EmailDiscussions.com  

Go Back   EmailDiscussions.com > Email Service Provider-specific Forums > FastMail Forum
Register FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read
Stay in touch wirelessly

FastMail Forum All posts relating to FastMail.FM should go here: suggestions, comments, requests for help, complaints, technical issues etc.

Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 10 Jan 2017, 06:54 AM   #1
rabarberski
Master of the @
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Ghent, Belgium
Posts: 1,027
bug: archiving with 'y' does not work after deleting attachements

There is an annoying bug where archiving a message and navigating to next message does not work if you delete attachments.

Steps to reproduce:
1. open a message
2. select the attachement
3. Click "delete from message"
4. Press "y" to archive the message.
5. Press "j" to go to next message

Result:
- same message is shown, even after multiple times pressing "j"

Expected result:
- next message is shown

Workaround:
- go back to message list 'e.g. with "u" and then archiving and navigation works fine again
rabarberski is offline   Reply With Quote

Old 10 Jan 2017, 08:14 AM   #2
BritTim
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: mostly in Thailand
Posts: 3,084
I have a customer with a similar problem (almost certainly related under the covers).. After deleting attachment(s) , moving a message to another folder needs to be retried two or three times before it takes effect. This seriously impacts his workflow.
BritTim is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10 Jan 2017, 08:40 AM   #3
brong
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 2,696

Representative of:
Fastmail.fm
This is a problem because deleting attachments gives the message a new ID (it has to, we're physically rewriting the message, and IMAP UIDs always map to an immutable message)

Deleting attachments is a feature we offered to help people manage their mailbox with small quotas. None of our current plans have small quotas, so optimising for this case isn't a priority.

Regards,

Bron.
brong is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10 Jan 2017, 03:02 PM   #4
BritTim
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: mostly in Thailand
Posts: 3,084
Quote:
Originally Posted by brong View Post
This is a problem because deleting attachments gives the message a new ID (it has to, we're physically rewriting the message, and IMAP UIDs always map to an immutable message)

Deleting attachments is a feature we offered to help people manage their mailbox with small quotas. None of our current plans have small quotas, so optimising for this case isn't a priority.

Regards,

Bron.
Thank you for the feedback. I guessed the problem was something of this nature. What puzzles me a bit is that the problem used not to exist. Is there no way of forcing the message to be immediately reloaded when the message id changes?

While 15 GB (legacy enhanced subscription) or 25 GB might seem a lot, if you are receiving 100-200 emails per day and want to keep a full history, the mailbox fills up pretty quickly unless getting rid of large attachments. This probably impacts relatively few users, but I have two customers who are badly affected. Moving messages before deleting the attachments works, but there is no way doing the move, deleting the attachment(s) and then being back into (usually) an Inbox to continue working.

I was waiting to see if the problem was going to be fixed. On the assumption that it will now not be, I am going to suggest they modify their workflow. I am unsure how well this will be accepted. My idea is that, rather than delete attachments as they go, they have a saved search that shows all emails with attachments received in the last, perhaps, 7 days that are larger than 500 KB. This would be sorted with most recent messages first. They could then work through the message list, deleting attachments as desired. I think this will be workable, but people hate changing their everyday work methods.

Anyone see a better workaround?
BritTim is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10 Jan 2017, 05:35 PM   #5
rabarberski
Master of the @
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Ghent, Belgium
Posts: 1,027
Quote:
Originally Posted by brong View Post
Deleting attachments is a feature we offered to help people manage their mailbox with small quotas. None of our current plans have small quotas, so optimising for this case isn't a priority.
Thanks for the quick feedback.
Indeed, I am using the feature to keep my mailbox under 1GB.
Although I am sorry to hear that it won't be fixed, I do understand feature prioritization is unavoidable, and as a result some things don't make it.
rabarberski is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 26 Jan 2017, 01:49 PM   #6
NumberSix
Cornerstone of the Community
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: The Village
Posts: 599
Quote:
Originally Posted by brong View Post
Deleting attachments is a feature we offered to help people manage their mailbox with small quotas. None of our current plans have small quotas, so optimising for this case isn't a priority.
That's as may be but it's still a BUG

I have noticed this myself, and it's not too disruptive to me to return to message list and then archive, but... c'mon.... a bug is a bug.
NumberSix is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 26 Jan 2017, 06:49 PM   #7
rabarberski
Master of the @
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Ghent, Belgium
Posts: 1,027
Quote:
Originally Posted by NumberSix View Post
That's as may be but it's still a BUG

I have noticed this myself, and it's not too disruptive to me to return to message list and then archive, but... c'mon.... a bug is a bug.
Although I agree this is a bug, and I would like to see it fixed, I do understand Brong's point of view. I am sure there are many outstanding bugs, each of them requiring a small, medium or large effort to fix. In combination with the impact of the bug and feature popularity I understand that some bugs don't make it high enough up on the list.
Only in the ideal world do all bugs get fixed...
rabarberski is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 30 Jan 2017, 08:05 AM   #8
brong
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 2,696

Representative of:
Fastmail.fm
Quote:
Originally Posted by rabarberski View Post
Although I agree this is a bug, and I would like to see it fixed, I do understand Brong's point of view. I am sure there are many outstanding bugs, each of them requiring a small, medium or large effort to fix. In combination with the impact of the bug and feature popularity I understand that some bugs don't make it high enough up on the list.
Only in the ideal world do all bugs get fixed...
This bug is trivial to fix, just take away the "remove attachment" feature. It's a weird thing that nobody else really does anyway, modifying the underlying message.
brong is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 30 Jan 2017, 08:50 AM   #9
BritTim
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: mostly in Thailand
Posts: 3,084
Quote:
Originally Posted by brong View Post
This bug is trivial to fix, just take away the "remove attachment" feature. It's a weird thing that nobody else really does anyway, modifying the underlying message.
While not an especially common feature, Thunderbird does support deleting of attachments (by creating a copy of the message without the attachment). It is much more convenient doing it within FastMail.

I assume the main difficulty in making it work is the interaction with asynchronous page loading. It only seems to have become an issue in the last year or so. I have one customer in particular who uses this feature constantly, and only started complaining about the problem about six months ago.
BritTim is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 30 Jan 2017, 09:02 AM   #10
NumberSix
Cornerstone of the Community
 
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: The Village
Posts: 599
Quote:
Originally Posted by brong View Post
This bug is trivial to fix, just take away the "remove attachment" feature. It's a weird thing that nobody else really does anyway, modifying the underlying message.
If it's a question of losing the remove-attachments feature, I can live with the bug.
NumberSix is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 30 Jan 2017, 05:25 PM   #11
rabarberski
Master of the @
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Ghent, Belgium
Posts: 1,027
Quote:
Originally Posted by brong View Post
This bug is trivial to fix, just take away the "remove attachment" feature. It's a weird thing that nobody else really does anyway, modifying the underlying message.
Hmm, that's hardly what I would consider a bug fix

Quote:
Originally Posted by BritTim View Post
While not an especially common feature, Thunderbird does support deleting of attachments (by creating a copy of the message without the attachment). It is much more convenient doing it within FastMail.
Apple Mail also allows to delete attachments. The strange thing is, some emails have attachments that can only be deleted in Apple Mail, and others only using the Fastmail web interface.
rabarberski is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 30 Jan 2017, 05:49 PM   #12
BritTim
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: mostly in Thailand
Posts: 3,084
Quote:
Originally Posted by rabarberski View Post
Hmm, that's hardly what I would consider a bug fix
In my experience, it is one of the commonest "fixes", perhaps only surpassed by a documentation update.
BritTim is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 30 Jan 2017, 05:59 PM   #13
BritTim
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: mostly in Thailand
Posts: 3,084
Quote:
Originally Posted by rabarberski View Post
Apple Mail also allows to delete attachments. The strange thing is, some emails have attachments that can only be deleted in Apple Mail, and others only using the Fastmail web interface.
I have known cases where Microsoft "HTML" (with extra HTML parts for certain purposes such as "embedded" images) would be treated differently. Apple Mail has code that recognizes the Microsoft "HTML extensions" and re-embeds the separated parts, while FastMail treats those extra parts like attachments. I cannot recall seeing a case where Apple Mail shows attachments where FasMail does not. I am curious as to when that occurs.
BritTim is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump


All times are GMT +9. The time now is 02:17 PM.

 

Copyright EmailDiscussions.com 1998-2022. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy