92852 - offline: when selecting 'subscribe' (while offline) from File menu results in 'spinning barber pole'

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Backend, defect)

Description

[grylchan]

Using 20010726 commercial branch builds on
NT 4.0, linux 2.2, and mac 9.0.4

Steps to reproduce:
1.Login in to your imap account.
2.Go offline (doesn't matter about downloading messages, etc..)
3.File|Subscribe
4.Subscribe window pops up

Result: the mouse arrow becomes a hourglass and you see status bar spin as 
        it tries and tries to connect to your mail server (but it can't 
        since you are offline). You can click 'stop' button to cancel it.
Expected: Possible solutions:
       1. Disable Subscribe menu item if offline?
       2. Preload the existing mail tree for that account?
       3. Or like in 4.x, a message appears at the bottom of the
          subscribe window: "You are offline. Choose online
          to connect".

Comment 1

[Diane Sun]

The icon still shows online status.
It looks like we need to set it as offline and display  "You are offline. Choose 
online to connect".

Mohan, could you take this one.

Comment 2

[laurel]

Side note: We also have bug 79801 about offline icon in subscribe and search.

Comment 3

[Hong Kwon]

reassigning to jpm (please find a new owner)

Comment 4

[Jussi-Pekka Mantere]

Triaging nsenterprise-.

Comment 5

[David :Bienvenu]

we can't disable subscribe because news subscribe should be enabled. We could
change the subscribe UI to not allow you to switch to an imap server while
offline, or put up an error when the user does that, or tries to bring up the
subscribe UI on an imap server while offline.  I think that's probably the way
to go - just put up a status message that says we're offline, and don't try to
run the subscribe url (or handle its immediate failure). I don't think this is a
high priority, however.

Comment 6

[grylchan]

*** Bug 128274 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[timeless]

how about just not hitting the [mail] server?

Comment 8

[David :Bienvenu]

we're not hitting the mail server - when you're offline, we don't make new
connections. That's pretty much the definition of offline mode. We're just
spinning the status bar - this is purely a ui issue.

Comment 9

[grylchan]

*** Bug 129445 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Stefan Borggraefe]

*** Bug 252070 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #5)
> we can't disable subscribe because news subscribe should be enabled.

Note that if you enter the News Subscribe dialog while offline, you can get the same symptom right away, but not always (I don't know what the criteria are to avoid it); either way, when you click Refresh, the same symptom results -- eternally spinning barber pole, until Cancel.

> We could [... try] to bring up the
> subscribe UI on an imap server while offline.

That could be useful if the user simply wants to subscribe/unsubscribe to folders or groups in the existing list?  (*Is* there an "existing list" of folders for IMAP?)  Still, some visible warning indicator on the dialog for the offline status, in addition to avoiding an initial Refresh, would be warranted.
Disabling the Refresh button when offline should also be part of the fix for this.

Extra bonus points for a Go Online capability in the dialog, so the user doesn't have to Cancel, Go Online, Subscribe.