920560 - Linkify text-only URLs e.g. http://foo.bar in HTML messages when shown in message reader

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1143768

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, enhancement)

Description

[Michal Stanke (Mozilla.cz) [:mstanke][:MikkCZ]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:25.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/25.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130917123208

Steps to reproduce:

Let's receive a message in HTML format, where in text is a link (but not composed as a link) - just something like http://www.domain.tld/index.html, but in code no <a> tag.



Expected results:

Thunderbird should recognize this text ("http://...") as a link a behave like it is a real <a> link.

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Michal, this works for me as described in your expected results.
Pls add as an attachment to this bug the msg source of a testcase which fails for you, after removing private data.

Comment 2

[Michal Stanke (Mozilla.cz) [:mstanke][:MikkCZ]]

Attachment: testcase

Let's open a message composed like this. Thunderbird recognizes only links with <a> tag.

Comment 3

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Ok, thanks. I see this now. I misunderstood the original report.

So this is a RFE that in an HTML-formatted message with some plaintext "links" which do not have <a href="..."> tag, we should apply some magic and linkify them in message reader as we do for plaintext messages containing such text-only links.

Sounds helpful, otoh I'm not entirely sure if this is wanted as a default behaviour... For HTML messages, should we not just display whatever is there? So if sender composed in HTML but (deliberately) did not add link tags, should we really tweak that in an HTML message?

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Wayne, is this really the first time that this has been requested?
What do you think about the requested behaviour?

Comment 5

[Michal Stanke (Mozilla.cz) [:mstanke][:MikkCZ]]

The user who reported that says that MS Outlook do so. I cannot confirm, because I do not have it. IMHO for this should be rather an extension or a preference - I agree, displaying HTML as composed is desired behavior.

Adding link to the user report from Czech forum. Originally thought it's base64 issue.

Comment 6

[Michal Stanke (Mozilla.cz) [:mstanke][:MikkCZ]]

(In reply to Thomas D. (away till 23rd Oct) from comment #4)
> Wayne, is this really the first time that this has been requested?
> What do you think about the requested behaviour?

Bug 680352 is more like the <a href="..."> is wrong composed. Here it's completely missing.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Thomas D. (away till 23rd Oct) from comment #4)
> Wayne, is this really the first time that this has been requested?
> What do you think about the requested behaviour?

sorry, not really my area of interest or knowledge 

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?f1=OP&o3=anywordssubstr&list_id=8042088&short_desc=link%20url%20http&bug_severity=normal&bug_severity=minor&bug_severity=trivial&bug_severity=enhancement&resolution=---&resolution=WONTFIX&classification=Client%20Software&classification=Components&o2=nowordssubstr&f4=CP&query_format=advanced&j1=OR&f3=keywords&f2=short_desc&short_desc_type=anywordssubstr&component=Mail%20Window%20Front%20End&component=Message%20Reader%20UI&v2=about%3A%20samba%20nntp%20copy%20color%20icon%20alert&product=MailNews%20Core&product=Thunderbird

Comment 8

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Bug 229736 is same request but for Apple Mail format text/enriched.

Comment 9

[Olivier Jaquemet]

Attachment: email-sample.eml

Hi, 

I hate to write "me too" comments, but I was going to enter the same RFE so let me give your some context to add more weight to this requested improvement.

In the Android Twitter application, there is a feature to share/send a tweet. 
This will generate a raw text similar to this one (french version) : 

---
potch (@potch) a tweeté à 5:46 PM on jeu., août 24, 2017 :
Good morning! I built a tool that helps you figure out how to port a Chrome extension to Firefox. Try it out! https://t.co/z26bxB7mTk
(https://twitter.com/potch/status/900746114508312576?s=03)

Téléchargez l'application officielle Twitter sur https://twitter.com/download?s=13
---

The text is sent to whatever Android application the user wants, for example an email client such as Gmail.
The Gmail client seems to generate an HTML email (attached to this comment), but URL have not been converted to valid <a> link.
Thus when viewing the email in Thunderbird, the links cannot be clicked. Which is quite unfortunate.


The documentation clearly states the current behavior, "Thunderbird linkifies plain text when you display the message." not HTML : 
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Links_generated_automatically
But that would clearly be a nice behavior as far as UX is concerned.

Unfortunately, I could not find any add-on to provide this feature.
The addon "URL Link", https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/url-link/ is (in my opinion) not going far enough as it "just" provides a context menu to open the current text selection. I think an automatic linkify of the message on display would be better.

Comment 11

[Anje]

This bug was first mentioned 17 years ago in another bug.

Thunderbird 78.7.1 is current version and this issue is also still very much a problem.
Feedback - People are complaining in the Thunderbird Support Forum about this problem.

Whilst the workaround to change 'view' > 'message body as' to plain text gets around the problem, it would be a real improvement if those non html incorrect formatted links could be shown as clickable links.

Magnus are you able to see if there is someone available who could get this bug finally sorted ?

Comment 12

[barryjaylevine]

Version 102.1.2 as of today (8/16/22) and the problem still exists.

Comment 13

[SN]

Feedback - People are complaining in the Thunderbird Support Forum about this problem.

The support forum complaints continue to roll in.
Referencing bug 1897855 here to address all of the Zoom users who are affected by this issue.