90338 - [RFE] Separate Mail/News "Remember Passwords" Preference

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: Passwords & Permissions, enhancement)

Description

[TommyBee (No E-mail)]

Netscape 4.x lacks a password manager but allows mail passwords to be
remembered.  I personally do not wish to store passwords for web sites but would
like Mozilla to remember passwords to mail and news servers.  I rarely access
any web sites that require passwords, but I check my e-mail and newsgroups
several times a day, so having Mozilla just remember those passwords would be
much more convenient.

Comment 1

[Greg K.]

If this is one of those zillions of things that you can hack a JavaScript preference for, then 
this bug should be marked INVALID in deference to one specifying that a UI be developed 
for it.

If not, this bug should be confirmed as an RFE.

(There are too many undocumented JavaScript hack options for me to wade through 
trying to determine if this can be accomplished in that manner or not; sorry.)

Comment 2

[Keyser Sose]

Marking NEW.

Comment 3

[J Luh]

I believe "Platform" should be "All" on this one

Comment 4

[J Luh]

see also bug 93553

Comment 5

[TommyBee (No E-mail)]

Platform / OS ==> All

Comment 6

[Justin Huntington]

It would be great if passwords for mail/news were managed in the mail/news 
account settings instead of by the Password Manager.

It would avoid this (bug 93553) confusion and would allow you to _force_ 
mail/news to forget your password whenever you want it to.  i.e. no need for 
a 'forget password' option (bug 63633) and no automatically forgotten passwords 
on failed logins due to timeouts, wacky servers, etc.

Comment 7

[Christopher Aillon (sabbatical, not receiving bugmail)]

*** Bug 98022 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

Hm, this bug is hard to find.
I had looked for it in the MailNews product, and obviously not found it, so I
submitted a new one (the last duplicate).

What about moving it to MailNews?

Comment 9

[Christopher Aillon (sabbatical, not receiving bugmail)]

*** Bug 99970 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 130026 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Arthur]

Adding 4xp keyword. In NN4.x you can remember your mail/news-passwords without
having a message popping up on every password-form-webpage (even though you
can't remember web passwords at all). Plus mozilla1.0 keyword so QA has a look
at this.

Comment 12

[Christian Eyrich]

I've a addition to/variant of this password thing.
At the moment there's only one option and passwords are either on or off. What
about two options:
1. store Passwords
2. use stored
where 2 may always be activated if 1 is but not vice versa.

So you can (1) access all passwords by using one UI as for now, (2) use the
stored passwords (e.g. for mail/news) without always being asked to store one
when visiting a site using passwords and (3) get the password filed out only at
selected sites without (see (2)).

Comment 13

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

*** Bug 64050 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

This is a bug, not a feature. It's both useless and counter-intuitive to have 
an option for the option for remembering non-Web-site passwords (no matter what 
that option also applies to) -- since unlike Web site passwords, passwords 
which are asked for in their own alert don't need to put up an extra alert 
asking you if you want to remember them. Resummarizing from the duplicate.

Comment 15

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 177856 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 16

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 183451 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 17

[Thomas Brown]

IMHO, regardless of how the implementation is presented to the user (with
confirmations, preference settings, etc.), the ability to control the storage
and automatic use of authentication information on a per-mail-server basis is
important.

A quick look at other password managers shows that they keep web forms/passwords
separate.  There should be a "remember web form info" and "remember web
password" option as it exists currently, but there should also be a separate
"remember mail server password" option for each mail server configured in the
mail/newsgroup account settings.

There are a number of cases I have run into where one would wish to have a
password remembered for one server but not the next.  For instance, remember the
corporate mail server password for a machine already secured on the corporate
network, but don't remember the user's private external mail server password. 
Remember the internal Usenet server, but not the external.  etc etc etc.

Comment 18

[Heikki Toivonen (remove -bugzilla when emailing directly)]

Reassigning to new module owner.

Comment 19

[Alfonso Martinez]

*** Bug 203693 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 20

[Alfonso Martinez]

*** Bug 208943 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 21

[Daniel Veditz [:dveditz]]

This will likely fall out as a consequence of switching to Mozilla Firebird and
Mozilla Thunderbird.

Comment 22

[mozilla-bugs]

Just to add that the mozilla nightlies no longer request password on every 
startup of the mail and news client like they annoyingly used to.

Comment 23

[Jon Henry]

*** Bug 222815 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 24

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 248496 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 25

[TommyBee (No E-mail)]

Coming up on eight years.  Wow!  Is there any chance that something that's happened in the Mail / News base might make this easier?  I've switched from Mozilla Suite to Mac OS X Mail and back to SeaMonkey for mail, and this still bugs me.  I don't know why this was marked as the "Message Display" component.  I'm not sure if the proper select is "MailNews:  Account Configuration" or "Passwords & Permissions", so I'm taking a guess.

Comment 26

[TommyBee (No E-mail)]

Re comment #14, right now the "Remember passwords" checkbox and the "Manage Stored Passwords" button are the only two items in the "Passwords" preference pane under "Privacy & Security".  I liken an option to "Remember passwords" "Only for Mail/News Accounts" as similar to the "Cookies" preference pane options (normally / current session only / days).  Whether you agree with those options being there or not, there's a precedence to having more fine-grained control over broad preferences, and the location of the password management preference now isn't pressed for space.

Someone using Firefox for browsing and Thunderbird for e-mail may prefer to save e-mail account passwords but not web site passwords, and with two discrete programs it's possible.  It should be possible in a suite as well.

Comment 27

[Robert Kaiser]

This is surely no priority for SeaMonkey 2, and I'd actually argue that it should be WONTFIX, as nobody forces anyone to remember passwords anywhere right now, you can decline saving any single password, even permanently, right now.

Comment 28

[TommyBee (No E-mail)]

I've come up with a satisfactory workaround for now.  When I enable the "Remember Passwords" option and check mail, it asks me for passwords and gives me the option to remember them.  If I choose to remember those passwords and then go back to the Preferences and disable "Remember Passwords", it no longer prompts me to remember new passwords but uses (and maintains) the passwords I already saved.  Is this by design?  I wasn't sure it would work before I tried it, but the behavior makes sense even if the description doesn't match it (to me, the opposite of "Remember Passwords" is "Forget Passwords", which would cause any saved passwords to be purged).

I still think the issue of how mail/news passwords are handled vs. web passwords needs consideration, as various standalone mail clients place the password text field in different places (e.g., an account settings dialog).  You're right, though -- it's definitely not a pressing issue for SeaMonkey 2.  I was mainly curious as to any developments that might have occurred behind the scenes or in related code (no bug activity for five years) and was unsure as to how to draw attention to the bug from someone who's still working on SeaMonkey (old, stale bugs usually involve old, stale bug-watchers).  ;-)

Comment 29

[Robert Kaiser]

I don't think the SeaMonkey team will ever consider this in any plans, so resolving as WONTFIX. Feel free to try and develop and add-on that does this, though.