538121 - email account auto-configuration : select SSL instead of STARTTLS when SSL is available (with IMAP)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, defect)

Description

[Pierre-Aurélien Georges]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_2; fr-fr) AppleWebKit/531.21.8 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Safari/531.21.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; fr; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091204 Thunderbird/3.0

On my IMAP email server ( imap . DOT . unice . DOT . fr ) both STARTTLS and SSL/TLS security options are available. Thunderbird email account auto-configuration uses STARTTLS by default instead of SSL/TLS, and don't let me chose easily between both : I have to click on "Modify", then switch from "STARTTLS to SSL/TLS", but the port number doesn't update automatically, so I also have to type in the correct port number (that I must know from another source because Thunderbird won't tell me which number it is)

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Tools menu => account settings (sorry if the names are not exact, this is translation of French version of Tunderbird)
2. Manage Accounts (drop down menu) => Add new email account
3. Type in something in "name" field, type in "[e-mail]" in email address field, click on continue
Actual Results:  
"Thunderbird has found the following parameters for your account : [...] IMAP 143 STARTTLS"
(should rather use SSL/TLS because both are available on this server)
No drop down list to choose between STARTTLS and SSL/TLS on this section -> I have to click on modify button, to specify "SSL/TLS" and then to manually specify the port number (because thunderbird doesn't automatically update port number when security parameter is changed)... Thus this actually totally ruins the utility of such an auto-configuration feature.

Expected Results:  
When both security parameters are available on a server, this dialog box should display a drop down list to chose between STARTTLS and SSL/TLS (in place of the text label) without having to click on "modify" button, and with SSL/TLS as default (if available). When switching between SSL/TLS and STARTTLS, Thunderbird should automatically update port number according to what have been detected on the server.
In the same way, when both POP3 and IMAP are available on a server, a drop down list should be displayed in place of the text label "POP" to let the user choose between IMAP and POP without having to click on the modify button (and specifying manually the server URL and port number). When switching between IMAP and POP, Thunderbird should automatically update fields "server URL", "port number", and "security parameters" according to what have been automatically detected on the server.

Comment 1

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

We apparently decided to prefer STARTTLS over SSL. It's not a bug. WONTFIX.

Port number preselection is a separate bug. The whole "Edit"/Modify mode is not terribly well worked out anyways.

Selection between POP and IMAP is again an entirely different thing and a new feature.