Have TB Download and Permanently Store Images in Emails?

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BuddhaNature
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Have TB Download and Permanently Store Images in Emails?

Post by BuddhaNature »

I am using Thunderbird (PortableApps) 60.9.0

I have Hotmail email accounts in Thunderbird all set up as IMAP type. I also have it setup to download copies of email from the Hotmail/Outlook server to be stored locally in TB. This works okay.

Today I was toying around with this and noticed that copies of images embedded in emails are not downloaded into Thunderbird and stored permanently inside the email that is stored permanently. So it seems that most times I view an email with embedded images TB still has to connect to the Hotmail server and download the images anew (for every occasion that I view such messages). It is a little bit complex in that sometimes the images seem to be in the email and other times not but I can't spot the pattern to see why this is so. I just did an experiment with this and it seems that the images might be downloaded (temporarily) on a per-Thunderbird-session basis i.e. shutdown TB and the images vanish and have to be downloaded again the next time you launch TB.

I did some research on this and found mention was made of the preference mailnews.message_display.disable_remote_image that preference had to be set to True to allow TB to download images automatically. In my setup that preference was already set to true. However, it seems that the preference only allows automatic downloading of images on every single view of an email that has embedded images.

So, my question is: Is it possible to get TB to download such images on the first view of an email and to have those images stored permanently (I would assume somewhere in the TB Profile in the IMAP folder there) so that TB doesn't have to be online to view such images in emails?

Also, if such a thing is possible, is it possible to do this selectively i.e. on a per-email basis and/or per-sender basis?
OS: Windows 10 Pro. x64
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DanRaisch
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Re: Have TB Download and Permanently Store Images in Emails?

Post by DanRaisch »

mailnews.message_display.disable_remote_image
That's not the setting you need and you want to restore that to False. That setting will allow ALL remote images, even malicious ones in spam, to be downloaded without consulting you.
Try setting mail.imap.mime_parts_on_demand to false
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BuddhaNature
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Re: Have TB Download and Permanently Store Images in Emails?

Post by BuddhaNature »

Thanks very much for the response, Dan. I set mailnews.message_display.disable_remote_image to False. Then set mail.imap.mime_parts_on_demand to false. Then rebooted TB. After the reboot I clicked two messages that have images in them and I got the images automatically. After that I rebooted TB again put it Offline then I clicked on the same two messages again but the images weren't there (and TB couldn't download them because it was Offline).

I also tried, once the two messages had download the images, putting copies of the messages in Local Folders, checked that the copies had the images. Then reboot TB, go offline, then check the two messages in Local Folders. The messages in Local Folders didn't have the images and I had to allow TB to go Online at which point the images got downloaded into the copies in Local Folders. (Out of curiosity I then put TB Offine and checked the same two messages in their location in the email account they came from, those two messages also had the images in them; which suggests the TB holds the images 'centrally' somewhere (in a temporary fashion, reboot and the images vanish) and applies those held images to any email that requests them.)

So, in all the suggested solution didn't work. And it also seems that downloading copies of messages from the server to be held locally for an IMAP email account only works partially, TB has to be Online to get images for messages after every reboot and the images of the message will be lost when TB is rebooted.That doesn't seem right to me. Ah well. . .

P.S. As far as the preference mailnews.message_display.disable_remote_image goes I had no recollection of ever having altered that preference myself. So I tried Resetting it to it's default value and the Reset set it to True. So, obviously, that must be the Default for TB PortableApps -- don't know if that differs for a normally installed TB.
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WaltS48
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Re: Have TB Download and Permanently Store Images in Emails?

Post by WaltS48 »

Some of the images are remote content served from a remote server.
Remote content are parts of a message (such as images, stylesheets, or videos) which are not included in the message itself, but are downloaded from the Internet when you view the message.
REF: Remote Content in Messages
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BuddhaNature
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Re: Have TB Download and Permanently Store Images in Emails?

Post by BuddhaNature »

WaltS48 wrote:Some of the images are remote content served from a remote server.
Yes, Walt, this seems to be the case and is enlightening to me.

However, I'm still struggling to understand why download of such images can't be made on a once only basis (the first time you allow the images to be downloaded/shown) and TB just stores the images thereafter so they don't need to be downloaded again. Current setup seems misguided to me I guess. Maybe there is some reason for this way of working, but I can't think of such a reason myself.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Have TB Download and Permanently Store Images in Emails?

Post by tanstaafl »

IMAP accounts are supposed to fetch messages as needed. Images are considered part of the message. There is support for a cache but it works poorly, you can't count on what you want being cached. Increasing the cache size to a ridiculously large size doesn't help. Disabling mime parts on demand (which tries to optimize what gets fetched) by setting mail.imap.mime_parts_on_demand false helps, but doesn't solve the problem.

The fundamental problem is that the Thunderbird developers choose to support offline folders rather than on disk caches of complete messages/folders, that can also be viewed when working offline.

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BuddhaNature
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Re: Have TB Download and Permanently Store Images in Emails?

Post by BuddhaNature »

Thanks very much, tanstaafl. Seems things are the way they are and no real options to do otherwise. Ah, well. . . Thanks again.
OS: Windows 10 Pro. x64
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