533689 - Field "From" / "To" in header pane shows "YOU"

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 478466

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, defect)

Description

[Olaf Fraczyk]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050922 Fedora/1.0.7-1.1.fc3 Firefox/1.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091204 Thunderbird/3.0

When I click on a message and its get displayed in the header pane I see for header "To" (In inbox) and for header "From" (in sentbox) value "YOU".

Who is "YOU": you or me? :)
I have multiple mail accounts and it is simply annoying.
Why can't it be a real address as in any other normal MUA?


Reproducible: Always

Actual Results:  
YOU

Expected Results:  
email address

Please, make Thunderbird a good and efficient mail user agent. Don't add unnecessary bells and whistles just because somebody had five minutes to write them.
BTW. it even works inconsistently - eg. for small letters(characters) in email address I get "YOU", for all capitals I get email address.

Comment 1

[Olaf Fraczyk]

updated version information

Comment 2

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

This is based on the information available in the address book, look into your AB and see how the You's are defined.

Comment 3

[Olaf Fraczyk]

Hmm, the address book is empty :)
Also, searching for YOU gives no match. But this is consistent, as address book is empty.

Comment 4

[Miguel]

Hi,

As a workaround, you can disable the option "Show only display name for people in my address book" in Tools > Options > Advance > Reading and Display.

Anyway, having a look at this I've noticed some issues:

1.- "You" field is only used when the email address is the main identity, secondary identities aren't displayed as "You".

2.- As the reporter says the comparison should be ignoring the case of the characters.

These points should be filled as new bugs from my point of view, but I'll wait to see if somebody else can confirm them before filling in new bugs reports.

About the specific concern the reporter has pointed to, I think a specific option to enable/disable this behavior is needed and it's what the reporter may be asking for (and why I'm voting this bug). Although an UI option like the "Show only display name for people in my address book" would be nice, maybe with just being able to disable it from the Configuration editor would be enough as most home users aren't going to need to change it.

As a general comment, I see the point of this feature although we shouldn't forget that an important part of the Thunderbird users are heavy email users so sometimes these features can be more annoying than useful.

Regards,

Comment 5

[Olaf Fraczyk]

Thank you for the hint.

After reading your response, however,  I suppose that this feature may affect users that have  LDAP servers and have multiple e-mails for single DN. It is common to have a private address and bussiness one. And it is sometimes really important to reply to the right one: eg. confidential company information, or just the opposite - something that shouldn't go to a corporate account.

Comment 6

[rsx11m]

This ambiguity has been a problem since that feature was introduced...

Comment 7

[Olaf Fraczyk]

I'm not sure it is an exact duplicate.
The "YOU" doesn't correspond to an addressbook entry and adds additional confusion.

Comment 8

[rsx11m]

Note that bug 478466 is about the "You" being ambiguous in general and not being appropriate in certain environments. It is not intended to be in the address book, this is only for display of message headers. However, the current workaround relates to an address book setting.

Overall, the discussion here is covered by that other bug already.

Comment 9

[Miguel]

Hi Olaf,

I also think that, although the issues raised here may be more specific, unless we have a well defined "You" feature function, it doesn't make a lot of sense dealing with concrete issues when the feature itself is subject to change.

It's when bug #478466 is resolved and the community has decided the best implementation when we could check if any specific situation is uncovered yet.

Regards,

Comment 10

[Olaf Fraczyk]

Yes, you both are 100% right. I was a little nutty.