229117 - Have tabs to toggle between Plain text/HTML modes

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Composition, enhancement)

Description

[Neil Marshall]

By default every time I send a message I get a dialog box that asks me if I want
to send as plain text/html/both.  Instead of having a dialog box it might be
better to have 3 tabs similar to Composers Normal/HTML Tags/Source/Preview tabs.

Plain Text/Formatted Text/Both

That way, there is visual feedback, there is no more need for another annoying
dialog box, and if you paste something into the email which includes HTML you
can see what it will look like when it sends as plain text before you actually
send it.

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 275968 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 284568 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Three tabs doesn't really make sense in this context.  How would the Both tab be 
displayed, in any meaningful way, that would be different from the other two 
tabs?  You can't actually display "both" at once; and a switch on the Both tab 
to switch the view would be just as easy as switching back and forth between the 
HTML and Plain tabs.

So assume a two-tab model.  The main drawback to having a tab is the expectation 
that the plain-text one would be an active editor.  Altho this sounds good, 
editing in the plain text window while maintaining formatting consistency in the 
HTML view would be a complex problem that I doubt would be worth the effort.
The Plain tab *could* be read-only, but we'd be forever Wontfix'ing requests to 
make it active.

Instead of a tab, there could be a preview popup (as mentioned in bug 39854). 
Alternately, there could be a switch (as bug 140800); but again, the problem of 
switching *back* to HTML and getting the formatting right, remains.

A popup could have a widget to select the Send format -- the same flag as set by 
the  Options | Format   menu item (and which would similarly override the need 
for the dialog).  You could also have a button on the "How do you want to send 
this?" dialog which would open the popup.


> there is no more need for another annoying dialog box

Avoiding the dialog is a different question.  The whole point of the dialog is 
that you, as the sender, may not have considered that some of your recipients 
may be restricted to plain-text clients, meaning they'll be presented with HTML 
source.  The easiest, and "correct," way to override this is to create an 
address-book entry for each recipient explicitly stating that they "prefer" 
HTML.  This process could be made easier; see bug 246757, bug 162554.

Comment 4

[(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 5

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"

Comment 6

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

This seems to be related or somewhat orthogonal to bug 140800.

Comment 8

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Given the massive complexity and doubtful feasibility of implementation as hinted in comment 3, I don't see this as a confirmed feature request.

Comment 9

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

I agree with Thomas. Also see his comment in bug 275968 comment #5. Let's get the bug off our books after 13 years.