539386 - Client refuses to reliably NOT pick up email

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Ness Blackbird]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20091221 Firefox/3.5.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091204 Thunderbird/3.0

When I request that email be picked up hourly, or never, the client will often get it much more often.  This happens after I read email in the inbox for the account in question.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set up an account with email picked up hourly.
2. Read email in the account.
3. Send email to the account.  It will be picked up before the requested time.
Actual Results:  
Email picked up too soon.

Expected Results:  
Email picked up hourly.

There's a movement gaining ground for limiting email reading in various ways ("it's an addiction").  Thunderbird simply can't be used effectively for this.

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

Are you using IMAP or POP ?

Comment 2

[Ness Blackbird]

IMAP.

Comment 3

[Jo Hermans]

Then it might be to the IMAP IDLE feature (RFC 2177). When this is used, it's the IMAP server that can notify the client that there are new messages ready, so that it doesn't have to poll anymore. The client will still poll though, because a server might not notify the client when it's very busy.

You can switch it off, by going to Account Settings -> Server Settings -> Advanced.

Comment 4

[Ness Blackbird]

If this is caused by the IMP IDLE feature, perhaps this feature should be OFF by default?  I'm not clear on what it's for, but it appears to be breaking the client functionality.

Comment 5

[Jo Hermans]

No, it's actually very useful (and supported by most IMAP servers). Most people want to see a new mail the moment it arrives in the mail server, without waiting for the polling (or by pressing the 'get mail' button). Without this feature, most people will lower their polling interval to 1 minute or so, which is a disaster for IMAP servers with many clients.

Comment 6

[Ness Blackbird]

That makes sense.  Perhaps just an explanatory text on the settings page, then?

"Turn IDLE off if you want to make sure you don't get email more often than indicated under <b>Check for new messages</b>."

Comment 7

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Ness is your issue due to IDLE ?

Comment 8

[Ness Blackbird]

Yes!  It now works perfectly!  Well, I haven't checked that it picks up mail on schedule, but it definitely AVOIDS picking up mail when it's not supposed to.

Recommend a UI change explaining how to use it.

Comment 9

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

WFM per comment 8

Comment 10

[Ness Blackbird]

UI still needs to be corrected...the only way I figured this out was to post a bug on the bug tracker :)

Comment 11

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to comment #10)
> UI still needs to be corrected...the only way I figured this out was to post a
> bug on the bug tracker :)

True raise a new issue for that (and search that we don't already have one for that ;-))