932746 - Impossible to set text color in message

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 883540

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Raymond Chevalier]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/6.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; eSobiSubscriber 1.0.0.40; BRI/2; MAAR; .NET4.0C)

Steps to reproduce:

Create a new message. Type text. Select text and click on the color icon to change its color(this works). Save the message. Select text and click on the color icon.


Actual results:

Nothing! The color icon doen not seem to work any more and the color selector menu does not open.


Expected results:

The color selector menu should have opened.

Comment 1

[KLB]

Confirmed, it seems the color selector menu gets broken when message is saved. If message is closed and then reopened, the color menu works again, so this is exclusively related to the message being saved and then the color menu being clicked on.

Comment 2

[Raymond Chevalier]

I have the same problem in Replying to a message: I cannot change the color of text in my reply.
In this case, saving, closing and reopening the message does not solve the issue.

Raymond

Comment 3

[BIC]

For me, closing the message and then opening it again does not fix the color menu.  I have to exit TB and restart it.  This is a pain -- restarting TB every time I want to set the color of a message.

Comment 4

[:aceman]

Can you guys observe whether the problem appears after you save the message as draft? Or compose the message for long enough so that the message is automatically saved as draft (after the timeout set in TB options).

Then, if reopening the message does no help, try this:
Tools->Options->Advanced ->General->Config editor, search for mail.compose.max_recycled_windows and set it to 0. Restart TB. Then check whether reopening the draft fixes the problem every time.

Comment 5

[BIC]

Aceman,

I'm not sure that my symptoms correspond exactly to the ones reported by Raymond and KLB.  But I will describe my situation.

I'm running TB (Thunderbird) 24.3.  First of all, I disabled all my Add-Ins.  Then I closed TB.

I opened TB.  I opened a message in my inbox.  I clicked on "Reply".  I typed a short message.  I highlighted it.  I opened the color dialog and set it to green.  I clicked on "Send".  I closed the opened message (from my inbox) and opened another message in my inbox.  I clicked on "Reply".  I typed a short message.  I highlighted it.  I tried to open the color dialog and it wouldn't open.  Once this happens, it never opens again, regardless of any tricks I might try.  I can close messages.  I can put messages in drafts.  I can open messages in drafts.  I can take a long break.  The color dialog does not open until I close TB and open it again.

Okay ... let me try the experiments that you suggest:

(1) I opened TB.  I opened a message in my inbox.  I clicked on "Reply".  I typed a short message.  I saved the message in drafts.  I opened the message from drafts.  I highlighted the short message.  The color dialog worked fine.  I repeated saved the message in drafts, highlighted the test, and used the color dialog.  Everything was fine.  After doing this many times, I sent the message.  I opened another message in my inbox, replied to it, typed some text, highlighted the text, but the color dialog refused to function.

(2) I opened TB.  I opened a message in my inbox.  I clicked on "Reply".  I typed a short message. I left the message sitting there for 15 minutes (my autosave time is set to 5 minutes).  The color dialog opened fine.  I set the color.  I sent the message.  I opened another message, clicked on "Reply", typed a short reply, highlighted it, but the color dialog wouldn't open.

(3) I changed max_recycled_windows to 0.  I closed TB.  I opened TB.  I opened a message in my inbox.  I clicked on "Reply".  I typed a short reply.  I highlighted the text.  I used the color dialog to change the color.  I sent the message.  I opened another message.  I clicked on "Reply".  I typed a short reply.  I highlighted the text.  The color dialog worked!! I repeated the experiment 10 times and it kept working.  So, changing the value of this variable appears to solve the problem.  I try it for my work and see if it keeps on working.

Comment 6

[:aceman]

That looks great. That scenario should be fixed by bug 883540.

Waiting for the test to be confirmed by the reporter of this bug.

Comment 7

[Raymond Chevalier]

This has corrected the problem for me too.


Raymond

Comment 8

[:aceman]

Great, thanks.