79455 - Reply-To address gets picked up in every compose window

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Composition, defect, P3)

Description

[Sheela Ravindran]

Builid:  2001050706 on all platforms

When you set the default reply-to address in accounts and settings for an 
account, the compose window picks it up all the time when it is not needed. It 
is okay to show this information in the header when you send a message from this 
account.  We pick up the reply-to address every time in the compose window. We 
do not send any mail but still should not show up in the UI if it is not needed. 
 

1.  While composing a new message.
2.  While forwarding a message
3.  While replying to a message received from some other account the first field 
should be the address of the sender in the first TO: field.

To be able to see the above set the reply-to address in accounts and settings 
and you will see that the whether it is a new message, forwarding or replying to 
some other account we populate reply-to address in the addressing pane for 
everything.  This happens both in plain text compose window and html compose 
window. Regardless of plain text composition or html composition.

Nominating this for nsbeta1.  When you launch the compose window every time for 
any activity this address gets filled in automatically which can lead to 
confusion. I would consider this major because it is very important in the user 
experience point of view.

Comment 1

[Sheela Ravindran]

cc esther, nbaca
adding keywords
varada,
I already talked to about this bug while verifying for bug 78245

Comment 2

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

reassign to varada

Comment 3

[scottputterman]

Jennifer, any comments on this in relation to overall user experience?

Comment 4

[jglick]

I agree that it is potentially confusing that the "reply to" shows as the first 
item in the Mail Compose addressing area.  

When users create an account, they are likely to enter their email address in 
the "Reply to" field because *it is there* and they think they are supposed to. 
 And then when they launch a New Message, it might not be clear to them why 
"Reply-to" is being displayed. 

Comment 5

[scottputterman]

moving to 0.9.2

Comment 6

[scottputterman]

moving to 0.9.3

Comment 7

[Sheela Ravindran]

varada, 
Based on our discussion, I had asked jennifer as to how the reply-to should 
behave and here are her comments: 

Jennifer wrote:  If the user has their preferences set up to always "Reply-to" a 
certain email address, when the user is composing a mail message (new or reply 
or forward) the "Reply-to" should not be visible in the addressing area.

When reading a message that was sent to me that has a different "Reply-to" 
address, the headers should show the "From" and "Reply-to" addresses separately, 
like 4.x.

When I reply to a mail message that has a different "To" and "Reply-to", the 
addressing area should display the "To" and the address that was specified as 
the "reply-to" in the original email email.

Comment 8

[scottputterman]

moving to 0.9.4

Comment 9

[Scott MacGregor]

Mail news triage meeting --> .9.5

Comment 10

[scottputterman]

moving to 0.9.6

Comment 11

[scottputterman]

moving to 1.0

Comment 12

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

taking all of varada's bugs.

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

tangential bug 84748.
(Thunderbird doesn't show the undesireable behavior.)

Comment 14

[David]

SeaMonkey (1.1.13) mail composition bug.
I think this bug in SeaMonkey is common to bugs 264626, 79455, 122352, 462589, 279846, 394216 that I have found. 
The mail in Netscape 7.2 works as expected. 
In a SeaMonkey mail program with multiple accounts, quite often the wrong account and "From" address is used when a message is replied to or forwarded on. 
For example:
An email is recieved in account1's inbox.
It is moved to account2's inbox
It is selected and replied to (or forwarded).
Netscape correctly uses account2's "compose in html" setting and the reply-to address. 
SeaMonkey incorrectly uses account1's settings and uses account1's reply-to address. The "from address" can be over-ridden with the pull down box, but the incorrect formatting etc is used when the reply (or forwarded) 
message is initially generated. 
Selecting a new composition from each account works correctly.
I think that the account settings, from address and formatting etc used when the reply or forwarded message is created, should be from the account where the initial message is currently stored (inbox, draft, template, sent etc), not some obscure address in the header.

Comment 15

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Wayne, do you understand this bug, and is there still any value in this?
Suspecting wfm and it's not in a good state either...

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I frankly dodn't completely understand comment 0. But I do not find reply-to being shown first to be confusing. Plus the SM related bug is wontfix and there's no one active in the bug. So I think WONTFIX is a good as anything