in the latest daily of
mozilla, on both Windows and OS/2. But I did a query and came up empty.

This bug happens with POP mail.

1) In the POP mail account "server settings", enable "Check for new mail at
startup".
2) Then exit mozilla and restart it.
3) Go to tasks/mail & newsgroups.
4) You get prompted for the POP server's password
5) However, no messages are fetched . You have to click on "Get msgs" to
actually fetch them.

This is a very upsetting bug. The checkbox says it will check for new mail at
startup, but all it did was cause a login to the server, without an actual
fetch. It makes the fetch a 2 step process.

What's even more upsetting is that if you don't enable that checkbox, go to
tasks/mail, and click "get msgs" for the first time, you'll get the login _and_
the message fetching will also happen. I want that behavior too with the
checkox. Otherwise the checkbox adds no value, it's still the same number of clicks.
I have been cursing at the Netscape6.2/mozilla mail every day at the office
because of this ...

Comment 1

[R.K.Aa.]

I believe there is one checkbox for "check for new mail at startup"
then one for "check messages every [ ] minutes"
and then the one for "Automatically download any new messages"

WFM on Linux/WinXP (when i check that third box)

Comment 2

[Julien Pierre]

I _don't_ want to "check mail every xxx minutes" or "automatically download new 
messages". What I want to do is get new messages at startup when I go to the 
mail program right after I prompt, or get new messages when I click "get new 
messages".

It doesn't make sense that with "check for new mail at startup" checked, Mozilla 
logs in to the POP server, then doesn't retrieve any messages.

In Netscape Communicator 4.x, it all works as expected the "check mail at 
startup" does the right thing, which is to login to the server _and_ immediately 
download the new messages.

This is what is hosed in Mozilla / Netscape 6.

Comment 3

[Julien Pierre]

I did a network trace and see that Mozilla is doing a login to the POP 
server on startup. I see the various pop commands, like USER, AUTH, 
PASS, UIDL going on. I see the POP server telling mozilla there is one 
message in the mailbox. But mozilla does not actually download the 
message on startup until the "get msgs" button is clicked.
I think this behavior conflicts with the name of the check box. I don't 
see the point of mozilla checking for messages and not giving any 
feedback to the user. The check box says "check for new mail at 
startup", not "login to the server at startup" - which would not be 
useful.

Comment 4

[selmer (gone)]

Please update this bug with an [adt1] - [adt3] impact rating (or take it off the
list if it doesn't even rate adt3.)  Thanks!

Comment 5

[Olga]

I am not sure, target milistone was set probably by the reporter.

Comment 6

[Julien Pierre]

Yes, I set the target. I don't know about the adt[x] priority though, since I 
don't directly work on the client but on NSS, so please set it for me.

Comment 7

[scottputterman]

Moving out and marking future.  We made this decision a while.  I think it's a
decision worth revisiting in a future release.

Comment 8

[Julien Pierre]

What what the decision based on ? The checkbox doesn't cause the application to 
do what it says - ie. it does not check for new mail at startup. I still think 
it's a bug for the current release.

Comment 9

[jglick]

I agree this is confusing. It has something to do with RFC's for POP vs IMAP and 
how POP accounts are "supposed" to behave. Maybe an engineer can explain this 
better than i can.

FYI, the spec for is here:
http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/specs/threepane/GetMail.html

1. In the Mail/News Account Settings: Server screen for IMAP and POP accounts, 
there will be a preference for each account to "Check for new mail at startup". 
This checks for new mail, instead of getting new mail. 

2.When the option is checked, biff is enabled to check for new mail. For IMAP 
accounts, message headers are loaded and biff icons are shown.  For POP 
accounts, biff icons are shown if new messages are on the server, but headers 
are not loaded. New messages on POP accounts are not downloaded until "Get Msg" 
is selected.  

Comment 10

[Julien Pierre]

I also see , in item 5 :

2.POP.  In 4.x,  a user authenticates to a server but still has to click "Get 
Msg" to initially receive their mail.  In this release,
    if a user has the "Log in to account at startup" pref set for an account, we 
will automatically fetch new messages once they
    authenticate to the server. 

There is no "log in to account at startup" preference .
And, the behavior described for 4.x is not true. In 4.x when you set "check for 
new mail at startup", it logs in to the server _and_ downloads new messages, 
without having to click Get Msgs. I want to be able to do the same thing in 
Mozilla. I don't care if there is more than one check box in mozilla preferences 
for this. But it it not possible today and i think that's a severe limitation.

Comment 11

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

I actually happen to agree with the reporter. The common behaviour for POP3
clients is to actually fetch the messages and then drop the connection, not just
do a knock-knock and let the user fetch them manually. I thought the whole point
of the "Check messages at startup pref" was to save the user the click on Get Msgs.

With IMAP, the current behaviour makes sense. Mozilla downloads the headers and
the user then fetches the message by just opening it. That's the way IMAP is
supposed to work.

Suggestions:
Either
1. Make the "Automatically download..." pref also apply to the startup check.
   (In the UI, remove the indention and the greying-out).
   Default should be on.
2. Add another "Automatically download..." pref specifically for the startup
   check. I.e. we would have 2 of those (on for periodically, one for startup.
   Default should be on.
3. Rename "Check for new ..." to "Get new ..." and make the pref actually fetch
   the messages.
None of that should change IMAP behaviour or UI.
If I were to choose, I'd go with suggestion 3..

Comment 12

[Julien Pierre]

Ben, Thanks for your comments.

Jennifer, thanks for the pointer to the document.

I think I begin to understand how this was done. I think the current design 
works well for IMAP, but really is not suited for POP.
Also, there is a platform issue.

I have been using mozilla on OS/2 with the following settings :
- edit/preferences/appearance/when mozilla starts up, open mail & newsgroups 
checked
- check for new mail at startup checked for my POP account

1) When I start up mozilla.exe, it brings up the mail window, and a dialog comes 
up prompting me for my POP password.
2) I enter my POP password
3) at that point, the login dialog disappears. There is no feedback whatsoever. 
In particular, there is no mention anywhere on the screen of how many 
unread messages there are in the POP mailbox.

This is, to say the least, an extremely confusing user interface !
The network trace does show that in 3), the client did in fact connect to the 
POP server and retrieve the number of messages on the server in the mailbox. But 
what good is it that we do this, if the information is not relayed to the user ?

To have anything useful happen, I'm forced to do :
4) click "Get Msgs", which then downloads the messages that are in the 
POP mailbox

So my suggestion is simply to combine the completely useless step 3) with step 
4), and remove the need for an extra click. That is, after the login to the 
server, immediately download both the message count and the messages themselves.

Now, let me get to the platform issue. If I use mozilla on Windows, after 3), 
there is some feedback, in the form of an icon in the Windows toolbar, that 
shows the number of messages in the POP mailbox. There is no such thing on OS/2. 
I haven't tried the Unix builds of mozilla so I don't know what happens there. 
I think it's a very bad idea to have the feedback for this be in a 
platform-specific widget. Even on Windows, I think it's very confusing that the 
feedback of the message count in is not displayed as part of the mail window, 
but somewhere on the toolbar. This is most confusing. I just don't see the value 
of doing these 2 steps independently for POP so I'd say there is no need for an 
XP widget and 2 separate steps - just do it correctly in one step, as 
Communicator did.

Comment 13

[Roland Steber]

Maybe this Information is useful:

I have error messages on my POP3 server (qpopper) when my wife connects to it
from our home PC. She also has the "Check for new mail at startup" setting
switched on (Mozilla 1.0 RC1). As described in earlier comments, no message will
be downloaded when mozilla-mail starts.

When mozilla.exe is not running the server say:
"-ERR Too few arguments for the auth command."
When the browser is running and mail is invoked, the server say:
"-ERR Unknown command: "xsender"."

When mozilla mail is running an I click "Get msgs" the client will make a normal
connect without any error message.

Regards
Roland

Comment 14

[rolux]

this bug should be renamed to something like:

"check for new mail at startup" (pop3) causes login and message fetching,
but does not give feedback"

my observation (with 0.9.x through 1.0.0, on both win and mac, even
though the startup behaviour may have varied slightly) is that:

- on startup, mailnews gets new mail, but doesn't give feedback in the
  status bar, while the "get msgs" and "stop" buttons are active but
  unresponsive

- when (re-)opening mailnews from within mozilla, mailnews gets new mail,
  but doesn't give feedback in the status bar, while the "stop" button
  is active and gives no feedback and the "get msgs" button is inactive
  AND WILL STAY INACTIVE AFTER MAIL IS RECEIVED, making mailnews useless
  until mozilla is closed and relaunched.

the latter is quite severe, and confirmed with 1.0.0 on mac os x.

Comment 15

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

bug 145341, which I think was fixed only on trunk and branch of 1.0.1, not 1.0

Comment 16

[scottputterman]

reassigning to naving

Comment 17

[Navin Gupta]

Attachment: proposed fix

I talked this w/ putterman and he basically wanted to do it for the default
account. So I made it as jglick suggested in that email. For pop3 accts if it
is the first default account then we set downloadOnBiff to true and also made
that it look like in the email. 

screenshot coming.

Comment 18

[Navin Gupta]

Attachment: server settings

Note that biff is on by default for pop3 servers.

Comment 19

[Navin Gupta]

cc cavin and bienvenu for review. 

Comment 20

[David :Bienvenu]

Has Jennifer approved this wording? Does it bother anyone that there's a
difference between checking for new mail, and downloading new mail? Checking for
new mail checks if there's any new mail and sets the new mail indicator.
Downloading new mail downloads the new mail.

Comment 21

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> Does it bother anyone that there's a
> difference between checking for new mail, and downloading new mail?

I assume so. Suppose you are on a 33k connection and someone mailed you a
collection of his vacation pics.

Comment 22

[David :Bienvenu]

yes, that's true. I'm also referring to the wording of the ui. Granted, many
users may not understand the difference, but I still think we should make the
wording of the UI reflect what's actually going to happen.

Comment 23

[jglick]

>but I still think we should make the
>wording of the UI reflect what's actually going to happen.

david, what would you suggest?

Comment 24

[David :Bienvenu]

"download new mail on startup", I guess.  Or, "get new mail on startup".

But we've also changed the default pref for biff downloading new mail to true to
make this happen. Is that right or am I confused? Do we really want to tie these
two things together? Wouldn't it be possible to have launching mail download new
pop3 mail without making biff always download new mail? I think the reporter
just wanted us to change the startup behaviour, not the biff behaviour.

Comment 25

[Navin Gupta]

I think wording is ok because both are separate prefs and this is just for
default account. 

@@ -900,6 +900,7 @@
     if (!(gDefaultAccount && gDefaultAccount.incomingServer.canBeDefaultServer)) { 
         am.defaultAccount = newAccount;
         newAccount.incomingServer.loginAtStartUp = true;
+        newAccount.incomingServer.downloadOnBiff = true;
     }
 }

I don't understand where the confusion is? The prefs do convey that we will be
downloading new mail. if they don't want it they can go turn off the pref as per
that email thread (downloading pop on startup)

Comment 26

[jglick]

For POP, this would still keep biff (check if there is new mail on server and 
shown an indicator) and actually downloading the messages separate.

All this change does is make "Automatically download new messages" Not a sub 
pref of "Check for new messages every X minutes". So, "Automatically 
download..." would now apply to Both "Check at startup" and "Check every x 
minutes". If user unchecks "auto download", but has either "check for new msgs" 
enabled, they only get biff.

As default settings, we would have "Check for new msgs at startup" enabled and 
"Automatically download new msgs" enabled. So on startup, user would check and 
download new msgs.

Do you not think that is appropriate?

Comment 27

[David :Bienvenu]

ah, ok, Jen, thx for the picture. That really demonstrates what's going on.  I
guess the answer to my question was no, you can't divorce the startup behaviour
re downloading msg bodies from the biff behaviour of downloading msg bodies, and
we're saying that's fine. As long as that's all understood, then the patch is
fine as is and no wording needs to be changed.

Comment 28

[David :Bienvenu]

Comment on attachment 100200 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

sr=bienvenu

Comment 29

[Cavin Song]

Comment on attachment 100200 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

r=cavin.

Comment 30

[Navin Gupta]

fix checked in. Existing users just turn on "Automatically download new
messages" to get this behvaior.

Comment 31

[Julien Pierre]

I installed build 2002093008 for OS/2. I don't see any new option, and the old
behavior is still there, I only get a login prompt, but the messages are not
fetched, I must still click on "get new msgs" to get the messages.
Since this was supposed to have been checked in last week, Im' reopening the bug.

Comment 32

[Navin Gupta]

Plese check "Automatically download new messages" in server settings to download
new messages. I cannot edit settings for existing accounts. 

Comment 33

[Julien Pierre]

You are right, the setting is there, but greyed out. The account was created as
a result of a migration from Communicator 4.6. I think it should be possible to
enable it, since many users who will migrate want that behavior to be the same
as in Communicator.

I was unable to create a new POP account in today's build (clicking "next" after
entering the server name has no effect) so I can't test if this works with a new
account.

Comment 34

[scottputterman]

It works with a POP account I had already created prior to the fix.  I selected
both Check New Mail at Startup and automatically download messages and when I
started up again, it prompted me for my password upon opening the mail window
and then downloaded my messages.

Comment 35

[Julien Pierre]

Scott,

I wish it worked for me too :)
Navin's comment #32 seems to imply that in some cases, the option may be
unavailable. What are the possible reasons for that ?

It sounds like I'm running into one such case, since the option is greyed out.

Comment 36

[Navin Gupta]

patch coming up.

Comment 37

[Navin Gupta]

Attachment: proposed fix

The problem was biff settings was disabling downloadOnBiff which isn't true
anymore. Remember, we have made it so that we can download messages when we
login at start up.

cavin, bienvenu, reviews ? thx.

Comment 38

[David :Bienvenu]

Comment on attachment 101287 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

sr=bienvenu

Comment 39

[Cavin Song]

Comment on attachment 101287 [details] [diff] [review]
proposed fix

r=cavin.

Comment 40

[Navin Gupta]

fixed

Comment 41

[Navin Gupta]

*** Bug 169337 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 42

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Cases tried:

4.x migrated profile into 10-24 trunk (option doesn't exist in 4.x on _startup_,
only 'every XXX minutes"):
 - password saved 
*  works as expected (retrieves messages)
 - password not saved
*  works as expected (doesn't retrieve until user auths and then performs GetMsgs)

7.0 RTM profile migrated:
| pref checked
  - password saved
  * works as expected (automatically downloads)
  - password not saved
  * works as expected (does nothing)
| pref unchecked
  - password saved
  * works as expected (nothing downloads)
  - password not saved
  * works as expected (nothing downloads)

Trunk 10-24 build:
| pref checked 
  - password saved
*   works as expected (automatically downloads)
  - password not saved
*   works as expected (nothing downloads)
| pref unchecked
  - password saved
*   works as expected (nothing downloads)
  - password not saved
*   works as expected (nothing downloads)

Julien, I believe I've covered all of the possible cases.  This works fine for
you now, too, right?

Comment 43

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Verified FIXED, see comments above.