350298 - Facility to mark messages to download for offline use separately from the flag

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Backend, enhancement)

Description

[Stewart Gordon]

What is the purpose of flagging messages?  It would appear from the help that it is supposed to be a means of marking messages that you wish to download for offline reading.  However, evidence within SeaMonkey implies otherwise:
(a) Messages in Local Folders can be flagged as well.
(b) When I try switching to offline mode, selecting Download when prompted doesn't download flagged messages, but apparently only messages in IMAP folders or newsgroups that have "Select this folder for offline use" switched on.
(c) It's a bit more cumbersome than it should be to flag an entire thread, which is fundamental to downloading messages for offline use.

These together suggest that the flag is designed to be used as one likes, perhaps most commonly as a reminder of which messages still need to be replied to or otherwise dealt with.  In particular, (b) appears to be due to SeaMonkey's inability to know whether the user uses flags to mark messages for download or for some other purpose.  Having a user preference to this effect would be one way to deal with it, but it isn't perfect.

I therefore propose that we introduce a separate "Mark for download" feature, similar to that in Outlook Express.  Already, this would mean that users who read newsgroups/IMAP mail offline can still use the regular flag for their own purposes, as many people who have permanent Internet connections and therefore don't need to use the offline facilities are likely to do.  And there are further benefits that could be developed:

- While online, SeaMonkey could automatically download marked messages in the background.
- If the user selects a marked message while still online in order to read it, it would save it for offline use there and then.
- When about to go offline, choosing Download would download all messages that are marked for download, as well as those in newsgroups/folders that are selected for offline use.
- The mark for download could come in two versions: single message and whole thread.  If a whole thread mark is used, it would download even those messages whose headers had not yet been downloaded at the time of marking.