209744 - "Compose messages in HTML format" option is in a silly place (should move to Preferences or to outgoing/SMTP account settings)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[Christopher Heiny]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030507
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030507

When playing with your mail preferences, most options relating to the
composition of messages are located quite sensibly under "Preferences":"Mail &
Newsgroups":"Composition".  Except one of the most important ones, which is
inexplicably stuck way over in an entirely unrelated window: the "Mail &
Newsgroup Settings...":"<account name>", in the "Identity" box.

Maybe it's just me, but when thinking about the format I want for my outgoing
messages, the last thing I associate with that is the identity information for a
particular account.  I suspect there are other people who think this way, too.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Try to find the button to specify the format for outgoing messages.
2. Look in all the logical places, and eventually give up.
3. Find it by accident many days later when changing my signature.

Actual Results:  
I was exceedingly annoyed.  It really detracted from the pleasingness
(pleasantness?  something like that) I associate with most other aspects of Mozilla.

Expected Results:  
Put this setting in a sensible place, with all the other format related settings.

Comment 1

[Patrick]

This is a per account setting, not a global preference

Comment 2

[Christopher Heiny]

> This is a per account setting, not a global preference

The whole point of this report is that it is silly for it to be a per account
setting.  It's not how people think about formatting messages, is it?

[A quick poll around the office here shows that 8 out 8 eight firmware engineers
think composition related preferences belong with composition related
preferences, not with the per account settings.  OK, I can vouch that firmware
engineers are just plain odd to start with, but I don't think we're so odd that
it's not a representative sample.  Granted, it was also an unscientific poll,
but even the IE users think that (a) html vs. plain text is part of the message
formatting preferences rather than a per account setting and (b) such
conceptually related information should be grouped together.]

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Confirming.  I've always found this to be ridiculously unintuitive...

Comment 4

[Damian Yerrick]

I too find associating the setting to a POP or IMAP account silly.
Associating the setting to an SMTP account, on the other hand, may have
merit.  For example, a company may have a policy to use HTML for internal
communication ([e-mail]), but an employee may want to use plain
text for personal messages ([e-mail]).  This is why I initially
held back on confirming this RFE, because I wondered if mozilla.org had
a reason for putting the pref in Account Settings.

That said, I'd be happy with moving it to preferences.  In fact, IE's
behavior agrees with this RFE, as Outlook Express 5 and 6 put the text
vs. HTML pref in Options > Send rather than somewhere in Accounts.

Comment 5

[Karsten Düsterloh]

I think it belongs where it is now, because you may want use
- HTML for your office mails (ugh!)
- plain text for private mail
- HTML for your office news server (double ugh!)
- plain text for serious news servers

So, a per account (or better: per identity) setting is very reasonable.

A general default pref (that gets overruled by the account setting) would be
nice, though.

Comment 6

[Damian Yerrick]

"Where it is now" is with POP servers and IMAP servers, which makes no sense.
I'd associate the choice of composition format more with sending mail (SMTP)
than with receiving mail (POP and IMAP).

Or, as comment 5 suggests, associate the pref with a profile.  If we set
it as per-profile rather than per-SMTP/NNTP account, then why not move
it to Preferences:Composition?

So here are the three choices:

 A. associate the pref to a POP or IMAP server (current solution)
 B. associate the pref to an SMTP server
 C. associate the pref to a profile and move it to Prefs:Composition
    (Outlook Express's solution)

I'm voting for B or C.  Can we get some UI design people in on this bug?

Comment 7

[Karsten Düsterloh]

> "Where it is now" is with POP servers and IMAP servers,

And with news accounts ...

> which makes no sense.

... which makes perfectly sense, just as with POP3 and IMAP.

(I sense a difference in opinion here. ;-) )

> I'd associate the choice of composition format more with sending mail
> (SMTP) than with receiving mail (POP and IMAP).

What's with news?
What's if I have several mail accounts that use just my default mail server, but
I want HTML composition for one and plain text for the other?

> Or, as comment 5 suggests, associate the pref with a profile.

I said and meant *identity*. You can (via user.js) have several identities for
one account.

> then why not move it to Preferences:Composition?

Because it is not a global setting.

> A. associate the pref to a POP or IMAP server (current solution)

You forgot NNTP server here in A.

> B. associate the pref to an SMTP server

Makes no sense with NNTP.

> C. associate the pref to a profile and move it to Prefs:Composition
>    (Outlook Express's solution)

What profile? The Mozilla profile? That would be global pref then, yes, but that
would be a jump backwards, we'd lose configurability.

Comment 8

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

It would be silly to do it global.

I send HTML mails internal (office) and i send text mails with my other private
Account and Newsgroups.

Comment 9

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

I agree with Karsten that it should be a per-account setting, for all the 
reasons listed.  I agree that it is not really an "Identity" issue except in the 
abstract sense of identity=account.  I would suggest one of the following:
 - move the 'Compose' checkbox out of the Identity group into its own group 
   on that page (or floating external to a group); or
 - rename the 'Addressing' page to 'Composition', surround the current controls
   there with an 'Addressing' groupbox, and move the 'Compose with HTML'
   checkbox to that page in another group, or floating external to a group.

Having an account-specific Composition page would also open the way for the 
long-fought-for account-specific top-/bottom- posting.  In fact, all the items 
on Preferences|Composition might be better account-specific; I know I've seen 
requests for account-specific character coding, for instance.

It might also be useful to place a note in the Preferences|Composition page 
indicating that the HTML Compose preference is account-specific.

Comment 10

[Ian Beyer]

I agree. I searched for it for ages before having someone point it out to me in
its current locaiton, which is the most bizarre place for it. Logic *would*
dictate that it be under the composition settings. 

Comment 11

[Christopher Heiny]

> What profile? The Mozilla profile? That would be global pref then, yes, but that
> would be a jump backwards, we'd lose configurability.

I question whether configurability for configurability's sake is actually a step
forward.

Yes, users want things to be configurable.  But if making things more
configurable actually makes them harder and less pleasant to use, why do it?  It
doesn't matter if feature X is infinitely configurable if the users cannot find
the place where they manage that feature's settings.

One of Mozilla's big advantages over other browsers and mail clients is that
configuration information is (usually) organized so that conceptually related
settings are grouped together.  This is a glaring exception to that nice rule.

Several people have presented the example that they want to post html to
newsgroups and plain text to this email account and Univac doc format from that
email account.  I want to use one setting for all accounts, regardless of
whether they're POP or IMAP or NNTP, or whether the outgoing server is SMTP or
NNTP.  [just a moment]  OK, quick survey of the same 8 firmware guys mentioned
above.  7 out of 7 available (the other was out to lunch) just want to use the
same format for everything.  Some want HTML, some want plain text, but all were
of the opinion that when they want something else, it's on a message specific
basis and they'll use the composer menus to switch.

It sounds like what is really wanted is a global setting in the Composition
preferences, with the ability to override on a per account basis (say, a
tri-state radio button of Use Global Setting|Html|Plain Text).

Comment 12

[Patrick]

Christopher: why did you change this back from ALL / ALL to PC / Linux?

Comment 13

[Christopher Heiny]

>Christopher: why did you change this back from ALL / ALL to PC / Linux?

It wasn't intentional.  Here's what happened:
- I started composing a reply to Comment #7 soon after it was added
- an all afternoon meeting intervened
- got back, saw there were more comments, so I clicked reload
- page updated with new comments.  My partially typed reply was still there in
the "Additional Comments" box, so I finished it up and hit commit

I didn't check to see if any other fields had changed in the form, since I
hadn't changed any but the Additional Comments.  But it appears that Mozilla
retained the old values of the Hardware/OS fields.  I've reset them back to
their original values.

Interestingly enough, this sequence did NOT stomp on the intervening changes to
the CC field.

I'll file a bug over at bugzilla.org.

Comment 14

[Christopher Heiny]

> I'll file a bug over at bugzilla.org.

I don't know what got into me.  More likely it's that sufficient caffiene is not
in me this early.  It's a browser bug, not a Bugzilla bug.

Anyway, see bug 210095.

Comment 15

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 128192 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 16

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

I see that in Moz 1.5, my suggestion in comment 9 has been followed (except 
for the idea of putting a note on Preferences|Composition pointing to the 
account-settings Composition/Addressing page).

What to do with this bug?  Christopher Heiny, it seems that the preference is 
going to remain account-specific.  Is the new location of the preference less 
"silly"?  I think this bug should be resolved either as WorksForMe or WontFix.

Comment 17

[Christopher Heiny]

Well it's an improvement, and it is a easier to find the particular desired setting.  
However, it is certainly not a "Works For Me" from my point of view.  There are still 2+n 
(where n is the number of email accounts you have) different places to look at when 
trying to configure how your messages are formatted: "Preferences|Mail & 
Newsgroups|Composition", "Preferences|Mail & Newsgroups|Send Format", and one 
"Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings|<account>|Composition and Addressing" for 
each account. 
 
My personal opinion is that continuing this structure is a major UI design error.  The 
desired information is scattered about, with no indication when you are looking at one 
place that there are additional settings to be made in another place.  At the very least, 
there should be a note (as suggested in Comment #9) pointing the user to the account 
specific settings. 
 
A much better solution would be to implement the suggestion (also from Comment #9) 
to move "Preferences|..." settings to a per account basis.  An alternative would be to 
create "Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings|Global" category and put "Composition" 
and "Send Format" there.  Either of these would maintain the desired capability to do 
per-account customization, and improve user experience by eliminating the easter-egg 
hunt approach to figuring out how to configure your accounts.  Perhaps that aspect of 
the problem should be different bug, though?  If that's done, then I'm OK with closing 
this one as "Fixed". 

Comment 18

[Sava Chankov]

What about allowing the users to change this setting per message as well? Me and
my colleagues send mainly plain text, but from time to time we need to send HTML
formatted mail. It is tedious to go every time to the settings dialog to change
it to send HTML mail, then again to reset it to plain text. A menu named, say,
'Format' under 'Options' in compose window with options 'HTML' and 'Plain text'
would be much more convenient.

Comment 19

[Karsten Düsterloh]

> What about allowing the users to change this setting per message as 
> well? Me and my colleagues send mainly plain text, but from time to 
> time we need to send HTML formatted mail.

If you hold the shift key while *clicking* a compose related button or menu item
(eg 'Shift + Reply Button' or 'Shift + Context Menu/Reply To All'), the editor
flavour opposite to your preference is used...

Comment 20

[Damian Yerrick]

"What about allowing the users to change this setting per message as well?"

Precedent: Outlook Express has this.  Its editor window's Format menu
contains items "Rich Text (HTML)" and "Plain Text".

"If you hold the shift key while *clicking* a compose related button"

Doesn't work if an external program launches a mailto: link, does it?

Comment 21

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #20)
 
> "If you hold the shift key while *clicking* a compose related button"
> 
> Doesn't work if an external program launches a mailto: link, does it?

No, it doesn't.  Also doesn't work if you've only got a browser open and use the 
Ctrl-M or File|New|Message menu.  I don't think it ought to work for the mail 
program's context menu, either -- the Shift is a neat hack, but I'd restrict it 
to toolbars, for just this reason that it's too much work to extend it 
consistently over everything.

At any rate: compose-time switch between plain and HTML is bug 140800.

Comment 22

[Hans Deragon]

A bit off topic, but would it be possible to have a direct option under the Edit
menu where one can select "Text" or "HTML" directly?  90% of the time, I write
ascii messages, but once in a while I would like to write one in HTML, but I
don't want to go in the prefs to change the default.  I just want to tell
Mozilla that this current message should be edited in HTML.

Outlook has such a feature and it is very practical.  Should I open a new
feature request for this?

Comment 23

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.

Comment 24

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"

Comment 25

[buovjaga]

Still valid and I agree the place is confusing.

Thunderbird 52.0.1 (32-bit)
Windows 7 64-bit

Comment 26

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: Screenshot 1: Account settings > Your account > Composition & Addressing > Compose messages in HTML format

Here's where the setting currently lives, which looks easily discoverable, and perfectly functional (per-account, or per-identity if needed).

I have no idea where it may have been 20 years ago when this was reported, but this location from comment 0 does no longer exist: "Mail & Newsgroup Settings...":"<account name>", in the "Identity" box.

Comment 27

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

About time to close this bug.

• Comment 0 is no longer applicable, looks like the setting has been moved to an easily discoverable position, which makes this bug invalid or worksforme.
• 1 duplicate in 20 years, very few comments (subtract unrelated), only 8 ppl cc'ed, 19 years with zero interest (the last relevant comment is comment 17), no real agreement on direction. Overall, very little interest, and nothing substantial here any more which would justify spending resources. HTML mail has become mainstream, which further reduces the relevance. Maybe it's even fixed now according to reporter's comment 17.
• As others have pointed out, this setting makes perfect sense as a per-account/per-identity setting. If it wasn't invalid, it would be wontfix. It's reported as a bug, so:

=> WORKSFORME

(In reply to Thomas D. (:thomas8) from comment #26)

Created attachment 9307622 [details]
Screenshot 1: Account settings > Your account > Composition & Addressing > Compose messages in HTML format

Here's where the setting currently lives, which looks easily discoverable, and perfectly functional (per-account, or per-identity if needed).
I have no idea where it may have been 20 years ago when this was reported, but this location from comment 0 does no longer exist: "Mail & Newsgroup Settings...":"<account name>", in the "Identity" box.

Comment 28

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

WORKSFORME (invalid, wontfix, you name it) per my comment 27.