350341 - OS X Dock icon doesn't animate when needed (mail biff)

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Rich Gray (:rbgray)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1b2) Gecko/20060819 SeaMonkey/1.1a
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1b2) Gecko/20060819 SeaMonkey/1.1a

The arrival of new mail fails to cause the Dock icon display to animate under most  conditions, particularly when the animation would be most helpful.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. POP3 account (using SSL, if that matters)
   Animate the Dock icon checked
   OS X Dock set to hidden

2. Start SM and open MN to get mail polling started

3. The following table represents status of Browser and Mail-News windows and the current desktop Application (appears in the menu bar.)  
The test account's inbox was emptied prior to each test.
SM windows were opened/closed as appropriate before each test.
Mail was sent from another system being accessed in Terminal.  


Actual Results:  
Browser  Mail-News  Curr App   Result       Expected
-------  ---------  ---------  ---------    --------
Closed    Closed    Terminal   No bounce    Bounce
C         C         SeaMonkey  N            B
C         O         T          Bounce       Maybe bounce?
C         O         S          N            No bounce?
O         C         T          N            M?
O         C         S          Bounce       N?
O         O         T          N            M?
O         O         S          N            N?

All other aspects of mail handling (biff message count on dock icon, green arrows on component bar/mail folder/inbox, inbox message count) seemed to operate correctly (except for bug 344066.)  


Expected Results:  
See expected column.  The dock animation is really needed when there are no open SeaMonkey windows or maybe when another application has the desktop and SeaMonkey windows are likely to be hidden.  Also if SeaMonkey windows are all minimized.  (Didn't think of that until just now, didn't test.)   Animating the SM dock icon when SM windows are visible is probably just annoying.

My test account is my fourth and last mail account.  I had noticed the lack of animation in the others though.   I'm running Modern theme.

Comment 1

[Rich Gray (:rbgray)]

Tested minimized MailNews cases with all other SM windows closed.  

Actual Results:  
Browser  Mail-News  Curr App   Result       Expected
-------  ---------  ---------  ---------    --------
Closed    Closed    Terminal   No bounce    Bounce
C         C         SeaMonkey  N            B
C         O         T          Bounce       Maybe bounce?
C         O         S          N            No bounce?
C         Min       T          Bounce       B           <<--
C         M         S          N            B           <<--
O         C         T          N            M?
O         C         S          Bounce       N?
O         O         T          N            M?
O         O         S          N            N?

StephanH points out that this was ported from TB where there ARE no other windows. (bug 322923)  TB though should bounce the icon when minimized.

Nominating for 1.1b blocking status.  This (and the message count biff) is a great addition to SM for Mac users. (Thanks Ian!)  Just needs to get the kinks out.

Comment 2

[Robert Kaiser]

Note that the case where mail has never been opened in this SeaMonkey session is not expected to work (yet), and is a different bug on all platforms, known as bug 71105

This bug here can and should only be about cases where MailNews has been loaded already in the running SeaMonkey session, even if the mail window got closed again after that.

Comment 3

[Chris Thomas (CTho) [formerly [e-mail] [e-mail]]]

Not blocking.  I think the bug is relatively low-impact.  Patches welcome though.

Comment 4

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Can you reproduce with SeaMonkey v1.1.9 ?

Comment 5

[Rich Gray (:rbgray)]

How about trunk?  ;-)

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9pre) Gecko/2008060701 SeaMonkey/2.0a1pre

Just rechecked the first of the cases: (start SM, open Mail News, delete all unread mail, close all SM windows, send mail to the account)

Expected: the dock icon should show the new unread count (1) and start bouncing
Actual:   the dock icon shows the unread count but does not bounce.

So it seems this one is still alive on trunk.  Version -> trunk.   Since I have gained Can Confirm rights since filing this bug, I'm also going make it New, but I'd REALLY like someone else to reproduce at least the above case.

I'm kind of doing a drive-by check on the way to fooling with bug 71105 which seems to be under active development.  The value of that enhancement will be greatly diminished if notification bugs like this prevent the user from finding out that new mail has arrived.  I will have to come back and run more of the test cases when I have a chance.

[BTW, my bugmail is, well, buggy.  Some days it make it, many days not.  I need to get my own domain...]

Comment 6

[Rich Gray (:rbgray)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4pre) Gecko/20090903 SeaMonkey/2.0b2

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4pre) Gecko/20090915 Thunderbird/3.0b4

Just checking the case of starting with mailboxes empty, apps started to get polling, then windows closed.  Accounts set not to check on startup, but check every few minutes. Notifications on arrival of new messages: animate the dock icon, play a sound and (Seamonkey: show an alert.)  Send a couple of e-mails.

Observe the arrival of the e-mail in the dock icon count badge, but none of the notification events occurs, no pop-up, no sound and no dock icon animation.  Turning off all other notifications except animate dock (i.e. get down to just this bug) still results in no animation of the dock.

I need to do some more testing to see if there's any condition where the dock animation does work. It may be that there is some condition totally blocking notifications and once that is fixed, this bug may still be in effect with dock animations not occurring when needed.

Comment 7

[Rich Gray (:rbgray)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100429 SeaMonkey/2.1a1pre

Dock animation is still totally busted in SM2.  Probably should find/file a bug and make it block this one.  Ah, bug 534098.

Setting this bug to block bug 36011 (Biff meta) and changing hardware platform to All.

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

per bug 534098 this works in thunderbird.

Do you agree?

Comment 9

[Stefan [:stefanh]]

I don't think it works in SM. The numbers in the dock icon are updated when new mail arrives, but the icon doesn't bounce (I interpret that "animate" means it should bounce). I only tested in 2.49.4 (Firefox 52), though.

frg, does it bounce for you?

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

make sure Animate the Dock icon is checked/enabled

Comment 11

[Stefan [:stefanh]]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #10)

make sure Animate the Dock icon is checked/enabled

Yeah, it is.

Comment 12

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

No wobble with 2.53

Comment 13

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

Sorry no wobble was 2.49.5. Didn't try 2.53 yet.