512385 - Display Archived-At header field as a link (RFC 5064)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, enhancement)

Description

[Doug Schepers]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.19) Gecko/20081209 Thunderbird/2.0.0.19 Mnenhy/0.7.5.0

The 'Archived-At' header field [1], is not displayed by default in the message-pane head, but it can be specified to appear by adding it to mailnews.customHeaders.  However, it is not displayed or treated as a link, as intended, but only as a string with brackets, like so:

<http://www.w3.org/mid/[e-mail]>

Through a Thunderbird extension (now expired with the new version of Thunderbird), I was earlier able to expose the 'Archived-At' header as a link.  This is extremely handy for those of us who have to deal with and reference forums or archived emails.

[1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5064.txt

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Edit mailnews.customHeaders to include 'Archived-At' header
2. Restart Thunderbird
3. Open message in message pane and find 'Archived-At' header
Actual Results:  
'Archived-At' header displayed as string with angle brackets, no hyperlink functionality

Expected Results:  
Clicking on 'Archived-At' header should open link in default browser

If this can't be fixed, please at least remove angle brackets, so copy/paste into the browser address bar is easier, and doesn't require manually removing the brackets.

Comment 1

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

Could you attach an example email with this header?

Comment 2

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

Attachment: Add Archived-At link to message header

Here's a simple patch for this, which only handles the case where there's one Archived-At header (the RFC allows for several).

Comment 3

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

I have mixed feelings about exposing this as a linkified message header.  The primary usage mode of the link affordance is to, as you say, click and open in a browser.  If you're already staring at a copy of the message in your mail client, why would you want to go view another copy in the browser?

Section 3.3 of RFC 5064 (linked to from comment 0), mentions three use cases:

   A user may want to find messages related to a message at hand.  The
   user may not have received the related messages, and therefore needs
   to use an archive.  The user may also prefer finding related messages
   in the archive rather than in her MUA, because messages in archives
   may be linked in ways not provided by the MUA.  The Archived-At
   header field provides a link to the starting point in the archive
   from which to find related messages.

It seems like the List-Archive header is a better solution to this problem, though one could certainly use this header as fallback in that case.

   A user may want to refer to other messages in a message context.
   Referring to a single message is often done by replying to that
   message.  However, when referring to more than one message, providing
   pointers to archived messages is a widespread practice.  The
   Archived-At header field makes it easier to provide these pointers.

For this, it seems like there could be better affordances than a message header (something off the "other actions" menu, perhaps?)

   A user may want to refer to messages in a non-message context, such
   as on a Web page, in an instant message, or in a phone conversation.
   In such a case, the user can extract the URI from the Archived-At
   header field, avoiding the search for the correct message in the
   archive.

This I get.

My main objection is that mailing list messages that one reads are likely to all be tagged with this header, but the number of times when one wants to do one of the above things seems like a tiny minority of messages.  So it feels like taking up space in the header pane every time this header is available is likely to be the wrong tradeoff for the core code.

I'd be interested in clarkbw's thoughts here; adding him to the CC.

Comment 4

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

The "other actions" menu might be a good place to put this (or something like it). A "copy permalink" option should resolve this, and could be expanded to handle newsgroup messages pretty easily, though in that case, "permalink" might be a bit of a misnomer.

Comment 5

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

(In reply to comment #3)
> My main objection is that mailing list messages that one reads are likely to
> all be tagged with this header, but the number of times when one wants to do
> one of the above things seems like a tiny minority of messages.  So it feels
> like taking up space in the header pane every time this header is available is
> likely to be the wrong tradeoff for the core code.
> 
> I'd be interested in clarkbw's thoughts here; adding him to the CC.

Sounds spot on to me.  Keep the low percentage use items in a less visible area.

(In reply to comment #4)
> The "other actions" menu might be a good place to put this (or something like
> it). A "copy permalink" option should resolve this, and could be expanded to
> handle newsgroup messages pretty easily, though in that case, "permalink" might
> be a bit of a misnomer.

Agreed, you might want something like "newsgroup link" or "newsgroup message link".

Comment 6

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

How about "Copy Message Link" to be neutral with respect to mail vs. news?

Comment 7

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

I like that idea.  We might want to prefer Archived-At when it exists, since that's likely to link to an HTTP version, which people are pretty much guaranteed to have a client configured to talk to, and fall back to a news: or email URIs without.

Comment 8

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

Sounds good to me, both comment 6 and comment 7

Comment 9

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

After bug 29041 we now have a good spot to put this.

For when the link is showing it has a context menu to copy url.
For the menu there, I'd just let it be Permalink and let people open it. Sure, you often want to copy as well, but before you do it seems like a good idea to open the link to make sure it's still valid. And then you're already in the browser and can easily copy...

Comment 10

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Attachment: Bug 512385 - Display Archived-At header field as a link, and add Message Permalink option to List-Id menu. r=john.bieling,vineet

E.g. Topicbox list mails have this...

Comment 11

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/f92cb382e528
Display Archived-At header field as a link, and add Message Permalink option to List-Id menu. r=john.bieling,vineet

Comment 12

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/52a70a56a161
Follow-up, fix typo in comments. rs=me