206681 - Need a way (pref) to stop attaching the images on Reply

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 161775

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[racham]

Today, when I try to send a reply to a message which has an image, Compose
window comes up with that image in it. As exchanging digital pictures is such a
common activity now, we need a way to speicify whether or not to have that image
quoted/included on reply. The likelihood of user who just sent you image
expecting to receive it as part of your reply, is very low. It will fill up the
mailboxes pretty quickly. Though, we can manually delete image as we reply, it
will be nice to have such a feature available. In order to serve those people
who don't mind the current behavior, the solution should come as pref (a hidden
pref if we do not have real estate for any more new prefs). I guess this can be
part of that dropdown which provides us reply quoting choices under
Edit|Preferences|Mail&Newsgroups|Composistion.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Open a mail message which has image (View inline)
2. Click on Reply button
3. Compose window that comes up has this image inline.

We need a way to probably retain any text sent along with message..but not the
image.

Comment 1

[Massimo Santoro]

I was going to add a new bug about it, but I found this previous report so I 
use it. I didn't figure it out until a client of mine used Thunderbird for the 
first time and she (of course) used the HTML composing feature. Replying any 
message with one or more attachements being images (prevalently JPG's), causes 
Thunderbird to quote the entire text AND the images. This is unacceptable 
because the majority of the emails with images are because of attached photoes 
(even VERY big photoes). This occasionally causes also very weird hungs in 
Thunderbird when handlink 4/5 big attached photoes.

Comment 2

[Theblueman]

This is also happening in Linux and should probably be changed to all OSes. 
Replies should never keep the attachment.  If the attachment is to be kept in
the email then forward should be used.  As mentioned earlier, the likelihood of
wanting to send the same attachment(s) to the person who sent them originally is
very low.  Mozilla has been like this for a while, I'm surprised there isn't
another bug filed for the same issue.

Comment 3

[Jeremy]

Thought it useful to copy my original post here:

---------------------------------------------------------------

When Forwarding an e-mail any attachment stays attached (attachments pane in the
compose window) but can be removed if required - CORRECT.

When Replying to an e-mail attachments are removed (CORRECT) but NOT images -
this is inconsistent within Thunderbird as well as other e-mail clients. It
seems to be that because an image attachment is embedded as a preview in the
original e-mail, it does not get removed on reply. Outlook Express does remove
image previews on reply for example.

The impact of this is that it's a pain!! Accidental reply to an e-mail with a
large image uneccessarily attached delays the reply and sends the originator
their image back!! Yes, the work around is to individually delete the images
from the Compose window but could the developers correct this asap please?

I can't find an extension that corrects / handles this satisfactorily (including
'Attachment Tools')

Many Thanks,
Jem

P.S Could we also have attachment sizes in the 'Attachment Pane' of the Compose
window along with the filename please???

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Bug 206793 comment 6 states that for quoted text -- forwards and replies -- we 
*should* be blocking images -- no pref needed.

See TB bug 263345.

Comment 5

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

Note this is also a privacy issue should any of the images contain tracking
information in the url ("web bugs").

Comment 6

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

I just changed bug 263345 to be a Core bug, since this problem (for FORWARDED 
mail) exists in TB and Mozilla.  *This* bug, for REPLIES, doesn't manifest in 
the suite, in my testing; but I'm still going to leave this as a Core bug until 
someone who knows better can explain why it shouldn't be.

Comment 7

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

OK, I need to apologize -- my comment 4 & 6 were about a different problem than 
the one this bug is about.

The problem of including attachments in the reply is not limited to images being 
included in an HTML reply; it's also the case if (for instance) a text 
attachment is displayed inline, and that message is replied to (as either plain 
or HTML).  
A workaround is to uncheck   View | Display Images Inline   before replying.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 161775 ***