57604 - mass-replying/forwarding to more than 8 emails opens/forwards only 8 windows/emails [Ctrl+R, Ctrl+L for multiple / many selected messages limited to maximum of not more than 8 compositions]

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect)

Description

[Oliver Klee]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; m18) Gecko/20001011
BuildID:    2000101104

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Mark 9 or more mails.
2. Press the Reply button.
3. (Wait for the windows to open; maybe have a cup of tea =.-> )

Actual Results:  Only 8 mail compose windows are opened.

Expected Results:  More than 8 mail compose windows should open (one for each
replied message).

I noticed this bug when mass-approving entries for a mailing list (with
majordomo). So there are situations where someone actually wants to reply to
more than one mail at the same time.

Comment 1

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

You are right, there is a limitation in the number of window you can open during 
a reply. It's to prevent you to open too much window by accident, imagine you 
have all your mailbox selected, maybe more than 100 messages and you press 
accidently the reply button or you didn't realized that you have all those 
message selected: You will not be happy to get 100+ windows. Sorry, won't fix.

Comment 2

[fenella]

I try to compare this behavior in Nova. When I select 2 or more messages, the
Reply button grays out.  So I could compare it with Seamonkey

Just curious, is this Won't fix just for the RTM, Would it ever be fixed? Or it
won't be fixed forever?

Comment 3

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

It's a limitation I did to prevent you openning more than 8 message compose
during a reply or forward. I won't change that in the future.

Comment 4

[Oliver Klee]

I don't like this at all. There is no user feedback that some (and which) of the
marked messages don't get a reply. A better solution would be
a) greyed-out Reply and Forward buttons when > 8 messages are selected, or
b) a dialog box: "You are about to open more than 8 mail compose windows.
Proceed? (Yes/No)"

I want to be able to rely on Mozilla to do something properly or otherwise give
me feedback that I have to do something again.

Comment 5

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

I like the second proposition. Reopen the bug...

Comment 6

[Oliver Klee]

Adding correctness keyword.

Comment 7

[Sheela Ravindran]

change qa contact ->fenella, mark messages your area if not reassign

Comment 8

[Oliver Klee]

Nominating for 0.9.1 and 0.9.2.

Comment 9

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

reassign to varada

Comment 10

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

*** Bug 103825 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Henrik Gemal]

since Bug 103825 is a dupe of this...

Comment 12

[Andreas Premstaller]

Attachment: Patch that adds a confirm dialog before opening more than 8 compose windows

Following Oliver's comment #4b and ducarroz's comment #5, this patch implements
a confirm dialog before opening more than 8 compose windows.
Patch is against W2K build 2002020208, works ok with Reply, Reply All and
Forward commands.

Comment 13

[Andreas Premstaller]

adding keywords...
varada, could you please have a look at the patch and review it?

Comment 14

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

this change of UI should be reviewed by jglick (cc robinf so she can review the
text, if jglick likes the approach.)

I think there might be a related bug about fwd-ing, about how to handle fwding
of several messages.  (should they be in seperate windows, are all in one?)

but reply is still an issue.

re-assign to jglick, so she can make the UI decision.  jennifer, re-assign back
to me when you are done, and I'll drive the patch in (unless you reject it.)

Comment 15

[robinf]

Suggested wording for alert: "You are about to open more than 8 Mail Compose
windows. Do you want to continue?"

Comment 16

[jglick]

Related bug is 84131 - Forwarding multiple e-mails to single/multiple 
recipients.

I like the idea of disabling the Reply and Forward actions if > 8 messages are 
selected. It prevents the user from getting into this situation in the first 
place and avoids having to pop up a dialog to users.

If folks really prefer the dialog option, then I would add to the text Why we 
are asking them to confirm an action they requested. "You are about to open more 
than 8 Mail Compose windows. This may take a few minutes. Do you want to 
continue?"

Or, we could deal with this as a combination with 84131. Multiple messages 
selected and user wants to Reply or Forward. Open dialog asks them if they want 
to open each window separately (this make take a few minutes) or Reply to them 
all at once with the following comment (add the comment once and each msg is 
sent with it), or Forward them all as one email with the forwards as 
attachments.

Comment 17

[Andreas Premstaller]

If a decision is reached to change the behaviour of the application in any of
the ways Jennifer mentioned above, and there is a realistic prospect to get this
coded any time before or around 1.0, that is ok for me. Infact, if the spec is
clear enough, I would be glad to give it a try myself, my skills allowing.

If this does not happen, I think it would be a good idea to go with this simple
patch at the moment, agree on the best wording, and change to the "correct"
solution (whatever that may be) later. 

I think we agree that it is bad UI behaviour to silently not open more than 8
compose windows without giving the user any feedback as to what happened and why.

Comment 18

[Andreas Premstaller]

jglick, awaiting your decision... :-)

Comment 19

[jglick]

My preference is disabling the Reply and Forward actions if > 8 messages are 
selected. Since, as I mentioned, it prevents the user from getting into this 
situation in the first place and avoids having to pop up a dialog to users, 
asking them to confirm an action they requested.  

Comment 20

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

*** Bug 142541 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 21

[gabriel]

I'm just a bystander ( ;-) ) but I would much much prefer a dialog to pop up.
Why ? Well, to my mind, it is perverse to limit the functionality of an
application, just because a user might select that function by accident.

It makes much more sense to me that if mozilla *can* do something, it should be
allowed to - with a check if necessary. There are comments above that indicate
that some people want this functionality ( + see also bug 142541). Are you going
to deny it to them, just because you don't want to add in an extra dialog ?

Maybe while you're at it you should stop people from loading too large pages
(because it might take too long to load in their browser) or posting to
newsgroups (well a spammer might get their email address).

Comment 22

[Russell Odom]

Something I just noticed - selecting more than 8 messages then selecting
"Forward as attachment" also only forwards 8 of the messages. This only opens
one window, so there shouldn't be a limit in this case. Do we need a new bug for
this issue, or can it live here?

Just my 2p on the rest of this discussion: I think a dialogue box (with a "Don't
ask me again" option possibly) is the best solution. Greying out the options
(comment 2, comment 4(a), comment 19) is definitely *not* the way to go, even if
it is the easiest solution to implement - there is absolutely no indication to
the user as to *why* the button has greyed out, it just looks like Mozilla is
broken. Also, thoroughly agree with last sentence of comment 17.

Comment 23

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Comment on attachment 67814 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch that adds a confirm dialog before opening more than 8 compose windows

Sorry, gabriel and Russell, we're trying to make software for the human species
here. And as long as we're doing that, `limiting functionality' isn't
tyrannical behavior, it's a fundamental part of the job. Further, any solution
which involves a confirmation alert is almost certainly wrong, and this case is
no exception.

For Forwarding, there doesn't need to be any limit, because that should only
open one composition window (with all the selected messages attached, just as
one message is when it is forwarded by itself).

For Reply, however, it makes no sense to reply to more than one message with a
single action. The limit should be one (as it is in 4.x), not an unintuitive
eight. If you want to reply to two messages, you can click Reply once for each
of them. That's hardly oppressive.

Comment 24

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 156146 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 25

[Seth Master]

Hey, what is going on with this bug, there has been no activity for a long time.

Comment 26

[Russell Odom]

Re my comment 22 - the 'only forward 8 messages as attachments' behaviour has
gone away - bug 156146.

IMO, only greying out the buttons when > 8 (as opposed to > 1) message is
selected (as suggested by jglick) is not the correct behaviour - there is no
indication to the user as to why the button is greyed out when they select 9
messages, but enabled when they only select 8 (as I said in comment 22, it makes
Mozilla look broken). Either make the limit > 1 (it's more obvious what's
happening), or don't have it at all.

To summarise the above comments, there seem to be 2 patches required:
(1) Hitting 'Forward' with multiple messages selected should attach all of the
selected messages (inline) to one compose window (comment 14, comment 23). This
is bug 84131, so we don't need to worry about it here.

(2) Either:
(a) 'Reply' and 'Reply all' buttons should be greyed out when multiple messages
selected (comment 19 + others (suggests limit should be 8), comment 23).
(b) User should be prompted when > 8 messages selected and 'Reply'/'Reply all'
button hit (comment 4(b), comment 5, comment 12, comment 21).

Comment 27

[xolaware.llc]

this also occurs on mac, so i request the hardware & os be changed to all.

after reading the other comments, adding a dialog that allows this behavior if requested would be 
the preferred behavior.  there are times when i select a number of messages in order to force 
myself to reply to them all, and if it only selects the first 8 (or first 1!!), then i am forced as a user 
of thunderbird/mozilla to have to go find the others i want to reply to and select them one by one.  
the dialog box serves the purpose of stopping the user from accidentally opening 100s of windows 
while allowing those that legitimately want to do this to do it all at once with a single dialog box 
answer (and if the dialog box were to contain a 'do not show this again' dialog, it would allow it 
without even an extra click after the first time).

Comment 28

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 245136 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 29

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

*** Bug 331409 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 31

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Gary, can you check how bad is the current patch?

Comment 32

[Be Wee]

Is there a patch or a workaround?

Comment 34

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Adding relevant search words to summary to improve retrievability.

Comment 36

[twentyex]

I'm also for having a dialog box. Mozilla is about giving the user the freedom to choose! Why the chains here?

Comment 37

[kifoghorn]

Is this similar to not being able to open more than 8 emails to read.

I am use to select all emails in inbox and have them all open in separate windows.

this no longer works.