425020 - Advanced Account Settings dialog invites you to defer to a News & Blogs account

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Account Manager, defect)

Description

[Rod Whiteley]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b5pre) Gecko/2008032502 Thunderbird/3.0a1pre

When you set a POP3 mail account to download mail to some other account's Inbox, News & Blogs accounts are listed as possible choices.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
0. Ensure that you have a POP3 mail account and a News & Blogs account
1. In Account Settings, go to a POP3 mail account's Server Settings page.
2. Press the Advanced... button
3. Choose: Inbox for a different account
Actual Results:  
News & Blogs accounts are listed as possible choices.

Expected Results:  
Only accounts that have inboxes should be listed--that is, POP3 mail accounts that are not themselves deferred.

Local Folders should probably not be listed either, because it has its own radio button in the dialog.

Comment 1

[Joe Sabash [:JoeS1]]

Yes News & Blogs is a useless offering.
I really don't understand why "inbox for a different account" is even offered.
Confusing dialog at best.
Tested in:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1b1pre) Gecko/20080924032742 Shredder/3.0b1pre ID:20080924032742

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

protz, was it you that volunteered or got conned on IRC to do something with News & Blogs in account manager?

Comment 3

[Jonathan Protzenko [:protz]]

Maybe Squib. What about removing that confusing option entirely?

Comment 4

[:aceman]

Let's use this bug only for the decision if RSS account should be offered.
I discussed it with David Bienvenu recently for bug 389139 and he says offering RSS account is OK.
It probably works but you can't send out msgs from that account. So it works similar to Local Folders account. Can't say much about the usefulness of this option.

Any ideas?


The other suggestions of the reporter are already covered in bug 389139.

Comment 5

[Kent James (:rkent)]

I tried deferring to an RSS account, and I could not make it work. That is, the deferred POP3 account had no presence on the folder pane, either by itself or as an RSS account inbox.

Assuming that it does not work, then you should not offer it in the advanced dialog. I also don't think it is time well spent to try to make it work.

If I was wrong, and in fact it does work, then I would leave the option to select it.

Comment 6

[:aceman]

On TB18 Linux, as soon as I deferred a POP3 account to an RSS account the Inbox appeared under the RSS account in the folder pane. Also, getting new messages worked fine, they went to this new Inbox in RSS account.

Comment 7

[:aceman]

Alta88, what do you think about this?

Comment 8

[alta88]

it seems a bit odd to offer it (the code is merely going through a list), but it works as advertised.

the worst thing about it is the inability to remove the Inbox and Archive folders (conventionally) once created, and no longer wanted.  users really dislike that sort of thing.

imo either those folders should be contextmenu deletable in a type=rss account or a type=rss account should be excluded from the list.  i would lean toward the former (n.b. bug 259184).

btw there is the reverse bug 599659.