Open Bug 1829790 Opened 1 year ago Updated 4 months ago

Make "View Message Body as" a per-message option

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, task)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Message Reader UI
Type:
task

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: TbSync, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

(Whiteboard: [Supernova3p])

There has been a change of behaviour for the action "View Message Body as" (which is toggling the preference mailnews.display.html_as).

In Thunderbird 102, a change of this preference only affected newly opened messages, not already opened ones. In Thunderbird 113 (maybe earlier), this now affects all opened messages.

It is no longer possible to view plaintext by default and only enable html view for individual messages.

Even though I understand the rationale to make the menu selection always reflect the reality, it does remove the option to enable html view on a per-message basis. The user could switch it to html view and then switch back to plain text view before loading another message. I agree that this workflow is not straight forward, but there is an add-on to simplify the switching process, and its existence shows the general need for such a view-this-message-as-html-on-demand workflow.

I would like to propose the following:

  1. Do not reload already opened messages when the preference is changed, but merely return to treat it as a default value for newly opened messages.

  2. Rename the "View Message Body As" menu entry in the global mail-menu in a way to indicate it refers to a default.

  3. Rename the "View Message Body As" menu entry in the message menu (behind the dropdown in the message header area) in a way to indicate it refers to this message only.

  4. Make that menu entry not toggle the global preference, but only change the view mode of this one message (we probably have to store the default value as a local value into the message window when it is first opened and only use that for rendering).

I could then make the per-message-state available to add-ons through the messageDisplay API and allow add-ons to toggle the display mode of the currently viewed message (in addition to the already existing menu entry behind the dropdown in the message header area).

Whiteboard: [supernova3p]
Whiteboard: [supernova3p] → [Supernova3p]

Looks like the pref is now observed:
https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/fdb79ff0f1be77d6ada7baa02cd721ec0770a956/mail/base/content/aboutMessage.js#255
Previous behavior can be restored by removing this line. The question is: Why was it added when there was no such code in TB 91:
https://searchfox.org/comm-esr91/search?q=mailnews.display.html_as&path=&case=false&regexp=false
Note: A search on comm-esr102 already shows the line in question, but aboutMessage.js wasn't active in that version.

Do not reload already opened messages when the preference is changed, but merely return to treat it as a default value for newly opened messages.

I support this, because of security / privacy concerns when reloading all opened mails.

Rename the "View Message Body As" menu entry in the global mail-menu in a way to indicate it refers to a default.

Maybe not necessary, if the following is done:

Rename the "View Message Body As" menu entry in the message menu (behind the dropdown in the message header area) in a way to indicate it refers to this message only.

Would be helpfull to reduce support requests.

Make that menu entry not toggle the global preference, but only change the view mode of this one message (we probably have to store the default value as a local value into the message window when it is first opened and only use that for rendering).

I could then make the per-message-state available to add-ons through the messageDisplay API and allow add-ons to toggle the display mode of the currently viewed message (in addition to the already existing menu entry behind the dropdown in the message header area).

Would be great to have all these steps done!

Do you see a realistic chance to implement this already for the Supernova release? Is there any approval from the core team at all?

(In reply to Alex Ihrig [:Thunderbird_Mail_DE] from comment #3)

Do you see a realistic chance to implement this already for the Supernova release? Is there any approval from the core team at all?

String freeze on May 18

As a user of Allow HTML Temp addon (https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/allow-html-temp/) I was just bit by this change after upgrading to 115.

I don't get the rationale of the removal. Even more so - this should have been an option in the Thunderbird itself without the need to rely on extension.

Is there a possibility to restore the functionality?

(In reply to wojtek from comment #5)

As a user of Allow HTML Temp addon (https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/allow-html-temp/) I was just bit by this change after upgrading to 115.

I don't get the rationale of the removal. Even more so - this should have been an option in the Thunderbird itself without the need to rely on extension.

Is there a possibility to restore the functionality?

This bug here is a proposed new feature for Thunderbird, which would introduce a basic functionality to have HTML allowed for the just selected and displayed message. And this bug would give us the possibility to develop a new version of "Allow HTML Temp", which would just provide a simple button to enable HTML for the displayed message.

This bug here has not removed anything ;-)

SOT: Well, if something was working before (i.e. there was something that facilitated it) and now it's not possible to make it work (hence lack of something that facilitated it) thus my layman conclusion was that something was removed. But this is very scholar discussion about semantics ;-)

All in all, would be awesome if whatever is lacking would be included in new versions of Thunderbird to be able to see plain text messages by default and only in certain situations fallback to html if required.

The user could switch it to html view and then switch back to plain text view before loading another message.

Our whole office is using this workflow, and it has just been broken by Thunderbird 115.

We strongly support John's request. The cumbersome switching via menu is inconvenient and steals productivity time.

Would be great if the devs could chime in here.

As a privacy and security concerned program TB should keep the option for this fature.
The add-on Allow HTML Temp has not only the option to switch between plain text and (full) HTML but also simple HTML. This allows to more easily read complex messages while preserving security. This feature, too, should be available further.

I support the statements made here and would like to see the conditions created for further use.

+1
I use plain text view only, but sometimes attachments are missing that are only available in the html part of the message. For this reason I would like to have the ability to toggle just this message as was possible with Allow HTML temp.

(In reply to betterbird.project+8 from comment #12)

Is this bug still required?

Yes, it is. The Add-on is still only possible by using an own experiment API, which will end at some point in the future.

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