512920 - Send in Background should attempt resend/ensure prompt for send before shutdown

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Backend, enhancement)

Description

[dfghjkjhg]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Thunderbird/3.0b3

Sometimes it happens that my DSL-network brakes, so an e-mail cannot be sent immediately, an error popup comes up and the message is moved to the outbox.

In the outbox it remains until Thunderbird is re-started. Only after this re-start of TB I am asked if I want to send this message now.

There's no automatic attempt to send this message again after the DSL-network works again.


There's also no popup that asks me if I want to try to send again BEFORE I close TB, what I would expect at least.
I am only asked after starting TB again.


(PS: I have set the preference "Send in background")

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> User-Agent:       
> Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.9.1.1)
> Gecko/20090715 Thunderbird/3.0b3
> 
> Sometimes it happens that my DSL-network brakes, so an e-mail cannot be sent
> immediately, an error popup comes up and the message is moved to the outbox.
> 
> In the outbox it remains until Thunderbird is re-started. Only after this
> re-start of TB I am asked if I want to send this message now.
> 
> There's no automatic attempt to send this message again after the DSL-network
> works again.
> 
> 
> There's also no popup that asks me if I want to try to send again BEFORE I
> close TB, what I would expect at least.
> I am only asked after starting TB again.
> 

and if you use the workonline/offline, are you prompted to send the email ?

Comment 2

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Send in background is an incomplete feature under development which is why it hasn't been included by default. Hence there are some bugs in it.

As we haven't got an explicit bug on this at the moment, I'm changing this into a bug that will implement the original proposed resend after a specific time and better handling on shutdown (as discussed in the original bug 440794).

Comment 3

[dfghjkjhg]

@ Ludovic (comment # 1):
You are right, after chosing "work offline" and then "work online" again, a popup comes up with the question, whether I want to send now.

But this procedure is a "little bit" uncovenient. And it would require my awareness of messages in the outbox (surprisingly I never realize that messages are still hanging in the outbox although there's a counter).


Therefore I prefer Mark's proposal (comment # 2):
- "autom. resend after a specific time" and
- "send-on-shutdown prompt".

Comment 4

[dfghjkjhg]

For the time being, here's an Add-On I just found which prompts for send before shutdown:
https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/902/
(MagicSLR)

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

Doing things on shutdown, especially prompting the user, has been something we've historically tried to avoid because it's considered annoying and counter to the user's intent of shutting down the app. So this is probably something we're going to want Blake's feedback on. Similarly, a "nag" about unsent messages is also problematic. Ideally, we'd do these things w/o bothering the user.

Comment 6

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Does it have to be a prompt? Can't we just have something like a progress dialog with a "force shutdown" button?

 Thunderbird is still sending a message
 [==============         ]      
                      [Shutdown Anyway]

Comment 7

[David :Bienvenu]

I've been working on doing a silent retry when send in background fails, but the message compose/send code isn't set up to allow calling code to override the error reporting. We could allow overriding of the send reporter, which would allow other client code to change the way errors are reported (though that code might have to duplicate some of the stuff nsMsgSendReport does.

Comment 8

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Removing myslef on all the bugs I'm cced on. Please NI me if you need something on MailNews Core bugs from me.