164154 - HTML message: Save As | File using HTML format and inline/embedded or attached images are broken/missing (img src points to user's mailbox-message instead of data URI)

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Attachments, defect)

Description

[Ninoschka Baca]

Branch build 2002-08-22: WinMe
I couldn't find a specific bug reported on this.

Overview: Save a message in html format and the images appear broken when opened
from the browser.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Create a message with html text, attach a gif and jpg file
2. Send/receive the message
3. Select the message from the thread pane and notice that the graphic images
appear in the body of the message. Then select File|Save As|*.html (not sure
what to expect with eml)
4. From the browser open the just saved html file

Actual Results: The images appear broken
Expected Results: The images should display

Comment 1

[grylchan]

this might be a dupe but I can't find it.

Closest is this RFE bug 92036 but on mac.

Images are broken because we only save the mail
mesg and not the attachments in the mail mesg.

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Dupe of bug 88451?

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

My comment 2 is in error.

Bug 92036 is about asking for the option NOT to save attachments; this RFE 
applies for saving .EML files, not message-as-HTML.

Saving Message-as-HTML stores image-attachments as <IMG> tags with a src URI of 
the form 
  mailbox-message://[e-mail]/Folder#678443?
      header=saveas&part=1.3&type=image/gif&filename=netscape_logo.gif

This will break under any number of situations -- a different system, a 
different browser, a different profile, message removed from the folder, message 
position changed within folder.  However, Mozilla the browser won't display the 
image even if it is still in place.

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 187736 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[Joe Sabash [:JoeS1]]

Save as html should save the complete html document including the binary embeds.
References to mailbox-message cannot even be read by thunderbird itself.

EML saved files were supposed to provide a means of saving content outside of the user profile, to a degree, eml is better, as embedded content can be viewed, but not edited without loosing content.

Tested with:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091214 Shredder/3.0.1pre ID:20091214032014

Comment 7

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

After saving an HTML message with embedded inline images <img src="cid:...">, these images will be lost in the resulting HTML file, because of disfunctional and unstable src links to mailbox-message. That's datalossy at least.

IMO this could be addressed by converting inline images (and probably attached images, too) into HTML-embedded data URIs <img src="data:...">. Is that a viable solution (feedback pls)?

I believe that's better than (for each saved msg) creating HTML file with separate folder containing images sources on user's local store; Mozilla Archive File (*.maff) format would be ideal, but is not supported with other browsers afasik. Perhaps we could offer "Save As: *.maff" as another file type (needs new RFE).

Comment 8

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

OT sidenote (re: alternative formats for saving msgs as HTML):

Apart from .maff (zipped HTML file/folder structure), there's also MHTML:

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHTML:

"Although Firefox does not currently (v12.0) include support for MHTML without the use of add-ons, there is source code available for viewing MHTML files within the related Thunderbird project, indicating that future support in Mozilla software such as Firefox may become available without such add-ons. MHTML support has been filed as an unsolved issue within the Firefox project since 1999,[7] while progress in fixing it seems to be slow moving."

Comment 9

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Testcase: see bug 766679, attachment 643292 [details]