SMTP send in background?

[aweber1nj]

Is there a way to configure Thunderbird to send in the background? I
find the pop-up status/message box a little cumbersome. I'd like to
go on and view other emails and/or compose/reply/forward others while
the sending happens in the background. Pop-up an error or warning if
the send could not be completed.

I would venture to say that most users don't need to see all the
details of the sending process.

Thoughts?

-AJ

[Mike Easter]

aweber1nj wrote:
> Is there a way to configure Thunderbird to send in the background? I
> find the pop-up status/message box a little cumbersome.

Popup status/message box?

You didn't mention which v. Tbird and you aren't posting nntp to the moz
news server so I can't see a Tb in your headers, but I've never seen a
popup smtp status when sending. I get a tiny bit of information flying
by in the status bar, but if I want to know what is happening during the
smtp transaction I have to start Tb in a logging condition.

Searching on no quote 'thunderbird popup smtp' gets me nothing.

--
Mike Easter

[Tarkus]

I've always gotten a popup when sending mail. Currently using TB7.

[Mike Easter]

Tarkus wrote:
> Mike Easter wrote:
>> aweber1nj wrote:
>>> Is there a way to configure Thunderbird to send in the background? I
>>> find the pop-up status/message box a little cumbersome.
>>
>> Popup status/message box?

> I've always gotten a popup when sending mail. Currently using TB7.

Hmm. You're right. Mine lasts about 0.1 sec and I never noticed it. It
says connecting and successful if you can read that fast.

I suppose if everything were pokey and lasting for a number of seconds
you would want it to go away or not even show up in the first place.


--
Mike Easter

[Peter Taylor]

Try sending a mail with an attachment over one MB.

--
Peter Taylor

[Tarkus]

Yeah, if your connection is not so fast and/or heavily shared, it can be
annoying. I don't really understand the purpose.

[Mike Easter]

Peter Taylor wrote:
> Mike Easter wrote:
>>>> aweber1nj wrote:
>>>>> Is there a way to configure Thunderbird to send in the
>>>>> background? I find the pop-up status/message box a little
>>>>> cumbersome.

>> Mine lasts about 0.1 sec and I never noticed it. It says connecting
>> and successful if you can read that fast.
>>
>> I suppose if everything were pokey and lasting for a number of
>> seconds you would want it to go away or not even show up in the
>> first place.

> Try sending a mail with an attachment over one MB.

I don't recommend that and I try to motivate my friends who do it to not.

I suggest using a filesharing site or such/similar for file transfers.

In the first place, email isn't really the best 'vehicle' for
transferring files. In the second place, email agents aren't really the
robust database they would need to be for accumulating and managing a
lot of bits and/or pieces.


--
Mike Easter

[David]

Does:

mailnews.sendInBackground

set to true do what you want?

--

David

[Peter Taylor]

I've been using email for file transfers since 1997 and the problems
I've had doing that are zero, none, zilch and nada. I received a few
today that were over 20 megs. Not with T-Bird, mind you, but with
Outlook 2003 that has no limit on .pst file size. Course, that wasn't
the point. The point is that you *will* see the status box/progress bar
if you send an email with some weight.

--
Peter Taylor

[Mike Easter]

David wrote:
> aweber1nj wrote:
>> Is there a way to configure Thunderbird to send in the background? I
>> find the pop-up status/message box a little cumbersome.

> Does:
>
> mailnews.sendInBackground
>
> set to true do what you want?

Good.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_3.0_-_New_Features_and_Changes
Setting mailnews.sendInBackground true will send a message in the
background, and provide automatic retries if a failure occur.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/TestPlans/SendInBackground The idea
here is that when a user sends an email, they don't want to have to wait
for the email to be sent before getting on with the next task. The
intention is to utilise Thunderbird's existing "Send Later" mechanism to
send the emails in the background with some added automation. ... The
feature is currently disabled by default due to being incomplete.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440794 Initial Support for
"Leverage Offline capabilities to make sending email appear faster" (aka
send in background)


--
Mike Easter

[g]

On 09/29/2011 02:27 PM, aweber1nj wrote:
> Is there a way to configure Thunderbird to send in the background? I
> find the pop-up status/message box a little cumbersome. I'd like to
> go on and view other emails and/or compose/reply/forward others while
> the sending happens in the background. Pop-up an error or warning if
> the send could not be completed.

as mentioned, you do not state v/r, but i would presume v 6 or later.

i am using a 'backported' v/r 2.0.0.24 (20110906).

in 'about:config', i have 'preference name' of;

mailnews.show_send_progress user set boolean false

which stops showing of 'progress' window.

if you do not have this setting, you could try adding it to about:config
to see if it will work.

see thunderbird's about:config at;

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Mail_and_news_settings

use "Find: send_pro" to locate above setting.

*NOTE* this does not cause a true "background" send, as status does show
in lower progress bar.

> I would venture to say that most users don't need to see all the
> details of the sending process.

this is true and why i changed setting.

> Thoughts?

see above. :-)

hth.
--

peace out.

tc.hago,

g
.

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[Tarkus]

Here that just holds it in the Outbox until I send it manually. It does
get rid of the pop up, but I don't like the trade-off.

[David]

Did I not understand you? You want to send without being notified? Does
this not do this? Or do you want something that will send at a later date?

The 'later date' thing is this:

Send Later 3" It works good and the guy should get the $5 if you use
it. IMO.

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/send-later-3/"

I *do not know* if the sending later is without being notified however.


--

David

[Tarkus]

On 9/29/2011 1:01 PM, David wrote:
> On 9/29/2011 3:48 PM, Tarkus wrote:
>> > On 9/29/2011 9:26 AM, David wrote:
>>> >> On 9/29/2011 10:27 AM, aweber1nj wrote:
>>> >> Does:
>>> >>
>>> >> mailnews.sendInBackground
>>> >>
>>> >> set to true do what you want?
>> >
>> > Here that just holds it in the Outbox until I send it manually. It does
>> > get rid of the pop up, but I don't like the trade-off.
>
> Did I not understand you? You want to send without being notified? Does
> this not do this?

No. Again, it just holds it in the Outbox. It doesn't send it
automatically. I have to click on File > Send Unsent Messages before it
will send. I want it to send right away (or close to it), but without
the pop up showing SMTP status.

[Mike Easter]

Tarkus wrote:

>>>>>> mailnews.sendInBackground

> No. Again, it just holds it in the Outbox. It doesn't send it
> automatically. I have to click on File > Send Unsent Messages before it
> will send. I want it to send right away (or close to it), but without
> the pop up showing SMTP status.

According to the lengthy discussion in the bugzilla I cited earlier,
that is not the way it is supposed to work.

It is supposed to go to the Outbox and get automatically sent from there
'a second' later.

Also, the mode change requires a restart.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=440794

The most recent post in there is over 2 years old, when Tb3 was developing.


--
Mike Easter

[aweber1nj]

Sorry I was away from my desk. "Work got in the way"

Thank you to all who have replied!

I am using v7.0 of Thunderbird.

I tried both the settings referenced:
mailnews.show_send_progress set to false
does exactly what the author said. It does not show a separate
progress pop-up, but the email you're sending is instead stuck in the
foreground with the progress displayed in bottom-right corner of the
window until it's complete

mailnews.sendInBackground I get the same results as Tarkus. It
doesn't actually send it in the background. It holds the email in the
Local Folder's Outbox. So either that config-setting is misnamed, or
there's a bug in it.
(But this _sounds_ like the setting I would want, you are correct.
It just does not work as described.)

-AJ

[aweber1nj]

Yes! This is how I think it should work too. It looks like this is
an update of that bug, and I'll figure out how to "vote" for it ASAP,
but I don't know if that'll do any good.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=511079

[aweber1nj]

OK,

Re-reading posts and the bugzilla, I found that after restarting TB,
this seems to work as desired.

That is, I set show_send_progress to FALSE, I set sendInBackground to
TRUE. Then shutdown and restart TB.

From there, and email that is sent hits the Outbox for a second or
two, then it sent in the background.

Perfect (so far)!!!

Thank you to all who made suggestions, and forgive me for not
following the "restart TB" instruction before replying.

-AJ

[g]

On 09/29/2011 10:09 PM, aweber1nj wrote:
> OK,
>
> Re-reading posts and the bugzilla, I found that after restarting TB,
> this seems to work as desired.
>
> That is, I set show_send_progress to FALSE, I set sendInBackground to
> TRUE. Then shutdown and restart TB.
>
> From there, and email that is sent hits the Outbox for a second or
> two, then it sent in the background.
>
> Perfect (so far)!!!

great. glad to have been able to help with part of your wants.

being with v/r 2.0.0.24 (backported), i do not have "sendInBackground"
so i was not able to test for that.

because i have "show_send_progress", i was aware that it changes
with out a restart and did not consider above needing such.

> Thank you to all who made suggestions, and forgive me for not
> following the "restart TB" instruction before replying.

just goes to show that with configurations, functions and restarts are
just like females, "some will, some won't. some do, some don't". 8-D


now i know about at least one config change that i will make, and what
i will have to do when i up grade to make it work.

[Tarkus]

My last test worked, so it must've been the restart that fixed it.
Thanks, that a very nice hidden tweak.

[Wayne Mery]

I don't see how sendInBackground is misnamed. Perhaps your concern is
semantics. But yes, if what you want is to have mail sent async after
you are done composing, mailnews.sendInBackground is definitely that,
and it is the only way short of using an addon.

The fact that it uses an outbox is just an implementation detail. Please
file a bug for any issues that don't work and don't already have a bug
report, and please make it block the meta bug 511079.

--
contribute ... http://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing
evangelize ... http://www.spreadthunderbird.com/aff/165/

[Mark]

Thank you for persisting in this. I have a 2-3 sec delay for each
email (w/ no attachments) and was ready to quit using TBird do to
this. These settings should be much more obvious.