Thunderbird applet shows EMails as unviewed after viewing them from within TB

[Chascon]

Problem: Thunderbird applet shows EMails as unviewed after viewing all new EMails from inside TB.

Comment & summary
Communication is one way, from applet to Thunderbird. It should be bidirectional, so as to not have to always go through the applet to keep the applet status up to date.

Steps to reproduce
1. Click on the Thunderbird applet indicating new EMail
2. Thunderbird on the dock animates itself
3. Press on the Thunderbird dock alias
4. You're taken to TB and automatically view the EMail previously clicked on in the applet
5. Within TB, you view __other__ new messages, ones you haven't clicked on from within the applet

Expected results
TB applet should be aware of all the new EMails regardless of where (in what app/client or applet) you click.

Specs
Version: Thunderbird 7.0.1
Description: Ubuntu 11.10
Release: 11.10

uname -r
3.0.0-12-generic

Hardware
First generation (2006) Intel MacBook Pro (Intel Core Duo, aka Yonah based processor) with an ATI Mbility Radeon X1600 video card.

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

I didn't understand the issue. The current way seems natural and just right for me. Do you mean to say that, when clicking the Inbox button in the messaging menu, it should display only new e-mail? Or what else?

The bug description is missing an "actual results" part.

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

Oh okay, I get it. You mean to say that when I check unread mail in Thunderbird, the status in the messaging menu should be updated. That does happen in my case, the communication is two-way.

Or am I missing something?

[Chascon (chascone)]

@ Bilal Ahktar
That's what I'm saying exactly. It doesn't happen in my case. So changing the status to invalid (@Chris), well I don't know about that.

[Karaxus (milktiger)]

As i have the same problem i think i can add some additional information to reproduce this issue:

Ubuntu 11.10 Unity

Thunderbird is placed on virtual desktop number 4 ( I'm mainly working on virtual desktops 1 to 3 and number 4 is for mail and so on)

Second i have some message filters which sorts mail into seperate folders.

I observe the following problems with the mail applet:

1. If i'm clicking on the mail applet indicating new mail, i expect that thunderbird will be shown (and i get switched to desktop 4).
Instead nothing happens and the new mail number resets.

2. If i'm going directly to desktop 4 and read my mail, the applet won't update the numbers.

3. If mail was sorted by my filters, i get an unread mail number in inbox and the subfolder in which the mail was sorted into.
That means that the applet says i have 1 new message in inbox and there is none because this message is in a subfolder. The applet also states that in the subfolder is a new message, which is correct.

[Andreas Hein (opti-l)]

Here my short description:

Thunderbird indicator shows an incomming mail.

In Thunderbird press button 'retrieve mail'.
The incoming email (spam) is moved directly to the spam folder
and there marked as read by me.

But the status of the Thunderbird indicator is not changed
(it still appears unread mail).

The behavior is not dependent on specific versions of kernel (2.6.35, ...) or Thunderbird (3, 9, 10).

uname -r
3.0.0-16-generic-pae

Ubuntu 11.10 Unity

Thunderbird 10.0.2

[Steffen B (stbartsch)]

I slighlty different observations from #5:

When I start from a clear message menu (no entries in the menu of the indicator under email) and receive an email, everything works as expected: the indicator is set to "no unread mail" after reading the email.

However, after days of usage, restarts of thunderbird and of unity, the indicator stops working: a received email is read, but the indicator stays on "unread messages"

Workaround: Once I go manually through all the entries under email in the submenu of the message indicator, it works again.

However, each RSS feed stays listed there even after I read all items in there. So I'm assuming, this bug is somehow related to the handling of reading RSS items.

Suggestion: make the reset action in the indicator menu reset all the entries under email in the indicator menu, including all RSS feeds.

[Chascon (chascone)]

I've upgraded to Precise and it continues. Since my upgrade, I've noticed that the TB dock icon also has notices now, only it suffers from the same problem Unity's applet has.

It seems that there is an external project that has been started up providing some of the functions and then some. I can't say as for it's reliance because I haven't tried it but since progress on this bug has been so lax, I might.

https://launchpad.net/libnotify-mozilla

Besides ubuntu-bug globalmenu-extension reports that this software doesn't exist. What's up with that?