1678220 - Attachments column in thread pane has become useless because of PGP keys, esp. Sent folder: How to tell apart attached keys from user-added file attachments?

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect, P3)

Description

[Mitra Ardron]

Its great that TB has included PGP without the buggy Enigmail extension BUT there are quite number of problems with usability (especially around practical key management in normal email flow) but the one I want to focus this bug on is ...

Every mail I've sent now appears to show an attachment because of the automatically attached OpenPGP...asc, which makes the attachment column of the listing 100% useless.

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Thanks Mitra!

+1, from an UX perspective, I second that. Attachment column should be about files/links/contents which have been actively attached, not about technicalities. Note that even before inbuilt openPGP, that column was lying more often than not.

Comment 2

[Mitra Ardron]

Oh, there are other bugs with that column - for example it often doesn't show an Attachment till you click on the line with the message, but I was trying to keep this bug report to one bug and presume that one has been reported already.

I'm glad that enigmail is gone, as it as seriously buggy - and even worse if you upgraded there was a significant chance of it not being supported and communications chains failing as the messages could no longer be decrypted. the bugs in the new implementation are more UX perspective - for example, Enigmail used to indicate there was a key to import - this version either doesn't indicate, or always indicates (even if the key is already imported). It also doesn't do a good job of defaulting to encryption or not depending on whether you have keys for the correspondants.

Hopefully since the implementation is fairly recent, whoever did it is still around.

Comment 3

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Oh, there are other bugs with that column - for example it often doesn't show an Attachment till you click on the line with the message, but I was trying to keep this bug report to one bug and presume that one has been reported already.

Thank you so much for the report, and for keeping the bug objective to a single element :D
There's currently bug 1640760, which will tackle the majority of UI and UX of the attachment pane.

Regarding the other OpenPGP UX issues you've listed, we have already various bugs dedicated to improving those aspects.
As you said, it's a pretty recent implementation so we're slowly improving every aspect of it. Apologies for the issues you encountered.

Every mail I've sent now appears to show an attachment because of the automatically attached OpenPGP...asc, which makes the attachment column of the listing 100% useless.

We had a discussion about "hiding" an attached OpenPGP, but I think we need to be careful regarding the conditions to do that. And of course, as a user actively using this feature, gathering your feedback would be much appreciated.

To kick things off, I think (and I might be wrong) that this conditions should have the priority.
Hide the attached OpenPGP Key, only if:

• The user already has that public key saved in the key manager
• The key matches both identity and fingerprint currently saved in the key manager
• Never show the attached key when the user composes the message, but rather show an icon in the compose window to let the user know that the public key has been attached

Kai, our security expert, will have more to say on this as I'm not 100% sure what might be the security and privacy implications for this implementation.

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani (:aleca) from comment #3)

Oh, there are other bugs with that column - for example it often doesn't show an Attachment till you click on the line with the message, but I was trying to keep this bug report to one bug and presume that one has been reported already.

Thank you so much for the report, and for keeping the bug objective to a single element :D
There's currently bug 1640760, which will tackle the majority of UI and UX of the attachment pane.
Bug 1640760 - Refactor and improve the UI of the attachment pane in the message compose window

Hmmm, no, there's a misunderstanding here: bug 1640760 is about refactoring the attachment pane in composition, and this bug 1678220 is about showing paperclip icon in the attachments column of the thread pane (in TB's main window), so they don't look related in any way.

Mitra's complaint here is that if sent messages which were sent out with user's PGP key are all showing an attachment flag, it's no longer possible to identify from thread pane which outgoing messages had an actual file attachment actively attached by the user.

Every mail I've sent now appears to show an attachment because of the automatically attached OpenPGP...asc, which makes the attachment column of the listing 100% useless.

We had a discussion about "hiding" an attached OpenPGP, but I think we need to be careful regarding the conditions to do that. And of course, as a user actively using this feature, gathering your feedback would be much appreciated.

To kick things off, I think (and I might be wrong) that this conditions should have the priority.
Hide the attached OpenPGP Key, only if:

• The user already has that public key saved in the key manager
• The key matches both identity and fingerprint currently saved in the key manager

Well, that's for incoming messages. This bug is starting out from Sent folder, which is different. My own key is always saved in the key manager, and hopefully it's matching everything as it should. So showing an attachment icon for all of my sent messages just because they had my key attached isn't helpful as it prevents seeing which message had "real" attachments.

• Never show the attached key when the user composes the message, but rather show an icon in the compose window to let the user know that the public key has been attached

That's composition, not this bug.

Kai, our security expert, will have more to say on this as I'm not 100% sure what might be the security and privacy implications for this implementation.

Maybe what this boils down to is implementing a separate iconic column in thread pane for attached keys, because to other users and use cases it might be important to know at a glance if the key was attached to certain sent/received messages or not.

Comment 5

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Ah, so sorry for misunderstanding this.
Indeed, a dedicated column for OpenPGP keys is needed.
Thanks for updating the summary.

Comment 6

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

I think we could mark as not having attachment if it's just the key. We already do that for vCards IIRC.
https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/862e050dfc9ae7a215e7b413b2b887df6dc77e17/mail/base/content/msgHdrView.js#695-696,698,708

Re buggy or not - tb will adjust the "has attachment" status when a message was viewed. That information isn't available from headers only, so parsing needs to happen before we know.

Comment 7

[Mitra Ardron]

I think the suggestion of a column for Encryption is worthwhile - it could also show when there are keys you don't already have (showing a key attached to a message when there is no info as to whether you already have it is next to useless IMHO), and for outgoing messages showing that you signed and/or encrypted a message.
And note - this isn't in the Sent folder (at least for me) these messages are filed various places (mixed with received messages on the same topic).

I would suggest a series of states for that column
For sent messages
a: signed (in which case, the presence or absence of your key is irrelevant.
b: encrypted (again, the key is irrelevant)
For received message
a: signed (presence of a key that needs importing should be indicated since it requires an action)
b: encrypted (again presence of key needing importing should be indicated).

Regarding the scanning of a message for attachments, didn't that used to happen automatically when the listing was generated BEFORE you clicked on a message? I'm almost certain this behavior changed recently.

Comment 8

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

(In reply to Mitra Ardron from comment #7)

Regarding the scanning of a message for attachments, didn't that used to happen automatically when the listing was generated BEFORE you clicked on a message?

No this is behaviour from way back.

Comment 9

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

I'd like to take on this bug, if no one else wants it :D

Comment 10

[u617804]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani (:aleca)[PTO: Dec 21 - Jan 3] from comment #5)

Indeed, a dedicated column for OpenPGP keys is needed.

+1

Comment 11

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani [:aleca] from comment #9)

I'd like to take on this bug, if no one else wants it :D

Everyone will be happy if you take this bug! :D

Comment 12

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

I'm not sure we should do this now since we're working towards removing the XUL tree and replacing it with our custom element, which will give us way more flexibility to show the user what's in that message.
We wouldn't uplift this to 91 for sure, so I think it might be better to fold this into the tb-deforestation project (bug 1724841) and defer it after it's done, before next ESR.

Comment 13

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

I don't think this is related to xul at all. It's about what we mark (however we display that) as having attachment. E.g. we do not mark messages with - technically - vCard attachments as having an attachment.

Comment 14

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Let's keep things simple for this bug.
Let's simply hide an attached OpenPGP key from being counted as attachment in the message thread column.
We will not implement a new OpenPGP Key column for now since we're soon dropping the XUL tree.

Comment 15

[Henry Wilkes (they/them) [:henry-x]]

Attachment: Bug 1678220 - Do not count pgp-keys attachments towards the message thread attachment icon. r=mkmelin

If a message only has a pgp-keys attachment, then we will not show it as having an attachment in the message thread, even though its attachment list is technically non-empty.

Comment 16

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/bcc038e23e0e
Do not count pgp-keys attachments towards the message thread attachment icon. r=mkmelin

Comment 17

[Henry Wilkes (they/them) [:henry-x]]

Does anyone want this uplifted to esr91? This seems more of a feature change than a defect from my perspective.

Plus, the patch here depends on the patch for bug 583572, which was marked as wontfix for esr91.

Comment 18

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Henry Wilkes [:henry] from comment #17)

Does anyone want this uplifted to esr91? This seems more of a feature change than a defect from my perspective.

Wearing my enterprise hat, I would love to see your patch uplifted to ESR91. Being unable to tell if incoming or outgoing messages have "real" attachments (as opposed to an OpenPGP key attached by default) is a major annoyance. In practice, e.g. this will make any text-only message from mkmelin look as if it had a file attachment, quite confusing!

Plus, the patch here depends on the patch for bug 583572, which was marked as wontfix for esr91.

I think uplifting your patch of bug 583572 will be equally beneficial (and with 2 files touched, hopefully not too hard), because not showing vcards in attachment list by default also looks like problematic behaviour given that the vcard might have multiple contacts, entire address books etc.

Thank you Henry for fixing these things! :-))

Comment 19

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I agree with Thomas. I would go so far as to say in the eyes of the user this is more bug than feature. Plus, we've got 10 more months of life in version 91. (But even if it were merely a feature, we do new features on esr.)

Comment 20

[Henry Wilkes (they/them) [:henry-x]]

Comment on attachment 9245954 [details]
Bug 1678220 - Do not count pgp-keys attachments towards the message thread attachment icon. r=mkmelin

[Approval Request Comment]
Regression caused by (bug #):
User impact if declined: Encrypted messages with no other attachments besides the pgp-key will continue to appear as having attachments in the message tree.
Testing completed (on c-c, etc.): No
Risk to taking this patch (and alternatives if risky): Low risk. The patch is very small, but it is a slight change in behaviour.
NOTE: Land after bug 583572 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=9244339)

Comment 21

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Comment on attachment 9245954 [details]
Bug 1678220 - Do not count pgp-keys attachments towards the message thread attachment icon. r=mkmelin

[Triage Comment]
Approved for esr91

We'll want to explicitly test this on the candidate

Comment 22

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Thunderbird 91.3.1:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-esr91/rev/617f088950c4