749654 - Bad message in Outbox blocks delivery of remaining messages until dialog is dismissed

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect, P3)

Description

[Jonathan Kamens]

As per https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=503193#c14...

If you have a message in your outbox with an invalid recipient (that will be rejected by your mail server) in it, and you do File | Send Unsent Messages, then it will stop and pop up an error dialog when encountering the first bad message and will not continue until you click OK.

This is double plus ungood for things like the Send Later 3 add-on, which invoke File | Send Unsent Messages automatically, possibly when no one is sitting in front of the computer.

These error dialogs should be popped up asynchronously and should not block the delivery of the remaining messages in the Outbox.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

i thought there was was a bug on this but I don't see one blocking https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=511079&hide_resolved=1

but what do I know :) ... perhaps there is something in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?type1-0-0=substring;list_id=4236084;short_desc=prompt%20dialog;field0-0-0=short_desc;type0-0-1=substring;field0-0-1=keywords;type1-0-1=allwordssubstr;resolution=---;classification=Client%20Software;classification=Components;query_format=advanced;short_desc_type=anywordssubstr;type0-0-0=anywordssubstr;component=Networking%3A%20SMTP;field1-0-0=short_desc;product=MailNews%20Core;product=Thunderbird;field1-0-1=short_desc

Comment 2

[Jonathan Kamens]

See also bug 859265.

Comment 3

[Jonathan Kamens]

Sure would be nice to see this fixed. Another user of my add-on (Send Later) just complained about it. It signiicantly degrades the functionality of the add-on, and there's no way I know of for me to work around it in my add-on code.

Comment 4

[Kent James (:rkent)]

Jonathan, can you suggest the fix for the core code?

Comment 5

[Jonathan Kamens]

I'm not a core developer and don't know the architecture of the relevant code enough to know what's feasible and possible.

For example, I don't know if it's possible to pop up an error dialog that's asynchronous and not modal. If that's possible, then I'd simply make this particular error dialog one of those, rather than one that requires the user to click OK and waits until the user does so before continuing. That's what I suggested above.

If that's not possible, then what I would suggest is for the code that does message delivery from the Outbox to keep track of messages that failed to be delivered and then, at the end, pop up a window displaying a log of the failed deliveries, rather than a modal error dialog as it does now.

Comment 6

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Removing myslef on all the bugs I'm cced on. Please NI me if you need something on MailNews Core bugs from me.

Comment 7

[Jacko]

Hello dear Developers of Thunderbird Mail.

Just new to TB (after long time use of Outlook Express and MS Mail) and I like it very much.

Bus as I discovered very quickly, here and there TB is somewhat developped from a technical point of view. Nothing to worry about, it is me that has to adapt.

Nevertheless I stumbled very quickly on a imperfection that you know as bug #749654 fir over 6 year now: as long as a message/error pop-up is open on a message that is trying to be sent, this prevents the sending of other messages.
Just this specific issue, being a enthousiastic user already of SendLater and not being able to install BlunderMail (because of incompatability with my version of TB??) very much tunes down the practical use of TB I do seek for.
I'm usually behind a very slow internetconnection, and often I suffer from timeout-errors. So now with TB I have to send each errored mail again, manually! With this issue fixed I can leave sending of errored mail to TB, trusting that there will be a time there won't be an error.

So, dear developpers, PLEASE fix this issue, I'm sure that a lot of other users will very much appreciate this.

Thank you.

Greetings,
Jacko

Comment 8

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: Screenshot 1: Send Later addon statistics on 16-01-2023, 677k downloads, 89k average daily users

I guess this bug would deserve some attention.
Send Later addon statistics on 16-01-2023:

• 677k downloads
• 89k average daily users

Comment 9

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Alex, John, any ideas on the way forward here? Send Later looks like an important add-on...

(In reply to Thomas D. (:thomas8) from comment #8)

Created attachment 9312467 [details]
Screenshot 1: Send Later addon statistics on 16-01-2023, 677k downloads, 89k average daily users

I guess this bug would deserve some attention.
Send Later addon statistics on 16-01-2023:

• 677k downloads
• 89k average daily users

Comment 10

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Yes it's a problem, but it's not part of the objectives for this cycle.
Considering that It's an 11 years old bug with 7 comments and 1 vote, let's not redirect effort to this one while we're in the middle of much larger and difficult objectives.
This can be part of the upcoming polish and clean up effort, but definitely not a priority.