291379 - Explore reducing ux-interruption of "Sending failed" alerts, e.g. option to retry silently (as "send later")

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[John David Galt]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 Firefox/1.0.3
Build Identifier: Thunderbird version 1.0 (20041206)

My ISP uses POP-before-SMTP authentication with a one-hour timeout.  As a
result, when I try to send a mail message, it will frequently fail, producing a
dialog box that says something like "Proxy Connection for [the recipient's
domain] refused by server."  (This is not always avoidable by clicking "Get
Mail" before sending, because often it takes more than an hour to download a
day's worth of incoming messages & I'm trying to send replies during that time.)

This pop-up (which also causes the Compose Message window to pop in front of
whatever I'm doing at the time) is an annoying interruption.  So I'd like to
have a prefs setting that disables the pop-up behavior, and instead causes the
message to just quietly go into my Unsent Messages folder, either with no notice
or with just a background pop-up notice similar to the one that appears when
Mozilla updates are available.

I'm already using
   user_pref("mailnews.show_send_progress", false);
in user.js, but the error overrides that setting.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Log into my ISP when it will take over an hour to download the incoming mail.
2. Spend the time composing and sending outgoing mail.

Actual Results:  
After the one hour timeout, all attempts to send mail cause the pop-up behavior
as described above.  Hitting "Get Mail" before a send attempt re-enables
sending, but can't be done until the initial "get" operation is complete.  (If
it's "received 120 of 345 messages, the only way I can stop the "get" operation
before I've received all 345 is to disconnect the phone line, in which case I
will get a second copy of the first 120 messages.  That's annoying too, and I
may file another bug on that topic.)

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
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you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
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If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
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Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 2

[John David Galt]

I still believe this enhancement is needed.  Would someone with the power to
mark a bug as "confirmed" please do so.

Comment 3

[zug_treno]

Related to/duplicate of bug 254178 -> Core bug 82996?

Comment 4

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 82996 ***

Comment 5

[John David Galt]

This is not a duplicate of bug 82996, but an alternative solution to the problem.

After all the efforts the Mozilla developers have made to rid the user of unwanted pop-ups from web sites, it amazes me that they are so willing to impose their own.  In my view it is an important core requirement for any mail and news client that the user should be able to start it and forget it.  Interruptions by pop-ups such as the subject of this bug are unacceptable, and adding a shortcut button to the unwanted dialog box is not good enough.  We must be allowed to turn the dialog box OFF.  This goes for pretty much every dialog box in the entire application.

Comment 6

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

I think that this issue is WFM will be fixed from bug #440794 (see also wiki
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/TestPlans/SendInBackground )

Reporter you can try with TB 3.0b4pre?
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-comm-1.9.1/

Comment 7

[John David Galt]

I agree that the full SendInBackground change, when fully implemented, will resolve this issue.  But the current version appears to have only the partial implementation described in the wiki article.  I'll mark this as a dup of that.

Comment 9

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Actually as it isn't the same bug, I'd prefer doing it via dependencies that way if it happens that bug 440794 doesn't get implemented then this bug is still live.