Keeping messages "unread" by default when viewed

[ed...@yahoo.com]

Is there a setting to prevent Mozilla from marking a message as "read"
when a message is viewed, until *after* I specifically mark it "read"?
I get lots of email and I typically navigate and scan various
messages before reading the full contents. I don't like having to
remember to mark messages as "unread" during my scans as this is
error-prone and time-consuming.

-Edwin

[ed...@yahoo.com]

Hi, I never got a response to my posting. Does that mean there isn't
a way to do this? If there isn't a way, how difficult would it be to
add it? I've seen other mail readers that have this feature which
allows you to "preview" messages without marking them "read". Thanks
for any info.

-Edwin

ed...@yahoo.com wrote in message news:<cd715519.0302...@posting.google.com>...

[David Morse]

ed...@yahoo.com wrote:
> Hi, I never got a response to my posting. Does that mean there isn't
> a way to do this? If there isn't a way, how difficult would it be to
> add it? I've seen other mail readers that have this feature which
> allows you to "preview" messages without marking them "read". Thanks
> for any info.

I read both your posts. At first blush the feature suggestion didn't
sound very useful to me so I kept quiet.

Why don't you set up a filter that automatically labels all your
incoming messages "important", and when you've really really read them,
label them back to normal. PS: hotkeys for the second is "0", so its
very fast. That way you have 3 categories:

important-unread ---> really really unread
important-read ---> skimmed
normal-read ---> finished

[us...@domain.invalid]

David Morse wrote:
> ed...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>> Hi, I never got a response to my posting. Does that mean there isn't
>> a way to do this? If there isn't a way, how difficult would it be to
>> add it? I've seen other mail readers that have this feature which
>> allows you to "preview" messages without marking them "read". Thanks
>> for any info.
>
>
> I read both your posts. At first blush the feature suggestion didn't
> sound very useful to me so I kept quiet.

Thanks for the response.

> Why don't you set up a filter that automatically labels all your
> incoming messages "important", and when you've really really read them,
> label them back to normal. PS: hotkeys for the second is "0", so its
> very fast. That way you have 3 categories:
>
> important-unread ---> really really unread
> important-read ---> skimmed
> normal-read ---> finished
>

Interesting idea. I tried what you suggested above, but found some
problems with it:

1) If I want to see all the "important" messages, then I could sort
using the Label column to put the "important-*" messages at the top.
But the problem is that the secondary sort key is by date so my Inbox
with 5000 messages in it has all the "normal-read" messages at the
bottom end of the message index and I have to scroll to the end of the
index to see them.

2) I like to sort with the newest messages at the top of the index so
that when new messages come in, I do not have to scroll the index to see
them. I normally do this with the "Unread" message column.

The way I normally read mail is to start in sort by "unread", most
recent first. When new mail arrives it appears at the top of the index
and I can see the subject without touching the computer. After I get
lots of mail and decide to process some of it, I switch to sort by
"thread" and then process the unread threads using "n", next unread
message. When I realize that I want to process a message later, a
common case, I have to mark it "unread". It is this step that I want to
eliminate, since I prefer to perform an action to process the message
such as mark a message "read", delete it, or move it. I then decide to
do some work and so I then switch the index back to sort by "unread".

So what you suggest doesn't really meet my needs. However, perhaps I am
missing something and there is a better way to read mail. Anyone care
to post how they read mail?

I'd also like to know how hard it would be to implement what I want. I
like Mozilla overall and so am willing to take the time to learn how to
customize it.

-Edwin

[Edwin Goei]

us...@domain.invalid wrote:
>
> The way I normally read mail is to start in sort by "unread", most
> recent first. When new mail arrives it appears at the top of the index
> and I can see the subject without touching the computer. After I get
> lots of mail and decide to process some of it, I switch to sort by
> "thread" and then process the unread threads using "n", next unread
> message. When I realize that I want to process a message later, a
> common case, I have to mark it "unread". It is this step that I want to
> eliminate, since I prefer to perform an action to process the message
> such as mark a message "read", delete it, or move it. I then decide to
> do some work and so I then switch the index back to sort by "unread".
>
> So what you suggest doesn't really meet my needs. However, perhaps I am
> missing something and there is a better way to read mail. Anyone care
> to post how they read mail?
>
> I'd also like to know how hard it would be to implement what I want. I
> like Mozilla overall and so am willing to take the time to learn how to
> customize it.
>
> -Edwin
>

Sorry about that, I switched from posting via google to posting via
Mozilla and misconfigured my from addres.

-Edwin

[Stanimir Stamenkov]

ed...@yahoo.com wrote:

This should be Bug 75866
<http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=75866>.

--
Stanimir <stanio(_at_)gbg.bg>

[Edwin Goei]

Yes, the summary for this bug is "Viewing message for very short time
shouldn't mark it as read". I would like the delay before marking it as
read to be infinite as I believe Outlook Express lets you do. In any
case, I added a comment to the bug. Thanks for the info.

BTW, anyone know how difficult it would be to implement? I could see a
simple hack in theory would be to comment out a single line of code that
would mark a message read in some source file. Would this be in C++?

-Edwin

[David Fraser]

Yes it would be in C++. I did a bit of a search in the mailnews code,
came up with the following:

For news messages:
In mailnews/news/src/nsNNTPProtocol.cpp, line 827:
MarkCurrentMsgRead();
commenting this out should prevent news messages from being marked as
read when you read them...

For local folder messages (i.e. POP3):
In mailnews/local/src/nsMailboxProtocol.cpp, line 480:
msgHdr->MarkRead(PR_TRUE);
commenting this out should prevent local messages from being marked as
read when you read them...

For IMAP messages it's a bit more complicated...
nsImapMailFolder::NormalEndMsgWriteStream in nsImapMailFolder.cpp is
what actually marks the message as read, based on a parameter, markRead
which is passed to it. This is called from
nsImapProtocol::NormalMessageEndDownload and msgRead is true if
imapAction == nsIImapUrl::nsImapMsgFetch
So looking at these two procedures should work.

Of course, you need to be able to build the source to do this, and I
haven't checked that it works, but hope that helps...

David

[Edwin Goei]

David Fraser wrote:

Thanks for the detailed info. Unfortunately, I'm pretty busy at work
right now, but I'll try it when I get some free time and post a patch.

-Edwin