774377 - New mail notification icon does not display in system tray - Win7

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: General, defect)

Description

[Rob Bell]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0.1
Build ID: 20120614114901

Steps to reproduce:

Installed Seamonkey update (2.10.1).


Actual results:

When new mail arrives, most of the time the 'new mail' envelope icon that should display in the Windows system tray does not appear. It seems like it happens once or twice after restarting SeaMonkey, but after some amount of time then future new messages do not cause the icon to appear.  This is NOT an issue of the icon being 'hidden' by the system tray customization options. The icon is definitely not present.

This has happened on several computers, even one where I just installed Win7 Pro fresh and brand new install of SeaMonkey.  The only thing in common is that I was using the same SeaMoney profile folder (copied to new system).

This has happened on Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 and Windows 7 Professional SP1.


Expected results:

Every time a new message arrives and the 'new mail icon' is not already showing in the system tray it should appear there and stay until I open the account and/or read the message.

Comment 1

[Rob Bell]

I should clarify a couple things related to the initial description.  In 'Steps to Reproduce' it should also say: 

1. install Seamonkey 2.10.1
2. Set up mail account
3. Receive new message

The original form asked "What did you do?", not "Steps to Reproduce", which is why that field was a little light.

Secondly, when I said "It seems like it happens once or twice after restarting SeaMonkey", I was referring to the icon appearing normally, as expected. After that it stops appearing.

Comment 2

[Philip Chee]

Go to about:config
Enter "mail.biff" in the search box.
What are the true/false values for:

mail.biff.show_alert
mail.biff.show_balloon
mail.biff.show_tray_icon

Comment 3

[Rob Bell]

mail.biff.show_alert      true
mail.biff.show_balloon    false
mail.biff.show_tray_icon  true

Comment 4

[[e-mail]]

For completeness, here's what I think is supposed to happen:
* SeaMonkey checks for mail in the background
* When new mail is detected, it sets a flag and triggers the sliding alert
* When the sliding alert finishes, if the flag is still set it shows the icon
* When you read a new message, the flag gets reset and the icon is hidden
(I don't know whether filters can reset the flag.)

It would be interesting to see whether it makes any difference if you turn on the balloon (either as well as or instead of the alert).

Comment 5

[Rob Bell]

Additional testing shows that once things 'break' the sliding textural alert does not appear above the system tray during new mail arrival either.  I enabled the 'balloon' option but I'm not sure what that is supposed to do.  While 'broken' I see nothing appear anywhere on my screen when new mail arrives.  I do hear the 'ding' audible alert and the green arrow appears on the account's inbox icon in SeaMonkey Mail itself.  But nothing visible happens in or around the system tray.

Comment 6

[Rob Bell]

Still occurring the same way in 2.11 update.

Comment 7

[Philip Chee]

Someone else has reported this with
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:14.0) Gecko/20120715 Firefox/14.0.1 SeaMonkey/2.11
<http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=2507897>

Comment 8

[Jim Taylor]

I am having this problem also on SeaMonkey 2.11 Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium  Build identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:14.0) Gecko/20120715 Firefox/14.0.1 SeaMonkey/2.11

When new mail arrives (pop3 accounts) I do not get the sliding alert or the system tray icon.  I do get the audible alert, the mailbox icon changes to the biff icon (green arrow) and the mail icon on the status bar changes to the biff icon (green arrow).

mail.biff.play_sound;true
mail.biff.show_alert;true
mail.biff.show_balloon;false
mail.biff.show_tray_icon;true

Not sure when this started, I think it was OK in 2.9, but not sure.  It's a bit of a nuisance  because if you're not at the computer to hear the biff ding and don't have SeaMonkey in the foreground to see the status bar biff icon you don't know you have received new mail.

Comment 10

[Philip Chee]

Similar problems reported for Thunderbird:
Bug 762900 - New e-mail notification bar stopped to appear in version 13 if "Show an alert" box checked on Windows XP Professional SP3 x32 and Windows 7 Ultimate x32, upgrading from version 12 or new installation
Thunderbird 13 == SeaMonkey 2.10 so happening at around the same time.

Comment 11

[Philip Chee]

This should be fixed in SeaMonkey 2.18. See Bug 404580 (Provide information like preview text, subject and sender in mail notification window - as in Thunderbird). Known to work on Windows7 and Linux. I'll just set a dependency to 404580.

Comment 12

[Filipus Klutiero]

Rob, Jim, could you confirm this problem is gone in current versions?

Comment 13

[Jim Taylor]

(In reply to Filipus Klutiero from comment #12)
> Rob, Jim, could you confirm this problem is gone in current versions?

I have not seen the problem in any release with the new mail notification alerts.  I am currently on 2.22a2 and do not see the problem and I did not see it on 2.20b3 so I can confirm it's gone in those releases.

Comment 14

[Philip Chee]

Thank you for your report. Closing this bug.

Comment 15

[Rob Bell]

I've only been able to watch it for a couple days but it seems fine. Before it would only display the notification icon (when additional new mail arrives) for less than a day, so this does seem better.

Thanks!

Comment 16

[Antti29]

I'm still seeing this bug with the latest version of SeaMonkey. Funnily enough, it is only my Gmail inbox that fails to show the notification; the three others I have set up work fine.

It seems that the bug doesn't appear when the browser has just been started up, but after a prolonged period without restarting it, the notification will at some point fail. And I do tend to keep my browser open for days, even weeks in a row.

Comment 17

[Philip Chee]

> I'm still seeing this bug with the latest version of SeaMonkey
If you see this only with Gmail IMAP then your problem may be Bug 861911 (Alert for new mail lacks message preview for unsynchronized Gmail IMAP accounts)