701325 - Monitoring multiple folder using IMAP IDLE

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, enhancement)

Description

[Adrian]

Currently TB only connects to INBOX by default and monitory it using IDLE.
By setting a high enough "cached IMAP connections" value and then viewing every folder you can make TB connect to the other folders to IDLE on them, too.

However, this is very annoying if you have multiple folders so there should be an option to (1) IDLE on all folders (if that many IMAP connections are allowed) or (2) select a list of folders that should be monitored via IDLE.

In case (2) INBOX should probably be always monitored.

The rationale for this suggestion is simple: By using server-side filtering - which makes sense if you access mails from different locations since you don't have to keep one client running all the time to perform filtering (which would cause the same problem though) or even keeping your filters in all clients - the INBOX is not the only folder where new messages arrive. Depending on your mailing habits (e.g. reading some mailing lists, getting automated notifications from websites, etc.) you might actually have the majority of emails filtered into folders so only few emails might actually be saved to INBOX. When considering additional foldes such as "Friends" and "Work" the amount of emails delivered to INBOX would even go down much more.

So it's kind of against the idea behind IDLE if the client doesn't monitor all folders - it's meant for instant notification about new emails and this purpose is defeated by not being able to monitor all folders.

Comment 1

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

If you right-click any folder and select "Properties", you will find that there is a text box which allows you to add the folder to the list of folders being checked for new messages.

Comment 2

[Adrian]

This unfortunately only affects the regular checks, not the IDLE-based realtime notifications.

Comment 3

[Brian Murrell]

You are probably looking for RFC 5465.

Comment 4

[David Lechner (:dlech)]

RFC 5465 = IMAP NOTIFY extension = Bug 479133

Comment 5

[Brian Murrell]

(In reply to David Lechner (:dlech) from comment #4)
> RFC 5465 = IMAP NOTIFY extension = Bug 479133

Maybe this should just be closed as a dup of bug 479133.

Comment 6

[David Lechner (:dlech)]

(In reply to Brian Murrell from comment #5)
> (In reply to David Lechner (:dlech) from comment #4)
> > RFC 5465 = IMAP NOTIFY extension = Bug 479133
> 
> Maybe this should just be closed as a dup of bug 479133.

I think there is still a case for this because not many servers support NOTIFY yet.

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to David Lechner (:dlech) from comment #6)
> I think there is still a case for this because not many servers support
> NOTIFY yet.

so confirming

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

OTOH, it is nice to use supported standards. And I'm not sure monitoring multiple folders isn't such a high demand item that we'd want to put effort into a solution only to have it obsoleted by eventually doing the right thing and supporting the servers that do support the standard.

Comment 10

[Brian Murrell]

And OYAH (on yet another hand) you could cripple yourself sitting around waiting for standards to come to fruition.  Sometimes you just have to forge ahead and side-step/pre-empt standards to make useful progress while waiting for the standards people to fight it out amongst themselves.

Comment 11

[Brian Murrell]

Just sayin'...

Comment 12

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

What is difference of this bug from bug 589731?

Comment 13

[Jesus Cea]

Just in case you are interested:

IMAP4 NOTIFY addon for Thunderbird!
http://blog.jcea.es/posts/20141011-thunderbird_notify.html

Comment 14

[gene smith]

I restated this feature idea here: Bug 1428097 comment 38. Make which fold does IDLE selectable. Also, still don't see support for the imap NOTIFY rfc now 4 years later.