755678 - Enhance adding of attachments: compress/zip, resize images, rename executables, tooltips for file types

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[supersonicsnow]

Attachment: ideal email attachments.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/12.0
Build ID: 20120420145725

Steps to reproduce:

Trying to request an upgrade (feature).
So that instead of the bare minimum just adding files to be attached, files can be compressed as necessary.


Actual results:

Usually I have to send people little executable or zip files, but their gmail or other server rejects the email because it contains a .zip file.
So I have to go to the folder on my hard drive, rename the file to program.exe.rename
then attach that file, click send and wait for the email to send, then remember to delete the attachment from my sent mail (so my thunderbird DB doesn't get massive)
And then I have to remember to go and rename program.exe.rename back to program.exe

And similar issues for resizing images.


Expected results:

Please see image for an ideal file attachment situation
http://i.imgur.com/hYyJK.png

But there should also be tick boxes for automatically deleting the attached files from the email in the 'sent' mail folder.

Comment 1

[supersonicsnow]

Attachment: ideal email attachments (Visual Example)

Comment 2

[supersonicsnow]

The file type hints will also be awesome. Often I send people files and 2 whole days can be wasted where they reply and say "I don't know what to do with this file, it doesn't run on my computer"

It saves having to write over and over again every time you attach common file types. "This is a blah blah file, you open it like this..."

Comment 3

[supersonicsnow]

Attachment: Ideal Email Attachments (visual example)

Comment 4

[supersonicsnow]

Attachment: Ideal Email Attachments (Idea v4) (visual)

Comment 5

[Ian Neal]

Sounds like something ideally suited for an extension/add-on to do.

Comment 6

[supersonicsnow]

If there are 2 or more files attached with the group box ticked.
Then a file will be sent as an attachment:
"grouped attachments for (email subject).7z"

Comment 7

[supersonicsnow]

Ian, thanks for your feedback :)
I disagree. Emailing files is one of the most common ways that files are shared, and we really need to improve the functionality of sharing files via email and up the standard.
If Thunderbird doesn't innovate, who will?

Comment 8

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Thunderbird 13 should be released with options to upload attachments to an external provider and just send links. This will avoid the need to attach the files, or compress them in a case where a person's inbox is limited.

Therefore I think that compressing in attachments isn't really necessary (and I think I know of at least one company that inspected the items within a compressed file, not just the compressed file).

Comment 9

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

(In reply to Mark Banner (:standard8) from comment #8)
> Therefore I think that compressing in attachments isn't really necessary
> (and I think I know of at least one company that inspected the items within
> a compressed file, not just the compressed file).

Gmail does that, and I think Exchange can too. Worse, I've seen several places (e.g. my old university) where *all* ZIP files are stripped from emails. While I'm not 100% convinced that this level of paranoia is necessary, I'm also not comfortable with making it easier to circumvent that security unless we can provide some guarantees that executable attachments are safe.

As for the other bits in the screenshot, bug 401991 covers resizing attached images. Stripping attachments for sent messages is bug 577959.

I'm not convinced that a list of descriptions for file types is necessary or useful, since 1) there are a *lot* of extensions out there, many of which are not unique, and 2) I don't think we can provide useful information for most of them. For instance, saying that a PSD is an Adobe Photoshop file doesn't help a whole lot if you don't have Photoshop.

Also, please file one bug for each issue so that we can track them separately.

I'd also like to reiterate Ian's suggestion that these could be implemented as add-ons. I've found it highly beneficial to work on new features as add-ons first, since that allows for plenty of time to get the feature just right without shipping a broken feature. Being able to distribute the add-on to interested users also helps a lot with finding bugs and improving the user experience.

Comment 10

[supersonicsnow]

(In reply to Mark Banner (:standard8) from comment #8)
> Thunderbird 13 should be released with options to upload attachments to an
> external provider and just send links. This will avoid the need to attach
> the files, or compress them in a case where a person's inbox is limited.
> 
> Therefore I think that compressing in attachments isn't really necessary
> (and I think I know of at least one company that inspected the items within
> a compressed file, not just the compressed file).

Thanks for your feedback. I agree that external links are better than embedding attachments in an email. But we should still recognize that email is probably the most popular method of filesharing, in the world. (popular meaning number of people who use this method, not number of files shared or MB shared)

Comment 11

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

the zip part of this RFE is bug 12865

Comment 12

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

supersonicsnow, thanks for sharing your interesting ideas.

However, this RFE as it stands is not actionable for several reasons.

1) As noted in comment 9, pls file one issue per bug. The feature set you describe is entirely impossible to be handled in a single bug, and nobody will implement all of these at once. Even if you want a single combined UI for these improvements, you'll have to break that up into pieces.
To that end, this RFE is -> invalid.

2) Because of 1), some of the many ideas in this bug are already covered by other bugs with a more limited scope:
- bug 401991 covers resizing attached images
- bug 577959 covers stripping attachments for sent messages
- bug 12865 covers zipping of attachments before sending
The respective parts of this bug are thus -> duplicates.

3) The remaining ideas are:
3a) auto-rename attachments per file type, e.g. rename executables
3b) auto-add pre-defined customizable instructions for handling of attached file types to the outgoing message (what reporter refers to as tooltips)

Both of these would require separate bugs, their combination here remains
-> invalid.
Both of these are not likely to happen in core, for some reasons see Jim's sceptical comment 9.

Furthermore, most of the ideas of 2) and 3) should be better tried and tested in an addon for interested users before exposing all users to them.
So they are also -> wontfix candidates.

Altogether, what this means is that notwithstanding the potential usefulness of some of the ideas mentioned here (and respective steps to be taken in other bugs as explained above), this combined RFE cannot be maintained because it is going nowhere. More so as we have much more urgent bugs and enhancements, and radically reduced manpower to address them, see below.

So I'll resolve this as
-> invalid,
feel free to change this to duplicate or wontfix resolution if preferred.

(In reply to supersonicsnow from comment #7)
> If Thunderbird doesn't innovate, who will?

Good question - pls ask that one to Mozilla, who have recently declared that "continued innovation in Thunderbird is not a priority for Mozilla’s product efforts" [1] and consequently are withdrawing most of their paid staff from the project.

[1] https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2012/07/06/thunderbird-stability-and-community-innovation/