1883428 - Improve the needinfo email situation (use HTML, drop unnecessary emails)

Status: ASSIGNED

(bugzilla.mozilla.org :: Email Notifications, enhancement)

Description

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

[Filing this bug for an issue that I noticed with the bugmail that I received for bug 1883370 comment 4:]

STR:

1. Have a pending needinfo on some bug.
2. Type out some numbered list into a bugzilla comment, where you simply put 1. for every list entry, as I'm doing for the STR here, and make sure that you check the box to cancel your needinfo.
3. (optional) Use Preview view of your comment to confirm that Bugzilla renders the numbers as 1,2,3, etc.
4. Submit your comment.
5. Look at the email you receive.

ACTUAL RESULTS:
The email notification for "needinfo canceled" shows 1. for every list entry.

EXPECTED RESULTS:
The email notification should show 1,2,3, etc., matching the preview and actual rendered comment on the bug page.

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Hmm, actually comment 0 here did generate bugmail for me that had the proper numbering. I noticed this happening on another bug, though; I'll post a screenshot where I saw it.

Just in case this is specific to comments after the first one, let me try again here...

1. one
2. two
3. three

Comment 2

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: screenshot of the issue, in bugmail from bug 1883370

Here's a screenshot of the bugmail for where I saw this, which was the bugmail for
bug 1883370 comment 4.

(comment 1 here didn't trigger this issue for me either, so I'm unsure about the actual STR that are required to trigger this.)

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Kagami: do you know what happened here? Maybe you used some other way of getting a numbered list, different from what I wrote in comment 0 here? (I'm wondering how your bugzilla comment triggered this but mine don't seem to be triggering it. I suppose it's conceivable it was a one-off bugzilla hiccup or something, too.)

Comment 4

[Kagami Rosylight [:saschanaz] (they/them)]

(In reply to Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] from comment #3)

(In reply to Kagami [:saschanaz] (they/them) from comment #0)

Just got a report from a user that their notification now goes behind other windows

Do we have any more info on environment (i.e. affected system configurations) and/or STR?

Yup.

1. On Windows 11, set alerts.useSystemBackend=false
2. Open https://www.bennish.net/web-notifications.html
3. Click Authorize and then Show
4. Bring some other window over the notification and see if it goes behind the window

Just copypasted the same comment here, let's see. (But how are you triggering the bug yourself, is Bugzilla sending you notification for your own comment?)

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(In reply to Kagami [:saschanaz] (they/them) from comment #4)

Just copypasted the same comment here, let's see.

Interesting. I don't see the bug in the bugmail for this version of your comment.

(But how are you triggering the bug yourself, is Bugzilla sending you notification for your own comment?)

Yes, I've opted in to getting bugmail for my own bugzilla comments (I don't recall if that's on by default or not).

FWIW: using DevTools to inspect Gmail: in the affected bugmail-email over on bug 1883370 comment 4, I see a literal 1. in DevTools' view of the html markup for each of the list-entries; whereas it shows <ol>/<li> (good) for the bugmails where we have tried and failed to repro this on-demand on this bug here.

Comment 6

[Kagami Rosylight [:saschanaz] (they/them)]

Copypasting once more without any extra comment...

Comment 7

[Kagami Rosylight [:saschanaz] (they/them)]

(In reply to Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] from comment #3)

(In reply to Kagami [:saschanaz] (they/them) from comment #0)

Just got a report from a user that their notification now goes behind other windows

Do we have any more info on environment (i.e. affected system configurations) and/or STR?

Yup.

1. On Windows 11, set alerts.useSystemBackend=false
2. Open https://www.bennish.net/web-notifications.html
3. Click Authorize and then Show
4. Bring some other window over the notification and see if it goes behind the window

Comment 8

[Kagami Rosylight [:saschanaz] (they/them)]

Copypasting once more with NI, just to make sure the same configuration.

Comment 9

[Kagami Rosylight [:saschanaz] (they/them)]

(In reply to Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] from comment #3)

(In reply to Kagami [:saschanaz] (they/them) from comment #0)

Just got a report from a user that their notification now goes behind other windows

Do we have any more info on environment (i.e. affected system configurations) and/or STR?

Yup.

1. On Windows 11, set alerts.useSystemBackend=false
2. Open https://www.bennish.net/web-notifications.html
3. Click Authorize and then Show
4. Bring some other window over the notification and see if it goes behind the window

Comment 10

[Kagami Rosylight [:saschanaz] (they/them)]

It seems clearing NI is the trigger of the bug?

Comment 11

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: screenshot showing raw HTML (in devtools view of Gmail) for "bad" vs. "good" version of bugmail

(In reply to Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] from comment #5)

FWIW: using DevTools to inspect Gmail [...]

Here's a screenshot to illustrate this, comparing bug 1883370 comment 4 (affected) vs. this bug here's comment 4 (unaffected).

(In reply to Kagami [:saschanaz] (they/them) from comment #10)

It seems clearing NI is the trigger of the bug?

I don't think that's sufficient; I'm still not seeing the bug in the generated bugmail for any of your comments on this bug here, at least.

Comment 12

[Kagami Rosylight [:saschanaz] (they/them)]

The left version of your screenshot did not process blockquote either 🤔

Comment 13

[Kagami Rosylight [:saschanaz] (they/them)]

Can you NI me so that I can cancel it? I think it doesn't send you the raw text unless it's triggered by you.

You can include some markdown in the answer for fun.

Comment 14

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Here's a needinfo for you.

1. sorry
2. sorry
3. sorry

Comment 15

[Kagami Rosylight [:saschanaz] (they/them)]

Yeah, so your needinfo comment generated three emails:

1. "needinfo canceled" that has raw text with 1. 1. 1.
2. "needinfo requested" that also has raw text with 1. 1. 1.
3. A fully rendered HTML text that processed all markdown properly.

So I think it's needinfo that sends text/plain which caused confusion.

Comment 16

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Reviewing my bugmail: comment 15 seems to be correct, yeah. It's specifically the "needinfo [canceled|requested]" bonus bugzilla emails that are missing the nice HTML formatting, which means they end up having 1. 1. 1. rather than li elements, and raw > rather than blockquote, etc.

Comment 17

[Kagami Rosylight [:saschanaz] (they/them)]

Adjusting the title 👍

Comment 18

[:glob ✱]

The implementation of needinfo sits on top of "flags", which are plaintext only (bug 1410772 covers fixing that generically).

dkl and I were talking about needinfo emails in general a fortnight ago, with a goal of decoupling flagmail from needinfos so we can drop redundant emails and bring HTML support to them. This seems like a good bug to morph into that work.