411869 - warn if server doesn't supported feature like marking message with star

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Markus Elfring]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11
Build Identifier: Version 2.0.0.9 (20071031)

A few identification marks (yellow star symbol) are displayed in my newsgroup folders. This marking is stored in a persistent way.
But it does not work with other mail folders. If I mark a few messages in my inbox and switch to a different folder, the yellow stars vanish if I return to the marked mails. Can a consistent and permanent designation be achieved for selected items?

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Works fine for me. IMAP or POP?

Comment 2

[Markus Elfring]

I'm using IMAP. Does the protocol really matter in this use case?

In which file will the marks be stored for a specific mail folder?

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

I'm not sure how usual it is, bug perhaps the imap server do not support it... Get a protocol log to find out
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/mailnews/mail-troubleshoot.html#imap

If you move/copy some mail to the Local folder account. Does stars persist there?

Comment 4

[David :Bienvenu]

one possibility is that the server claims to support the flagged keyword, but doesn't maintain it. That would confuse us, because it would look like the user had removed the flag/star via an other client or machine.

Comment 5

[Markus Elfring]

I've got a local mail folder "Gesendet". The star marks are also kept there as I would expect it.

Is a corresponding flag maintained on the server for each user and IMAP folder? Does it belong to the protocol?

Comment 6

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Yes, it's a per message flag stored on the imap server.

Comment 7

[Markus Elfring]

Attachment: Results from a short test

What is the technical name for the flag?
Which field should store this setting?

Is there any relationship to the document "SIEVE Email Filtering: IMAP flag Extension"?
http://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg02755.html

Comment 8

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

No direct relationship. It's \Flagged

Your server sais 
OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Deleted \Seen \Answered)], so it doesn't support them.

Comment 9

[Markus Elfring]

I suggest to show a status indication in the user interface if any flag will not be permanently stored by the server implementation between sessions.
It is still nice to highlight a few messages during a session. But I would like to get warned about missing or unsupported features so that I know that some settings will be lost after a logoff.

Comment 10

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

I'm not sure the best way to go about this.  I'm hoping that IMAP servers who don't support \Flagged aren't widely available or used.

For a quick solution I'd say we could have a dialog that is per account for the flagged exception.  When you click on the star we pop up the dialog alerting the user that "You better count these lucky stars, cause the server isn't".  If we offer a "[ ] Don't always warn me" exception in the dialog then people who want to use stars within their session can turn it off.  I'm not sure if the exception should be for the account or session lifetime.

We could try to just not show the stars column but that would just lead people to wonder (and file bugs) why they can't star messages on certain accounts.