thunderbird-android
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thunderbird
Download attachments and inline images when forwarding a message
If an attachment has not been downloaded before, redirecting the message doesn't include the attachments (and shows an appropriate warning). Nevertheless, it would be good to ask the user whether he wants to download the attachments now, because many users don't see the warning and in most cases redirecting a message without it's attachments is not helpful.
I've been playing with this on my own build and I'm fairly sure a prompt every time would be annoying. I think I'd rather just have a Settings option called "Forward complete message" or something along those lines that automatically downloads the complete message before moving onto the MessageCompose view.
Additionally, this will mean we will want to add a ProgressDialogFragment while the request to download the complete message is out. Currently you press download and there is nothing indicating to you something is happening or stopping you from doing something else.
If there are any thoughts before I continue I'd be willing to hear how someone else feels this could work best as far as UX.
I don't see why you'd ever want to forward an incomplete message. Forward and reply should just download the message.
I don't necessarily agree about reply. There are plenty of times where I want to reply without including attachments, e.g., when replying to the person that sent the attachments to me or bringing someone new into a conversation where the attachments are not relevant. That may need to be a separate behavior though.
I believe forcibly downloading a complete message on forward is unexpected behavior for some. If they did not download the complete message explicitly, thereby never seeing the attachments, I'm not sure why they would think about the attachments at all. Additionally, I don't see people making a decision to download on forward ad-hoc for each message, it's expected or not, which is why an Account Settings seems to make sense for this.
Hopefully that was coherent.
Introducing more settings pushes complexity into the app which introduces overhead and makes regressions and bugs more likely. The number of settings K-9 has is already vastly vastly more than most email apps. If we had a setting I'd want the app to actively inform the user the first time. Hidden settings are worse than useless because users who'd change it aren't aware of it.
I'm generally against new settings for this reason.
I'm trying to get us to a point where we can release the app more often and ship updates easier (currently our release cadence is very low).
Right now we're very dependent on a lot of manual testing to prevent feature breakage. The more settings we add the less we catch in manual testing and the more automated tests we will have to write.
Looking at this, I think I just agree with you, I don't know why you'd not forward a message in its entirety. I don't know how to convey that a message is going to be completely downloaded on forwarding though, so I think just keeping the toast is preferred. Though, my issue is that I would never forward a message without completely downloading it, so I don't know how this would naturally occur.
I guess it's a decision between assuming the user knows what they are doing or they do not.
EDIT: I sort of lean toward the user taking responsibility for downloading a message they want to forward, since I don't know why you'd blind forward an attachment to someone without reviewing the email. We'd essentially be modifying the data the user accepted to forward without their explicit consent by adding the rest of the content.
@PiwwowPants: By that logic an email client should never forward attachments the user hasn't opened for viewing. I don't think we want to go there. Especially since we can never be sure this hasn't happened using another client.
We should totally download the complete message when forwarding. And I don't want us to block the UI while doing this. Users should be allowed to start typing their message while attachments are still downloading. However, we need to wait for the download to be complete before sending the message. (Theoretically we could close the compose screen and can defer the sending until the original message has been downloaded in its entirety. But that would require a rather substantial change in how we compose/send messages. It would also make the encryption workflow much more difficult.)
We also want to automatically download inline images when replying to a message. But to be honest I don't know if we currently include them even when they have already been downloaded. If not, that needs to be fixed, too.
pls allow deleting attachments while they are downloaded.
and maybe allow opening attachments from the send dialog (long press on attachment with ripple animation)
Is the message (text) downloaded fully before forwarding in the current version? if not then that should be fixed, too.
+1
I totally appreciate if this very important feature/behavior could be implemented. We kill/loose attachments very often when mails are forwarded by K9.
Also at mailbox.org, we had several support tickets from customers that blamed us (!) at mailbox.org that we killed their attachments and that our ISP is unreliable, because we recommend K9 mail...
@heinlein-support Thank you, I absolutely agree.
In my case I only lost attachments if the mail was encrypted by using "Verschlüsseltes Postfach" on mailbox.org. This mails are not signet of course.
Encrypted AND signed mails have not this issue as I described in the (now closed) issue https://github.com/k9mail/k-9/issues/3460.
Hi, is someone work on this important issue. Very often I have to forward mails with attachment. Because this issue I described here I have first save the attachment and add it again to the mail. And belive me it's absolutely annoying if I forget this. Especially if I send important things to companies or so. So the receiver get a mail without attachment.
It would be great if you could fix it as soon as possible.
Since https://github.com/k9mail/k-9/issues/4378 is fixed now :+1: it would be great if you would take a look on this also really important issue and my special case I described in the (closed but not fixed) issue https://github.com/k9mail/k-9/issues/3460
Thank you
I just got bitten by this too.
This strikes me as a pretty serious bug. Forwarding should always include any attachments.
This issue has been open for 4.5 years now. Could I ask that its priority is raised, please?
Agree with jroldroyd. Forwarding an email should always include attachements. Maybe creating a setting should be the best solution which allow auto download of attachments and remove them just after the forwarding.
This feature exists on every mail app, I can't wait to see it on k-9
Hello, I've seen other people here questionning why would anyone forward an e-mail without downloading it fully first. As someone who has been hit many times by this issue, here are my two cents : I' m president of a non-profit association.
- Forwarding with attachment is what's done by default with the other mail clients I'm using (gmail, thunderbird)
- "hey, you didn't see that email I sent to everyone using my computer? Let me forward it to you. Oh crap, the attachment"
- "Hey, this is an email sent to the association that is important for the treasurer, let me forward this to him... What do you mean there's no attachment?"
- "Oh, you were not in CC from that mail we received the other day when I was on my laptop, le me forward it to you... And again with the attachment ?"
- "Can you write something for me so I can just forward the e-mail and the attachment while I'm on the go?" You guessed it, I forgot the attachment.
- "I won't have time to handle that news release written in a .docx to put it on the website because I'm on the go. Please Mrs. Social Networks, could you do that for me". Again nope
It's very frustrating...
