Closed Bug 531002 Opened 15 years ago Closed 7 years ago

New Message Notification pop-up window inconsistent behavior

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Mail Window Front End
Version:
10 Branch
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: mad.engineer, Unassigned)

References

(Blocks 1 open bug)

Details

(Whiteboard: regression)

Attachments

(1 file)

View of Folder tree without and with notification problem
15.78 KB, image/jpeg
Details 
User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091121 Thunderbird/3.0

I downloaded the latest 3.0 RC1 release for Windows XP today and was playing with it. Running into some weird situation and not sure what am I missing. Hoping that someone may have some pointers. Here are the steps:

- Created a new Profile first.

- Created an IMAP account for my email

- Created two Message Filters which pretty much do the following while Checking Mail in the order:
a) If the To: field contains my email address, Tag it with say Important
b) If the Cc: field contains my email address, Tag it with say Personal

- I see all my email on the IMAP server's InBox folder. All messages get tagged correctly as expected with the above filters

- Now, the first time I get a new email after all the above steps, I get the New email notification pop-up along with the filter which tags the mail for both To: and Cc:

- The next time I get a new mail, I don't see the New message notification pop-now. Though the message filters work ok. First I thought that may be I need to Compact the InBox Folder to make this work, which to me sounds odd. After all, it's just a new message. But even after Compacting the Folder, I tested it again, mail comes in OK, gets filtered OK, but no new mail notification pop-up window.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. See above details
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
New Mail notification pop-up on windows only work the first time the messages are access on the IMAP server. Subsequent new messages don't generate the new mail notification. Compacting the folder does not make any difference either.

Expected Results:  
New mail notification should pop-up every time a new mail shows up in the IMAP InBox folder regardless.
Version: unspecified → 3.0
Are all the times you are testing this where Thunderbird automatically gets mail? Or are you clicking get new mail?
Blocks: qa-tb3.0rc1
Summary: Thunderbird 3.0 RC1 New Message Notification pop-up window inconsistent behavior → New Message Notification pop-up window inconsistent behavior
I was clicking on Get Mail every time I tested this. The value to check for new mail interval was set to 10 min default value. I tried these steps couple of times by creating a new profile and observed this behavior consistently. Note that I tested this against my Work email account and not Gmail etc.
I did some further testing and this happens consistently all the times. First I thought that this has something to do with the Message Filters, but this time I removed all the filters before testing. Same behavior. I also changed the default mail check time to 1 min to see if that makes any difference, but it did not.

The first time I created a new profile for my work email and sent a test mail from my outside Yahoo account, the notification pop-up comes up OK, whether I wait for it or click on Get Mail. Any mail that I send subsequently after that from the same outside Yahoo account to my work account, the notification window does not show up. So this is confirmed now. Someone else need to look at it seriously.
Blocks: biff
xref bug 493478

I am also not getting notifications consistently for my IMAP account.  I'm trying to figure out the conditions that may be causing the failure, but I don't get a flood of mail.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317
  Lightning/1.0b1 Thunderbird/3.0.4
Same here. no new email notifications consistently for my 2 IMAP account too. Trying fresh new install instead of an update from thunderbird 2 doesn't help. 
Very strange. working for only one imap account , then not working for both. Need to re install thunderbird 2 to get back the notification stable.
I did some more testing about this problem with email notification with imap account. 
I was not able to reproduce it on each PC I have installed Thunderbird 3. 
I made tones of install on a PC at home without being able to get the notification stable. As describe by mad.engineer@yahoo.com  above, I had (sometimes) the notification the first time Thunderbird 3 was open after installation. Then after restarting Thunderbird 3 the notification was not working anymore.
On another PC at work I finally manage (after tones of install too!) to get the notification stable. I really don't know why it is stable now on one PC and working only for the 1st Thunderbird use on the other PC.
Both were totally fresh installs of thunderbird 3 (thunderbird 2 unistall and folder remaining removed manually).
I never had this problem before with pop server on thunderbird 3. But I can't say that it is for sure related to imap server. 
I can't say that it is always reproducible  as it is working now on one of my PC.  
Anyway I think the problem is confirmed now and I hope the bug will be taken in consideration.
I may take more time to investigate it if things move a little for this bug 


Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; fr; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 Thunderbird/3.0.4
Ok I post again to make a correction:
Finally  it is always  reproducible for me. It is not working anymore on the PC where the notification worked since 2 days! 
So:

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install thunderbird 3
2. Create an Imap account, configured to alert when New messages arrive (pop up and sound)
3. Send a message to your own  email address (from another account with a webmail for example) 
4. Wait for new message to arrive in your mailbox with thunderbird main window open or not.

Actual Results:  
New Mail notification pop-up windows may only work the first time thunderbird is working (sometime even don't work for the 1st use!). When restarted Thunderbird  don't generate the new mail notification. 
Notification may also work for a few day (as mentioned above) then stop work. 

To clarify: New Mail notification pop-up windows is working randomly after Thunderbird 3 installation and Imap account created. If the notification is not working anymore, it will never show again. Need to re-install to have it work "randomly" again .


Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; fr; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317
Thunderbird/3.0.4
Still experiencing this bug with Thunderbird 3.1.3.
It works  the 1st time I  check new mail  after installation and don't work anymore. 
Juste the same as describe above.
Status of this bug still unconfirmed for 11 month. But I do have this notification problem. 
I have read some similar  post on mozilla messenging get satisfation forum. 
It really seems to be related to IMAP account.
(In reply to comment #7)


> To clarify: New Mail notification pop-up windows is working randomly after
> Thunderbird 3 installation and Imap account created. If the notification is not
> working anymore, it will never show again.
>

I wanted to modify this: If the notification is not working anymore it can work again  later without re-installing TB3.  
This problem really occurs ramdomly! 
I have updated to thunderbird 3.1.4  a few days ago. The new email notification was not working anymore.  Today I have notice that it was working again for all my imap accounts. I closed thunderbird , then re-oppened it  and the notification was not working anymore for all my imap account. I restart my PC, but the notification  is still not working.
I really don't know when it will work again and for how long?
Any chance to get attention on this bug  one day?
Just wanted to chip in here as I've found a "work-around" for this bug that I'm currently using. I will copy-paste my response I originally posted in this thread: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=1867215



"I can make it to work (so-so) by ticking "Play a sound" in addition to "Show an alert."

However, as soon as I change to another folder the 'new messages' notification disappears even though I still have unread messages in the folder I just switched to, or in other folders. And if I untick "Play a sound" it stops working again. For me, this is reproducible.

Thankfully I can mute Thunderbird through the Volume Mixer so this work-around will do until a fix is issued.

Currently "working" config: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.9) Gecko/20100915 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.1.4"



Could anyone try this out and see if it works for them as a temporary fix?
"play a sound " has always been check on my thunderbird option. 
It doesn't help for me to check or uncheck this option. 
Anyway thanks for you contribution.
I am using Thunderbird 3.1.7 on Win7 64-bit. I experience exactly the same problem as poster Franck Poupart. I CONFIRM THIS IS A BUG. I am using push IMAP and though my emails always arrive reliably and timely in my 3 INBOXes the sound notidfication and popup notification very seldom work. There is nothing wrong with my audio configuration which works perfectly with all sound enabled programs. From time to time sound notification will work for a few hours then, for no reason at all, it may stop working for a few hours or a few days, then it works again (spontaneously) for a short while. Sometimes sound and popup notification work again after a Thunderbird restart but most of the time it does not help. When I don't get sound notification I also don't get popup notification. If I am lucky and get the sound notification I also get the popup notification. I have been searching for a reliable solution for a long time but have not found one. This is a major issue for me as my contacts expect me to reply rapidly to their messages. I have searched the net and found that very many other users don't get a reliable sound notification or popup notification with TB3 but the description of Mr. Poupart describes exactly the notification issue which I experience too. 
My system: 64-bit Windows 7 running on a Asus P5B Deluxe motherboard with 6 GB of memory.
These new mail notification are broken, as xref 627333. 
confirming but not duping until find out if that is same issue.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
OS: Windows XP → All
Hardware: x86 → All
Whiteboard: regression
Mark, is there any additional diagnostic steps need to help resolve this issue?
I can confirm the exact same as Orlando and Franck. I get the first pop up notification for my first IMAP email, any following email will not pop up. POP3 is not included in this problem. I too have looked around online for a solution and there is nothing. The following does not work:

Running as administrator
Running in compatible mode
Changing the value of mail.imap.use_status_for_biff to false
Anything to do with sound notifications (does nothing)
Disabling all addons
Running TB in safemode
Compacting folders
Deleting all of the .msf files and letting them rebuild

I have 5 email accounts in Thunderbird, 4 of which are IMAP, 1 POP. I have windows 7 32bit. It seems to be a relatively common problem, I haven't had the 'randomness' of it sometimes working; it has never worked properly for me. 

I would go back to TB2 but I have a fair few addons which don't work in TB2.
This NEEDS to be fixed, its a clear problem that has been around for over a year. This is NOT a windows problem, although its clearly something TB isn't liking with Windows 7.
(In reply to comment #15)

> This NEEDS to be fixed, its a clear problem that has been around for over a
> year. This is NOT a windows problem, although its clearly something TB isn't
> liking with Windows 7.

Not only with windows 7.also with XP and vista. this is not related to OS but to IMAP.
but I agree with you: this needs to be fixed! 
This is  a major bug.
I am experiencing a similar problem to some of the people who have said that the notifications are "randomly work". This may in fact be a different bug than what the original poster is describing. The observations of my problem show that if there is a new message when TB is started, notifications occur and if there is not a new message when TB is started they don't. 

I would be happy to demonstrate the problem to a TB developer that was interested in pursuing this. I also have Visual Studio 2010 installed on the computer with the problem so I could do building and debugging if necessary.
I have windows 7 64bit and asus maximum extreme with 4 core cpu. Im using Thunderbird since 5 moths without notification problems. I have 2 account, imap with push notification on the same hosting (hostgator). 

Now i have notification working on the 2nd account and notification not working for the first one. NO popup and no sound. 

I have try all things, selecting, deselecting, backup all with mozbackup, reinstall all and restore, compress all directory, etc etc...

It WORK good IF I OPEN THUNDERBIRD IN SAFE MODE, but i have try to disable all plugins/addons when the program is not on safe mode and notification wont work.

I confirm is a major bug and need to be solved as soon as possible! Thanks!
I have fixed the problem following this tutorial:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders

Section: "Quick and dirty fix"

Rebuild the index file within Thunderbird

    "Right click on each corrupt folder in Thunderbird, select Properties, and then press the Rebuild Index button. Its quicker/simpler if you only have a problem with a few folders, such as the Inbox. "

Whit the index rebuild the notification back to work fully for all 2 accounts! I hope this can help others ppls.
Thank you, I'm very glad you solved your problem but this is a (known) solution to another problem (inconsistency in database). This is not the problem described in this thread. Rebuilding ALL index files and compacting does NOT solve the problem discussed here which is a bug causing a randomly (and often) occurring absence of notification on new messages.
I had the same problem discussed here, 1 imap account working with all notifications and the other one NOT. I have try with rebuild index and the notification started to work! After 2 days notification stoppen to working on the same account another time and another time i rebuilded the index and it started to work again.
I have made a scandisk for check if i have sector problems that can cause corruption of the DB but nothing. I think its related to this bug.
I confirm that rebuilding index doesn't solve anything. 
I tried this a few month ago as an administrator on "get satisfaction" forum advice me to do so.  It didn't solve anything. As Massimiliano  said it could  work again after rebuilding but will stop working again soon later. Random behavior!! :-) 
I would like to ask a question to Massimiliano: Are the two imap account from the same server? Im almost sure they are different server.  It really seems to have to do with imap server. I have ask friends about this bug and make tests with them. It could always work with some imap server and not with other.
Someone should change platform "all" to "Windows".
This bug does not occur with Mac OS.
I don't kwnow with linux.
Franck, I've explicitly changed that because same behavior seen on Linux.
Hello Nicolay,
OK. 
(I have not seen it on Mac OS 10.5.8 and 10.6.5)
Hi Franck and others with this bug:

I too was experiencing 'random' failures of new mail notifications.  But turns out it is not random for me - as for Chris Lambacher, new mail notifications work if there were unread INBOX messages when I start Thunderbird 3.  If there were no unread messages when Thunderbird starts, mail notifications do not work.

Would you be able to confirm whether you see this behaviour?  This determines whether we are seeing the same bug...
Hi Ryan and others,

I'm using Windows 7 x64 with
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; de; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110414 Lightning/1.0b2 Mnenhy/0.8.3 Thunderbird/3.1.10

I have one IMAP account on Cyrus 2.3.11 with imap-idle support enabled.

I checked the following situations in safe-mode and normal-mode:

-Start TB with no unread mail
-Write myself some mail via console/mail on mailserver
-Notification works

-Close TB
-Write myself some mail via console/mail on mailserver
-Wait a few seconds
-Start TB, now with new unread mail
-One unread mail is displayed - no notification for this mail (I don't know, maybe this is the correct behavior)
-Mark this mail as read
-Write myself some mail via console/mail on mailserver
-New Mail AND notification is displayed.

But I'm experiencing 'random' failures over the day: after working a while, when I maximize Thunderbird I suddenly see new unread messages - without any notification before.

Today I'm going to verify this behavior WITHOUT the "Blinking Alerts" addon.
This addon suppresses the disappearance of the new mail notification.
Hi,
today while starting TB I had unread messages. 
"Blinking Alerts" is disabled.
After a while, I got new mail with notification - I read this mail, too.
The next mail, which came about 15 minutes later, did not generate any notification.

Maybe it's a detail: I have a two-head (screen) configuration. 
Notifications appear on the default screen (when they appear).
I believe the issue was fixed on Linux via the patch for bug 555536 (landed for Miramar).

From the sounds of it, I don't believe this problem occurs on OSX.  I've changed the target platform to Windows.
OS: All → Windows 7
My issue seems to be different than the one posted here.  I believe my problem occurs on Linux with compiled mercurial code that includes the 'changeset ccb90765df69' patch.  My problem is not random, but reproducible.  So I have opened Bug 661839.
Ok, just banged my head into this one too...

I'm surprised this bug has been around for so long and is still unassigned...

This is basic functionality that is totally broken...

Please, lets not add any more new stuff until some of these major bugs are fixed, devs!
Charles:

What operating system are you using?

-Mike
I agree with Charles. still not fixed with thunderbird 5! incredible!
I'm on Windows...

And I meant no disrespect to the developers... I know that developing free software is tough, and I absolutely do appreciate everything that I get for free, but I will reiterate what isn't that difficult of a concept...

Simply stop adding *any* new features/functionality until *all* of the major bugs are squashed... do just enough to keep up with the new Gecko versions, and just fix the damn things, even if it takes 6 months.

:)
I don't believe that fixing bugs for six months would improve Thunderbird's market share, and indeed I suspect it would cause its decline.

But Bugzilla, and this bug in particular, is categorically NOT the place to discuss that.  Ever.  (Nor is it the place to discuss this comment.  You know my email address, if you feel you need to respond.)
Any one to move version from 3 to 5 for this bug? I confirm that it is still present on thunderbird 5.
From what I can tell on my Ubuntu this is no longer case. On Windows I'm using "Growl for windows" as workaround.
Version: 3.0 → 5.0
Thank you Nikolay, "Growl for windows" is a real good workaround.

I also moved to Thunderbird 5 on Windows 7 - the problem is still present.
i can confirm this bug w/ an imap account on both win xp and win 7 64bit up to Mozilla/5.0  Gecko/20110804 Thunderbird/3.1.12
but what i am seeing is not random at all, it is very reproducible. 
and in fact i think it is part of a 'feature' someone programed in.
i've tried all the suggested solutions that commenter 15 compiled.

i do get popup alerts and sounds, but not if haven't read the new message that the last notification was about.

steps to reproduce:
start tb move it to the left of the screen so you can see the list of emails in the inbox.
now switch to firefox and send a webbased email to the imap account or one from a neighboring computer, but make sure there is enough room to the left of the browser to see tb's inbox list of messages.
the new msg appears in the list, an alert pops up and it plays a sound, but dont read it.
now send a new email you can watch it appear, but no alert pops or sound plays, but don't read it.
repeat last step to your hearts content it wont notify.
now read the new unread emails.
send a new email. the new msg appears in the list, an alert pops up and it plays a sound.
rinse and repeat.
the behavior is the same even if tb is the window in focus the whole time.

it looks as if this is a 'feature' someone programmed in so they only get one alert for every new group of emails received and checked, instead of an alert for every single new individual email received.

the reason people are calling this random is because they are not keeping track of whether they  are responding to tb by reading the email when it notifies.  

the user should be the one to decide to opt in to only notifying once per bulk.

this forced behavior (its not an option since you cant change it) is stupid: 
if you step out of the room and miss the first and only notification, 
or you see it is an email that doesn't need immediate response
then you get no new notifications.

whether you have or haven't read the previous msg shouldn't affect whether there is a notification, only the notification setting should, but apparently it does.

i guess it is possible that tb only sends out an alert when an imap server goes from saying that 'there are no new msgs' to 'there are new msgs'. im speculating since idk how imap servers work or pop3 ones do or how they differ. 
in any event the notification should be triggered when it gets a new email.
(In reply to Charles from comment #34)
> Simply stop adding *any* new features/functionality until *all* of the major
> bugs are squashed... do just enough to keep up with the new Gecko versions,
> and just fix the damn things, even if it takes 6 months.

I agree. Thunderbird is full of sharp corners. Please polish the existing corners before adding new ones.
(In reply to Mike Conley (:mconley) from comment #29)
> I believe the issue was fixed on Linux via the patch for bug 555536 (landed
> for Miramar).
> 
> From the sounds of it, I don't believe this problem occurs on OSX.  I've
> changed the target platform to Windows.

Problem is still there on Linux with TB10 and I think it getting worse. Now it's just randomly works or not. So changing back OS.
OS: Windows 7 → All
Version: 5.0 → 10
Nothing change on windows. still working or not working ramdomly. No fix since Thunderbird 3. Incredible....
Franck, see my comment#37 for really nice workaround. I've almost forgot this bug exist because of it on windows at least :)
Yeah, I've had a total of one system that had this problem and Growl worked great for it.

Don't know why our other systems aren't affected as badly... or maybe people just aren't complaining (unlikely, as these guys love to complain- lol)
Thank you Nikolay, 
I will try growl!
Hello all,
I tried Growl for Windows and it is a working (but utterly ridiculous) work-around for Thunderbird on Windows. One has to add both Growl for Windows and a Thunderbird Add-On in order to get a simple sound notification for each incoming mail message in Thunderbird. It works, but it is quite incredible to have to install 2 programs in order to make a third one work as it should. This bug which was discovered in version 3 is still present in version 10. Amazing. I would a million times prefer all bugs to be ironed out rather than to have any new features for a long while. Thanks for suggesting Growl anyway. Please, could someone finally fix this issue in Thunderbird ? Greetings.
You are absolutly right Orlando
(In reply to franck poupart from comment #48)
> You are absolutly right Orlando

I completely agree, and I can't wait to see the patch from you or Orlando to fix this issue.

Thanks,
Blake.
I'll help find regression window to find out which patch made this regression.
Blake, you are very funny.
If I was able to fix it, we would not be here to speak about it. 
I'm just here to report a bug. It is one of the goal of bugzilla. Isn't it?
Anyway you seem to be an expert. So what are you doing?
At least some reactions...
Hello All,

Thank you Nikolay for your suggestion to identify the patch which caused this, your help would be greatly appreciated.

Blake, I'm not a Thunderbird programmer. If I or Franck were, we would have tried to fix this issue because it bothers us very much.

To me it looks like someone somewhere, a long time ago, decided that it was not necessary to get a sound/popup notification for each incoming message as long as the previous incoming message was not effectively read. The reality, however, is that either

- a normal user does not constantly sit in front of his PC and therefore if he leaves his desk and misses the very first notification then he never gets any subsequent notification when he is back at his desk. I personally would have a very hard time staying perpetually in front of my PC 24h a day and therefore I really need to be informed of any incoming message.

 or

- the user does notice the first incoming message notification but, as it appears to be a not-so-important message (a joke for example), he decides not to read it right away. In that case too this user never gets any subsequent notification for more urgent messages. Clearly we need to have at least the option to get a notification for each incoming message if we opt for this behaviour (I would).

I am very grateful to all the programmers who brought us Thunderbird but I would nevertheless like to insist for major usability bugs like this one to be fixed before other features are being added. We do need to have a working notification for each incoming message if we opt for this.

Thank you all.

Orlando
(In reply to franck poupart from comment #51)
> Blake, you are very funny.

Thank you!  :)

> If I was able to fix it, we would not be here to speak about it. 
> I'm just here to report a bug. It is one of the goal of bugzilla. Isn't it?

Perhaps it is, and perhaps it isn't.  Either way, the bug has been reported, so how do you explain any further comments?  ;)  (I think bugzilla's goal is more to get bugs fixed, but that's neither here nor there.)

> Anyway you seem to be an expert. So what are you doing?
> At least some reactions...

I'm afraid I'm swamped with other work.  I do know someone who is working on a related area, so this bug might get fixed as part of the work he's doing.

(In reply to Orlando Dures from comment #52)
> Blake, I'm not a Thunderbird programmer. If I or Franck were, we would have
> tried to fix this issue because it bothers us very much.

Being an open source project, you are both free to become Thunderbird programmers…  I'ld be more than happy to help either or both of you get started, if you wanted to give it a try.  This certainly isn't the easiest bug to start on, but if it's something you really care about, that might be a good motivator.

> To me it looks like someone somewhere, a long time ago, decided that it was
> not necessary to get a sound/popup notification for each incoming message as
> long as the previous incoming message was not effectively read. The reality,
> however, is that either
[snip]

This is a pretty good summary of your use cases, and I've forwarded it to the person working on this area.  I'm sure he'll take it into consideration in his design.

> I am very grateful to all the programmers who brought us Thunderbird but I
> would nevertheless like to insist for major usability bugs like this one to
> be fixed before other features are being added. We do need to have a working
> notification for each incoming message if we opt for this.

The tough part about open source projects is that we don't get to tell the programmers what to work on.  If they want to write new features instead of fix bugs, that's their choice.  The best we can do is make bugs attractive for them to fix.  Some ways of doing that are by giving them a clear reason why this bug is more important than the other ones that they could fix; by making it easy for them to figure out which lines of code need changing; and, perhaps most importantly, by not leaving comments in bugs which don't help the bug get fixed.  (And I'm as guilty of this last one as anyone else in this thread.)

Thanks,
Blake.
I just figured out, that on Ubuntu 11.10 Thunderbird is displaying a notification for every new mail, even if the previous one has not been read.

The notification system is different, I thinks it's dbus.
But the creation of the notification has still be done in Thunderbird.
So the code there already works as we want.
Maybe Ubuntu patches this part already?

Regards
It turns out, as I understand it, that we have three different notification systems, all of which work slightly differently than each other.  Linux is definitely the most recent, and I think the best, out of the three, and we hope to make them all use the same code at some point.
I'm just adding my own comments here; I too would like to see this fixed.  I have several clients using Thunderbird who would love to have their notifications again; since I switched them to IMAP, their notifications are all gone.

Win 7 x64, Win XP x32.
All using Tbird 10.
vote +1 on this bug
Me too - have just switched to IMAP & now get no notifications - either sound or pop up(In reply to asai from comment #57)
> vote +1 on this bug
> it looks as if this is a 'feature' someone programmed in so they only get
> one alert for every new group of emails received and checked, instead of an
> alert for every single new individual email received.
> 
> the reason people are calling this random is because they are not keeping
> track of whether they  are responding to tb by reading the email when it
> notifies.  
> 

I'm not able to reproduce this. It is still totally random for me. It can work with unread messages remaining in my inbox. And sometimes It doesn't work anymore even with no unread messages in the inbox. 
I'm speaking about Thunderbird for windows.
The notification implementation is substantially different across the three major platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac), and also changes significantly with platform-specific settings. It would help a lot if you could report which platform you're seeing the problem on, and what configuration options or advanced preferences you've set.
(In reply to Irving Reid (:irving) from comment #60)
> The notification implementation is substantially different across the three
> major platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac), and also changes significantly with
> platform-specific settings. It would help a lot if you could report which
> platform you're seeing the problem on, and what configuration options or
> advanced preferences you've set.

So far I can confirm that Linux Ubuntu(10.11) and Windows 7 (64 bit) are affected. No advanced configuration here as clean profile seems affected too. But as Franck says it really difficult to reproduce problem.
As I had already mentionned in my previous posts since 2 years ;-), I have experienced this random bug on  windows XP, vista and 7. No advanced configuration; clean profile.
Changed mail.notification.count.inbox_only to false fixed it for me here.
Main problem here is that this bug is assigned to nobody.
Irving:

Any update on this?

-Mike
I'm not working on this; if I was, I'd have assigned it to myself.

Based on some quick searching, you could try changing the mail.imap.use_status_for_biff preference (i've never tried it, so I can't tell you what to expect). Beyond that, my suspicion is that it's in the code that figures out whether an imap message we find out about from the server is really considered "new" or not - I remember seeing that code a few months ago when I was looking into something else, but I don't have a pointer directly to it right now. I think it's somewhere in http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mailnews/imap/src/nsImapIncomingServer.cpp or http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mailnews/imap/src/nsImapMailFolder.cpp
Still présent in version 12. Please update the status.
I'm very happy to see in this last two posts that things are moving.
I can confirm this bug on Lubuntu 11.10, Thunderbird 12.01, using IMAP folders from fastmail.fm.

Most of the time, notifications do not occur. No real pattern that I can discern.
Still present in Thunderbird 14.0 - Win 7 64-bit.
Indeed notifications for IMAP accounts are still unreliable, in several ways:

* If there is a message filter assigned to an account, notifications entirely stop working. This is reproducible here.
* For the remaining accounts, notifications work sometimes, unfortunately this is not reproducible other than there seem to be two states: random, and completely broken. In addition, there are accounts for which the notification sound never works, while for the remaining accounts the sound again works in some of the cases (if there's no visual notification, there never is a sound, but sometimes the sound is missing even though the window pops up). I know this is not really helpful, I'd be happy to do proper diagnostics once someone posts the instructions :D
Still present in Thunderbird 15.0.1 - Win 7 64-bit - OS clean install two days ago.
Win 7 64-bit, Thunderbird 15.0.1
Same problem, but it always starts working again if I repair the .msf files.
Seeing this for the first time now on two RHEL 6.3 installations with Thunderbird 10.0.7 ESR
Same problem here, no notifications for my IMAP email account
Windows XP
TB 14
I have windows 7 64 bit. This is systematic: if there any unread messages in my inbox the visual alert will not work. Once the messages are deleted or read the visual alert works (but, oddly, no sonic alert - I wonder why) But agree that this is not intelligent.
I've also had this notification bug turn up a few times. Like people over here, I also use IMAP, have multiple folders and subfolders, lots of requests going, move messages (same as when people use lots of filters), and use IMAP idle.

When the notification failed this time, I noticed that when the last time the notification was active, it said I had over 400 unread messages. Which wasn't the case. But my android phone also "counted" a similar number of new messages. Until I rebuilt the folders, cleaned out the inbox, and made a new profile - then suddenly I had "one new message" again (when I had one new message).

So here's what I think it is. The notification itself is actually working more or less as intended. And instead it's possibly either, or a combination of:
1. The routine that runs through the active/subscribed folders, and check them for new messages (if there is such a thing - apologies for being too lazy to check), keep counting moved messages that the server doesn't tag in a different way as new messages. Or, the TB count skips new folders and the interface reports (1) new. But the check routine tags folders that aren't shown as unread, increasing the count.
2. The server side imap implementations disagree with TB status . I've seen this notification with wrong number of messages reported in TB before, when using server-side filters, or at least update routines the server runs. 

So.. I suppose it's probable that the check could find 450 new messages - but then find that the actual number of new messages in the inbox is lower than 450, or have ids outside that range, etc., and then not trigger the update?

Also, maybe TB has it's own count in the interface, that differs from the actual count when running through the server folders? I know I would definitely have used my own routine, and synced it indirectly if I had implemented something like that.

Apologies again, I know how useless holistic debugging is when you're actually coding. But I don't think it's the actual notification deamon that hangs itself, or that it only happens on win7 or Vista, etc. It does happen on any amount of linux builds as well, for example, if you're as careless with your folder organisation when using a different desktop. 

So maybe look at how the count is increased, and how the notification is triggered instead.
I have also been experiencing this for some time, perhaps since I installed this system (on Icedove 10). I now experience it under Icedove 17.0.7, Debian testing, KDE. Repairing my inbox appears to fix it (tried twice, worked twice), but only for a very short time (less than an hour).

This ticket is a mess. As a minimum, if the problem is that notifications in general break, this should be retitled to, say, "Notifications of new messages (usually) not triggered on IMAP accounts".
Jostein, Dinsdale, all others,

Do you still see this problem?
Flags: needinfo?(muspell)
Flags: needinfo?(dd.robson)
I can't really test the part with message filters any more, but other than that, notifications have worked pretty reliably for the past two weeks.
Ralf indicates no more problems, and no one else had commented, so closing WFM.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 7 years ago
Flags: needinfo?(muspell)
Flags: needinfo?(dd.robson)
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
Problem still exists in Thunderbird 45.7.0 in Linux Mint 18.
Problem was not always there. But since around 6 months the problem started from one day to the next. Since then not even one popup again. Never.

Mixed accounts: gmail, hotmail, freenet ... IMAP and POP. 

I installed now a plugin called Mailbox Alert. 
 https://addons.mozilla.org/de/thunderbird/addon/mailbox-alert/
But even with this tool - no change.
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