"Retrieve Entire Message" - Inconsistent Yellow Bar Behavior

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Godiva
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Joined: Sat Mar 06, 2010 5:22 pm

"Retrieve Entire Message" - Inconsistent Yellow Bar Behavior

Post by Godiva »

Sometimes the yellow bar (below the green eval bar) tells me to "Double-click here to retrieve the entire message".

However, sometimes it doesn't say that, even though the entire message hasn't yet been retrieved (this is confirmed by being able to choose File | Retrieve entire message, which is not greyed out). Is there a logic to this inconsistency?

NOTE: In Options|Message Retrieval, the default retrieval options for all three mail types is "Preview", the "Number of lines" box is set at 150, and the first three Webmail checkboxes are enabled.
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Jeff
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Re: "Retrieve Entire Message" - Inconsistent Yellow Bar Behavior

Post by Jeff »

Is there a yellow banner for which double-clicking does something else? Or are you saying that there is no yellow bar at all?

There can only be one yellow banner action at a time, and so it may first tell you to, "double click here to view html" and then after you do that, it may be "double click here to view images" and then after that it may be "double-click here to retrieve entire message".
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Godiva
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Re: "Retrieve Entire Message" - Inconsistent Yellow Bar Behavior

Post by Godiva »

Often, there is a banner telling me to double-click the banner to view in HTML. But when I do, the message isn't displayed properly - that's because I needed to first retrieve the entire message before viewing it (which I verify by choosing the File menu and see that the "Retrieve entire message" is not greyed out). When I first started seeing the "Retrieve entire file" yellow banner, I thought, "hey this is cool, it's detecting the issue for me", but as I said in my OP, that banner doesn't display consistently.

Maybe there are some messages that are plain text, aren't entirely retrieved, and there is no yellow banner telling me anything. But since most messages I receive are in HTML (though my default display mode is text), if that happens it's going to be rare, simply because I don't receive too many plain text messages. But I'll pay closer attention and see if I discover a pattern.
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Jeff
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Re: "Retrieve Entire Message" - Inconsistent Yellow Bar Behavior

Post by Jeff »

What you're saying is logical -- the message isn't formatted correctly because there are images missing; and you have to retrieve the entire message to get the images.

I'm not 100% sure (I haven't checked the code), but I think that the order I mentioned above is correct: view html | view images | retrieve entire. So let me know if that really is the situation.

The order of "retrieve entire" (whether it should be first or last) is very debatable. However, if it irritates you enough, you can always add "retrieve entire" to the toolbar for easier access and pre-empt the order of the banner.

And if anybody else reading this has a preference one way or the other of the banner -- let me know.
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Godiva
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Re: "Retrieve Entire Message" - Inconsistent Yellow Bar Behavior

Post by Godiva »

Jeff:
There can only be one yellow banner action at a time, and so it may first tell you to, "double click here to view html" and then after you do that, it may be "double click here to view images" and then after that it may be "double-click here to retrieve entire message".
As far as I know, you have the order incorrect, also your order is not logical (pardon my bluntness). The order is/should be:

1) Retrieve entire message
2) View in HTML
3) View Images

I know for certain that the 2 & 3 are in proper order, because many emails I get, I will click the banner to view the HTML message and then intentionally NOT choose to view images, because often the images are advertisements. So just viewing the HTML message without the images will give me the useful content of the email without me having to sift through embedded ads.

And from a logic standpoint, you should first need to retrieve the entire message before you can view it properly in HTML, otherwise the message format will often be incomplete/corrupted.

Or am I misunderstanding your quote?
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Jeff
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Re: "Retrieve Entire Message" - Inconsistent Yellow Bar Behavior

Post by Jeff »

Ok, the order I mentioned before (view html / view images / retrieve entire) is correct. In certain cases. In other cases, it will be (retrieve entire / view html / view images) and this is probably where you were thinking inconsistent behavior. It may seem inconsistent, but there is actual logic involved...

Most messages you get from a normal person (not using PP, because PP only sends plain text) will contain a plain text and an HTML text message. For IMAP, when PP retrieves the "preview" of the message, PP gets the Plain text (and not the html) format. In this case, you'll see the "retrieve entire" banner first -- because PP doesn't know that there is HTML available yet. Once it retrieves the entire message, it sees that there is HTML and so you'll then get the (view html / view images) banners.

Now, let's say the message *only* contains HTML. This is more often the case for newsletters and spammers. In this case, PP retrieves the HTML format for the preview (PP converts the HTML message into plain text for security). In this case, the order of the banner will show the "view html" first.

The logic of the banner order is (note that each case is "if applicable")
1) View HTML
2) Display all images (remote and local)
3) display remote images
4) display local images
5) Retrieve entire

side-note: 2-4 may seem redundant. But if you pay attention to the wording in the banner, it basically tells you what kind of images there are in the message. For any given message, you'll only see 1 of the 3 options, but it can be a different option for different messages. Most people don't really care about the difference between local and remote images (which is why the banner is nice because it combines them into a single action; whereas before they were always treated as separate), but there really is a subtle distinction (e.g. remote images may be web beacons).

So, in the case of an HTML-only preview -- you'll have the option to "view html" before "retrieve entire." If the message is spam, it may allow you to better view the message in HTML before forcing you to "retrieve entire." Besides, most newsletters that are html-only won't have any attachments and you'll already have the entire message. So the only time this will come into effect is when it's an HTML-only message with attachments. Probably spam in a lot of cases...

End result: I think the order is actually good and must be why I made it that way :D
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