353841 - Add a ".Mac" account type on Mac systems

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, enhancement)

Description

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

Since so many Mac users use .Mac for mail, it would be incredibly handy to have a one-click option to configure for .Mac's servers, by including a .Mac option next to IMAP and POP in the new account wizard.  Then all the user would need to enter would be their .Mac user name, and the rest could be configured automatically.

In fact, it would actually be pretty easy to look up their .Mac username from their system configuration and offer to create the account automatically on first launch.

Comment 1

[Scott MacGregor]

I made a post to the newsgroups describing how to do this:

Here's a small project a Mac contributor could help out with. You don't even have to be a programmer to work on it!

Add .mac support to the Thunderbird account manager: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=353841

Thunderbird already has a way to dynamically add ISP account types to our account wizard. The documentation for doing this can be found here:

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Thunderbird_ISP_hooks

What we need is someone to build a mac.rdf file with all of the various .mac account properties talked about in the document. 
You can test this on your own by adding the mac.rdf file to the defaults\isp directory located inside the Thunderbird application bundle.

I'll take care of all the build magic to make it part of our product once we've got a well tested RDF file.

Any takers?

-Scott

Comment 2

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

I tried to do this but TB seems intent on ignoring my .rdf file.

Comment 3

[David :Bienvenu]

Eric, can you attach the rdf file, and say exactly which directory you put it in?

Comment 4

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

Attachment: First draft, having trouble getting TB to see it

Attached my first draft.  Lots of options aren't being set yet, I'm sure, but I wanted to see if it works yet, which so far it doesn't.  I put it in Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/defaults/isp/dotmac.rdf

Comment 5

[Scott MacGregor]

Thanks Eric.

Your RDF file works for me on Windows (c:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\defaults\isp\). 

It adds an entry to the account manager wizard called .Mac. I didn't actually create an account though.

Not sure why it's not showing up on your mac in the account manager. The directory location looks correct.

Comment 6

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

That's odd.  Is there anything I might have to reset to get it to work?

Comment 7

[Scott MacGregor]

On a Mac release build I had to put the .rdf file in the locale specific directory for it to show up. So try this location Eric:

Thunderbird.app/Contents/MacOS/defaults/isp/en-US/dotmac.rdf

And I see your account data! 

Comment 8

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

Hey, neat, that works.  Need to do a couple of tweaks to it though.

Comment 9

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

Attachment: New account wizard info for .Mac email

Attached is a revised version of the .Mac account properties file.  Seems to work well for me, and everything looks good in the new account wizard.

Comment 10

[Scott MacGregor]

Awesome, thanks Eric. I'll look into adding the build magic to make this work.

Question, should we be defaulting IMAP to use TLS or SSL? Ditto for the SSL connection? What happens when you create a .mac account in mail.app? Do they set any of these security settings?

Comment 11

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

I duplicated the settings from Mail.app, which doesn't use any of these security options.

Comment 12

[Scott MacGregor]

Attachment: Eric's change + build magic to make it work on OS X

Eric's rdf file plus some build foo to package this up for mac builds.

Comment 13

[David :Bienvenu]

Comment on attachment 243813 [details] [diff] [review]
Eric's change + build magic to make it work on OS X

very cool, thx, Eric!

Comment 14

[Scott MacGregor]

I've checked this into the branch and trunk.

Thank you Eric! This is going to be a really cool touch on the Mac for Mac users.

Comment 15

[Scott MacGregor]

FYI, I ended  up making imap use ssl and smtp use starttls for dotmac created accounts over in Bug 366516.

Comment 16

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

verified fixed on the 1.8 branch using the Tbird cand build, version 2.0.0.0 (20070326). The .mac option is available as a selection in the account setup list. Note that I don't have a .mac account, so I did not test for functionality. Adding branch verified keyword.