345885 - Awkward handling of missing intermediate folders

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Samuli Kärkkäinen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4

I have, on an IMAP server, two subfolders "foo/a" and "foo/b", but folder "foo" doesn't exist. That is by design, since semantically it wouldn't make sense for "foo" to have content. Unavoidably I now and then click on "foo" by mistake, and am shown the modal Alert window "The current command did not succeed. Th mail server responded: Invalid mailbox name."

This behaviour is awkward: I'm aware the folder doesn't exist, and it's not an alarming situation that would require such prominent notification. A better behavior would be for example to to show a specially formatted text "This folder does not exist." on the headers area, or something else that doesn't require the user to click on an "OK" button or perform any other operation before he is able to continue using Thunderbird.


Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Steve Simms]

Are you still seeing this problem in 2.x?  I have a similar setup, and when I click on the "foo" equivalent, I don't get an error.

If you are still seeing the error, under Account Settings, Server Settings, Advanced, is the box "Server supports folders that contain sub-folders and messages" checked?

Comment 2

[Samuli Kärkkäinen]

I am seeing this, on 2.0.0.16. The said box is checked.

Comment 3

[Steve Simms]

Does your IMAP server actually support folders with messages and subfolders?  If not, can you uncheck the box, and see if the problem goes away?  (You may need to restart Thunderbird first.)

Comment 4

[Samuli Kärkkäinen]

Unchecking the box and restarting Thunderbird made no difference of any kind that I could see. I believe the IMAP server is Cyrus.

Comment 5

[Steve Simms]

Ok, it looks like Cyrus does support folders with messages and subfolders, based on a quick look at the features.  I'm not seeing a duplicate, so confirming.