226017 - Should try other SMTP servers when default doesn't work

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 52384

(MailNews Core :: Networking: SMTP, defect)

Description

[Petr Cerny [:hrosik]]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6a) Gecko/20031001
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6a) Gecko/20031001

When sending a message through the (account) default SMTP server fails Mozilla
just gives a n error message. It should try to send the message through the
other servers as well or at least ask whether it should be tried. The present
solution makes almost no use of the alternative SMTP servers.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Andy Ozment]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113

Still always reproducable. Would love to see this one get fixed - it would help
a lot of people with notebook computers!

Comment 2

[Andy Ozment]

Mail/News has a poorly designed SMTP user interface. This type of problem is
normally an enhancement, and would thus be of low priority to developers.

However, the bad design of the SMTP user interface is causing a number of users
to file spurious bugs. It is also resulting in a lot of grief (the magnitude of
which is not recognized, because it is dispersed between a number of different
bugs).

This is a problem with both Mozilla Mail/News and Thunderbird.

It remains a problem even in these, more recent versions:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113
Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5 (20040207)

Although no single SMTP bug has that many votes, the sum of votes for those bugs
partially or wholly dependent upon UI problems is rather large.

These bugs aren't really bugs, but are users who are mislead by the UI:
bug 228643
  - Outgoing Server settings ignore the default
bug 170089
- default server value not being used to send mail.  Mail cannot be sent.
bug 222064
- don't remember the updated default SMTP server. Can't use more then one SMTP
server

These bugs all mention or are in part due to bad UI design:
bug 202468
  - 3 votes - Simpler, more consolidated UI for SMTP server settings
bug 52384
  - 27 votes - difficult to define multiple smtp servers and
quickly/automatically switch between them
bug 154453
  - 2 votes - SMTP setting dialog totally corrupted
bug 218518 comment 4 and comment 5
 - unable to select alternate SMTP server in Account Settings
bug 226017
- Should try other SMTP servers when default doesn't work

Note that all of these bugs can't simply be marked closed and consolidated into
one bug (most contain more than one issue with the way SMTP servers are entered
& organized).

However, I suggest that the UI aspects of these bugs be consolidated into bug
202468 . 

Let's all vote for it, and hopefully get some work done on this UI!
Andy

Comment 3

[R.K.Aa.]

Nice overview, Andy.

The issue is being covered in too many bugs already - no need to keep this one
open - it's not unique. Resolving as dup of the original report in bug 52384
which states approx the same wish as here:

.."to be able to tell Mozilla both of these mail servers, and have it test the
others if it can't successfully send mail through one of them"..


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 52384 ***