253853 - RSS items should have different HTML mail preferences than regular messages

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Feed Reader, enhancement)

Description

[Martey Dodoo]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040730 Firefox/0.9.1+
Build Identifier: version 0.7+ (20040731)

When Thunderbird preferences are set to display messages are "plain text" or
"simple html", images and advanced html content do not display. While it is
possible to change the preferences when reading RSS feeds, they stay that way
while reading normal messages, resulting in the necessity of changing them back.

Adding a new preference solely for RSS accounts would make RSS browsing easier
for people who like plain-text email, but HTML RSS browsing.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Sven Grull]

At least Thunderbird should IMHO use the parser that strips the plain text out
of html mail/news.

Comment 2

[Juha Sahakangas]

This needs to get fixed, I don't think trying to map showing RSS into the global
e-mail settings is a good idea, but if it is going to stay that way, "simple
html" should at least be the real content of RSS feed (show images, etc.), since
there is currently no way to have those at all, the linked page shown by
"original html" (which is kind of stupid too, IMHO, as is not showing anything
at all when plain text is selected) does not necessarily even have same content.

Sage output for example is pretty much what I have in mind for "simple html".

Comment 3

[Lachlan Hunt]

*** Bug 259950 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[Chris Beck]

I agree with Sven's comment about the parser.  I see a need for 3 levels of feed:
Sage
Simple HTML
Full HTML

(and just to continue my own personal rant: I still think I should be able to
turn off remote image loading in RSS feeds but get all the HTML although if the
fact that it is displayed in an iFrame makes the coding too difficult I understand)

Comment 5

[Dan Faerch]

Absolutely..

I always use "plain text", which shows nothing when viewing RSS from eg.
theregister.com. Simple html shows the "headline + excerpt" and full loads the
page..

All i want i to keep plaintext for my email, and see all text contained IN the
rss tags, not loading the entire page. 

Comment 6

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 325445 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Ian P. Christian]

I'd go one step further and say that this setting should be done per-folder - but I just spent a long time trying to figure out why some of my feeds were showing no content, and it's because I've configured thunderbird for plaintext emails, assuming that I'd also want this for RSS feeds is a little unintuitive. 

Comment 8

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

*** Bug 354096 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Ale Mand]

html tags in title are displayed literally. A bug was filed years ago, and considered duplicate of this, although for me are different bugs altogether (bug 284102 which was considered duplicate of bug 253853 finally resolved as invalid).

Comment 10

[Ale Mand]

Sorry I meant bug 284102 which was considered duplicate of bug 252147 finally resolved as invalid

Comment 11

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

If you have different prefs, they should be:
pref("mailnews.display.html_as", 0);
pref("rss.display.rss.html_as", 0);
pref("mailnews.display.html_sanitizer.allowed_tags", "html head ... noscript ... img(alt,title,longdesc,src) ... b");
pref("rss.display.html_sanitizer.allowed_tags", html head ... noscript ... img(alt,title,longdesc,src) ... b");

This would also allow you to permit a different set of HTML tags in RSS than in email.

The sanitizer has special code (not preffed) to remove URLs, and a special case to allow images embedded in the email (mid: URLs).
FYI, the sanitizer was written in part as defense against web bugs in spam mails.

To make a different set of prefs, you need to push your HTML through the sanitizer yourself. The currently used code is function HTMLSanitize() in mimemoz2.cpp
http://mxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/mailnews/mime/src/mimemoz2.cpp#2201
called from mimethsa.cpp (mimeInlineTextHTMLSanitizedClass), which processes HTML (text/html) and triggered in mimei.cpp as alternative to mimethtm.cpp (mimeInlineTextHTMLClass).

Comment 12

[Ian P. Christian]

I personally think the suggestion above is a ugly fix...

What if I want HTML for one feed and not another? Or... for one mail folder and not another?

These kinda of settings should be on a per account, and overrideable on a *per folder* level to be of real use - IMHO.

Comment 13

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

I don't think you want such complex prefs like the HTML tag list on a per account or pre folder level. Otherwise, you could argue that straight out all prefs should be per account/folder.

Comment 14

[Ian P. Christian]

Personally I would argue that actaully - much like you can in mutt (i think)

Such as setting a sig per folder, or a default identify - or any other config setting.

Maybe I'm asking for the moon on a stick though... but this kind of feature is something I would definatly use - even if it meant writing complicated config files - obviously the scope of this solution is far greater.

Comment 15

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

That's fine. That just doesn't belong here. It should be a general facility of Mailnews (can you file an enhancement bug, please?) - to allow (almost) all prefs to be per-Account, but have a global (per-user) pref in case there's no pre-Account setting. Because in most cases, you want all accounts to have the same setting and all change with one click.

Comment 16

[Skippy le Grand Gourou]

Seconded, this is quite painful. In particular, I would love enhancements proposed on comments #14&15.

Comment 17

[alta88]

the UI pref selection has been implemented in Bug 438429, what remains is for libmime backend code to honor the pref for feeds.  marking this fixed, as it's obsoleted now by Bug 458606, and comments should follow up there.