Open Bug 511079 (sendinbackground) Opened 15 years ago Updated 2 years ago

Leverage Offline capabilities to make sending email appear faster (aka Send in Background, preference mailnews.sendInBackground) [meta]

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect, P3)

Product:
MailNews Core
Component:
Backend
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: standard8, Unassigned)

References

(Depends on 14 open bugs, Blocks 7 open bugs,
URL
)

Details

(Keywords: meta, ux-efficiency, ux-interruption, Whiteboard: [gs])

User Story

Postbox has this enabled, probably for years - a shame we don't.
https://support.postbox-inc.com/hc/en-us/articles/202200330-Send-in-Background 

user requests:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1286288
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1194608
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1132511
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1023292
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1180441
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1160641
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/991897
https://launchpad.net/bugs/810769
https://superuser.com/questions/777982/hide-sending-message-dialog-in-thunderbird

blog posts:
https://superuser.com/questions/871132/bad-side-of-enabling-sending-emails-in-the-background
http://www.adriano.ws/how-to-send-email-in-the-background-with-thunderbird
https://support.hollandcomputers.com/kb/a104/why-does-email-i-send-seem-to-take-a-long-time-to-leave-my-outbox.aspx
https://commons.lbl.gov/display/google/Thunderbird+configuration+for+Gmail
https://www.summet.com/blog/2015/11/16/making-thunderbird-send-messages-in-the-background-like-outlook/comment-page-1/
http://durofy.com/thunderbird-background-outlook/

Attachments

(1 file, 1 obsolete file)

[checked in] don't close compose window w/ send in background if last open window v2
(deleted), patch
standard8
: review+
Details | Diff | Splinter Review
+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #440794 +++ Sending email should use the offline capabilities (dump the mail in Unsent Folders, schedule a background send), so that the user can move on immediately to the next task. Bug 440794 has done most of the initial work to get basic support, what is left is to be able to manage failures so that send/copy failures are automatically retried, and only notified to the user after several failures, plus the associated UI updates.
Blocks: TB2SM
Summary: Leverage Offline capabilities to make sending email appear faster → Leverage Offline capabilities to make sending email appear faster (aka Send in Background)
Depends on: 440794
Depends on: 512920
Summary: Leverage Offline capabilities to make sending email appear faster (aka Send in Background) → Leverage Offline capabilities to make sending email appear faster (aka Send in Background, preference mailnews.sendInBackground)
Depends on: 532982
Depends on: 518528
Depends on: 537404
Seems to have stopped working in: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.2pre) Gecko/20100310 Lanikai/3.1b2pre ID:20100310032818 The message gets placed in the outbox, but never actually sent. This is just an FYI since I know you are not actively developing this feature at this time.
I'm running Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8) Gecko/20100227 Thunderbird/3.0.3 and seeing the same phenomenon as Joe Sabash in comment 1. In my case it's emails; I cannot swear they would never get sent, since when I have found some I have always sent them - which works every time. I don't see a setting "Send in Background, preference mailnews.sendInBackground" Peter
Peter, your issue has nothing to do with this functionality unless you find mailnews.sendInBackground=true in about:config (use options|advanced|etc or ask for help a forum). And even then, this is only a placeholder tracking bug. You'd want to file a new bug. But first see my posting in .support.thunderbird
Keywords: meta
Summary: Leverage Offline capabilities to make sending email appear faster (aka Send in Background, preference mailnews.sendInBackground) → Leverage Offline capabilities to make sending email appear faster (aka Send in Background, preference mailnews.sendInBackground) [meta]
I have just test mailnews.sendInBackground=true in Lanikai and it works quite ok, but I think that the Activity Manager should display the progress bar, in order to keep a place where the progress statue is available.
Any update on when we'll get this feature?
Depends on: 459376
Depends on: 636681
Depends on: 549274
Assignee: mbanner → nobody
Depends on: 671673
One simple fix to the most basic issue (send in background w/ only the compose window open) is to not do a send in background if there are no other windows open, at least on Windows/Linux, because we know that's going to fail, and we don't want the user to think the app has shutdown when it hasn't (and do something like shut their laptop in the middle of the send).
This fixes the easiest to reproduce issue, which is having only a compose window open and doing a send. I know you're not crazy about leaving the compose window open, but it's a safe simple fix for things like handling mailto links, and will get us that much closer to turning this on.
Assignee: nobody → dbienvenu
Attachment #551136 - Flags: review?(mbanner)
Depends on: 677590
Alias: sendinbackground
Depends on: 690194
standard8, what about the pending review?
Comment on attachment 551136 [details] [diff] [review] don't close compose window w/ send in background if last open window pinging for review - this won't affect the mac, and it makes send in background a lot safer to turn on with the other platforms.
Comment on attachment 551136 [details] [diff] [review] don't close compose window w/ send in background if last open window Review of attachment 551136 [details] [diff] [review]: ----------------------------------------------------------------- ::: mail/components/compose/content/MsgComposeCommands.js @@ +2232,5 @@ > .getBoolPref("mailnews.sendInBackground"); > + if (sendInBackground && !Application.platformIsMac) { > + let windowMediator = > + Components.classes["@mozilla.org/appshell/window-mediator;1"] > + .getService(Components.interfaces.nsIWindowMediator); You can just use Services.wm
Depends on: 745456
Depends on: 749654
Depends on: 789865
Depends on: 799533
Blocks: 799533
No longer depends on: 799533
Comment on attachment 551136 [details] [diff] [review] don't close compose window w/ send in background if last open window I'm sorry that I've taken so long to look at this. I was, like previously mentioned concerned that this is an incomplete patch. However, now I've spent a bit of time on it, I think that even if we have bug 459376 fixed (or something that would effectively fix it) then we'd still want to ensure message send completes on sending with just the compose window open anyway. So I think this is good to go. I'll do a patch that uses Services.wm as Magnus suggested.
Attachment #551136 - Flags: review?(mbanner) → review+
Updated patch using Services
Attachment #677386 - Flags: review+
Attachment #551136 - Attachment is obsolete: true
Attachment #677386 - Attachment description: don't close compose window w/ send in background if last open window → don't close compose window w/ send in background if last open window v2
Comment on attachment 677386 [details] [diff] [review] [checked in] don't close compose window w/ send in background if last open window v2 https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/2c2b7ad3bed3
Attachment #677386 - Attachment description: don't close compose window w/ send in background if last open window v2 → [checked in] don't close compose window w/ send in background if last open window v2
I believe David isn't actively working on this at the moment, so removing the assignee. If folks want to help that would be great - the main priorities would be to fix the bugs this one depends on to reduce the dataloss / messages not sent possibilities that there are now.
Assignee: mozilla → nobody
Keywords: helpwanted
Depends on: 815638
Blocks: 971333
Whiteboard: [gs] → [gs][http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_3.0_-_New_Features_and_Changes#Send_in_Background]
URL: http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_me... → http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird...
Whiteboard: [gs][http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_3.0_-_New_Features_and_Changes#Send_in_Background] → [gs]
Blocks: 246865
list which may contain some related bugs https://mzl.la/24SIlJ8
Depends on: 268589
Outlook does this (so I hear). And postbox. And ... we don't.
Blocks: 423488
User Story: (updated)
Blocks: 1501890
No longer blocks: 971333
Depends on: 971333
Depends on: 1539028
Priority: P1 → P3
User Story: (updated)
Depends on: 1088152

The "lack of interest" by users is perhaps because most users don't know it's possible to do this. The lack of progress in a decade on the blocking bugs of course doesn't help.

ISTM we only need to fix a couple bugs to make this good enough to send out for wider testing. What do others think?

Perhaps a good starting point is Bug 749654? Bad message in Outbox blocks delivery of remaining messages until dialog is dismissed

Jonathan, how does Send Later deal with these issues? (or can't it?)

Blocks: 737347
Flags: needinfo?(jik)
Flags: needinfo?(bugzilla2007)
Keywords: helpwanted

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #27)

The "lack of interest" by users is perhaps because most users don't know it's possible to do this. The lack of progress in a decade on the blocking bugs of course doesn't help.

ISTM we only need to fix a couple bugs to make this good enough to send out for wider testing. What do others think?

Having this would surely be useful to make us look and feel better.
I'm not sure how much priority it would be worth, maybe I'd prefer to fix even more basic scenarios (e.g. that after saving (downloading) an attachment to your disk, there's zero hint in the UI how to open the target location with your OS file manager, so unless you already know about Ctrl+J, you'll have to start navigating all the way to that attachment in Explorer whereas TB knows exactly where it is).

Perhaps a good starting point is Bug 749654? Bad message in Outbox blocks delivery of remaining messages until dialog is dismissed.

Bug 749654 is an excellent starting point, that nasty thing really needs fixing although it may not be in everybody's workflows.

Flags: needinfo?(bugzilla2007)

Send Later doesn't deal with this in any way, as far as I'm aware. It just puts messages into Outbox and then calls the API endpoint to tell Thunderbird to deliver the messages in the Outbox.

Note that Jonathan Perry-Houts is the new maintainer of Send Later as of TB78. I'm mostly a bystander at this point.

Flags: needinfo?(jik)

I think to give decent feedback in cases where there are problems, bug 1675978 is a prerequisite.

Depends on: 1675978
Depends on: 1074256

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #27)

ISTM we only need to fix a couple bugs to make this good enough to send out for wider testing. What do others think?

Generally send in background worked fine when we first implemented it, however, there were two big issues that we never solved at the time:

  • the user's expectations around what happens to unsent messages at shutdown
  • the potential dataloss issues at shutdown (e.g. if a message fails to be copied to a folder on shutdown, what should happen?).

Many of the blocking bugs are related to these two big issues, and these were what blocked it from being enabled 10 or so years ago. They need careful thinking about and the various possible routes examining.

iirc, handling some of this on shutdown wasn't easy to do when we looked at it many years ago (e.g. bug 459376). That may have changed now.

Just tried enabling mailnews.sendInBackground in TB 102, the mail was put in Outbox in local folders, but not sent until I requested to specifically send it. Is that the expected behavior? I was online when I sent the message.

Severity: normal → S3

(In reply to Vincent Bernat from comment #32)

Just tried enabling mailnews.sendInBackground in TB 102, the mail was put in Outbox in local folders, but not sent until I requested to specifically send it. Is that the expected behavior? I was online when I sent the message.

IF you held the shift key down when doing send, then yes, that is an explicit "Send later".

Duplicate of this bug: 1816034
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