Virtual Identity 0.4.1 is released
Posted by rene on 25 Apr 2007 at 04:39 pm | Tagged as: ... ? ..., Hacking, virtual id
It took longer than I expected, but I think it was worth to include a lot of feature-requests and get rid of some bugs. Many thanks to you all who gave me reports and suggestions and translations and thank-you-mails, without this feedback the extension would have been not even half as nice as it is by now. So as you see, I like the result of the last weeks work, and I hope you will enjoy it too. Don’t like to mention the list of bug-fixes again, just the list of new features compared to version 0.4.0:
- you can now sort the header any way you like, also exclude ‚to‘ or ‚cc‘ as you like it, but you have to tell Virtual Identity that it has to use those headers. So change your settings and add ‚to‘ and ‚cc‘ to the list of headers. A header name now refers to all headers of that name, not like before only the outmost one of you mail. To select a specific header, just use the number of it’s occurrence, so for instance „:3“ and add it to the headername. And if you wish to use only the email address and not the name, then simply add „:@“.
- reading the headers was in version 0.4.0 dependent on installed mnenhy or enigmail. Now it’s independent on other extensions, so you are free to use whatever you like (but to protect the freedom of having secrets the same way as the freedom of choice or the freedom of speach, you might choose to install enigmail anyway)
- added a nice debug-window, which helps you understanding what Virtual Identity really does. using complex filter rules you might get very creative, and this is the place to look if it doesn’t work as expected. This debug information is also helpful for me to understand how and when problems occur if you are sending a bug report.
Ok, here you can find the recent release 0.4.1, and, tadaa, there will be a documentation soon (have a look at the work in progress)
Hi Rene,
I found a bug with the identity chosen when replying.
I have multiple accounts, each with separate Inboxes. There are actually two problems:
1) In certain cases, it’s setting the sender identity to the wrong account. I think I might have fixed this by checking the „ignore full name while comparing email addresses“ option, but my feeling is that if I have Account A and Account B, and I hit reply to a message in Account B, the identity from Account B should take preference /unless/ it’s overridden in the Virt ID settings. In my case, it chooses Account A whether I enable Smart Reply or not. (If I don’t enable Smart Reply, then I think it’s definitely a bug that it chooses Account A.)
2) When I enable Smart Reply and check the „ignore full name“ option (everything else is defaulted), and I reply to a message in Account B, it first chooses the identity from account A, then correctly changes it to the identity for Account B. However, it does NOT REMOVE the signature from Account A, so I end up having two separate signatures in my reply, and I have to manually take one out.
Thanks,
Keith
PS: Anything you can do about the spam filter settings and my IP address, so I don’t have to keep using a proxy?
Actually, now that I think about it, does Virtual ID put any consideration at all what into what account/folder a message is in when a reply is being composed? Maybe that’s part of my problem – that I’m expecting it to do this.
By the way, the link to the 0.4.1 docs on this page doesn’t seem to be working.
Keith
Hi Keith,
So, the problem is that Thunderbird selects which account is being used. If Virtual Identity found an existent Identity as the one to choose, it switches to this one and all settings of this one are used (so also signatures and so on are changed). But if Virtual Identity has to create a ‚virtual‘ non-existent Identity, it does this based on the account Thunderbird has selected.
If you like to control which account Thunderbird uses, maybe you should use additionally the ‚correct identity‘ extension, not that I use it myself, but this one should do the job.
Does this help you? Just tested it with a created account, can’t reproduce your problems here.
Thanks for the tip with the documentation, it’s not still worth the name and therefore wasn’t published, but it’s changed now. And regarding the SPAM-problem, I don’t know why but your IP ended on a blacklist. I removed it, hope its working now.
Regards,
Rene
Hi
I’ve notice a problem with this extension. I use a Thawte signature to sign my outgoing emails. This extension for some reason creates an error dialog when trying to send saying it couldn’t find it or it expired. When looking at my settings however, they are correct and it has a long way to go before it expires.
I end up having to not sign the email and send without.
Regards.
Rene,
Thanks! (For the reply, and for getting me off the blacklist.)
Regarding this: „If Virtual Identity found an existent Identity as the one to choose, it switches to this one and all settings of this one are used (so also signatures and so on are changed).“
What about the fact that it’s leaving the old signature when inserting the new signature, so that I end up with two? Are you saying this is a Thunderbird issue? (I would believe that, if only because I saw this once in awhile in 1.5, when I changed the account I was sending from. Could never reproduce it reliably, though.)
And regarding this: „But if Virtual Identity has to create a ‘virtual’ non-existent Identity, it does this based on the account Thunderbird has selected.“
I guess what I don’t fully understand is that if the email is labeled „To: Account A“, and located in a folder in Account A’s Inbox, why would Virtual Identity not have to create a virtual identity that would result in its selecting the identity from Account B?
I can try to create a simplified standalone test case, if you like. Let’s do it over email, though.
Cheers,
Keith
Sorry, that second to last paragraph should have said „why would Virtual Identity have to create a virtual identity….“ — remove the extra „not“.
Keith
Hi AppleBag,
usually don’t use S/MIME, but are you sure the problem is related to Virtual Identity? Have you tried it without the extension? I just tested it (again) and it seems fine here, I can encrypt and sign the Messages without problems, also if I change the Identity (means Virtual Identity is active).
But have a look at the preferences of Virtual Identity, you must have ‚copy S/MIME-settings‘ for the Virtual Identity Account activated, otherwise S/MIME won’t work with Virtual Identities. But it should work with existent Identities if you leave this switch deactivated.
Hope to help you, regards,
Rene
Rene, thanks for creating this extension that should be so useful! I hoped this recent release would help, but I still have problems. Two comments:
(1) No matter how many possible virtual addresses it finds in the headers, nothing shows up in the „checklist“ that pops up — but they do appear in the drop-down menu.
(2) I receive email from a mailing list [example: group@yahoogroups.com], so none of my accounts show up in the headers. It would be GREAT if there were an option for „if..then“. (If the email is to „group@yahoogroups.com“ then automatically use my email address associated with that mailing list.)
Thanks for your work!
Mark
Rene,
Thanks for this wonderful extension and for continuing to fix and upgrade. I’ve liked it from the very beginning, and now love it since you added SmartReply.
I can do most of what I want with SmartReply, but am stuck on a couple points:
(1) In Thunderbird’s Account Settings for fu@my.domain, I have an additional identity defined, fu@other.domain. Messages sent to fu@other.domain are forwarded to fu@my.domain, so when I reply to them, I want to use fu@other.domain. SmartReply recognizes the email address and fills it in, but doesn’t fill in the name from the Account Setting to which the identity belongs (when no name was included in the message).
(2) When I receive messages from a certain account, I want to always reply from a different account than which the message was sent to. Is there a way to do this with SmartReply?
Thanks,
John
I have several newsgroup accounts that use the same email address as my mail accounts. With default header settings, it seems that VI picks up the email account. If I add „from“ to the headers for smart reply, it seems to pick up the newsgroup account instead.
This happens even if I turn off smart reply for newsgroups.
Seems it should be sticking to email account identities.
Hi,
thanks for the comments and reports, I was a little busy for some days but will go through your posts soon.
Nice regards,
Rene
This may be a bit incoherent, because I don’t understand what is happening.
I use correct_identity and virtualID. I have correct_identity set up to set my identity to an account with a bogus SMTP server, because I want to be always forced to pick one of my several IDs. I have virtual identity set up to identify my virtIDs, but not to open a dialog or use first found address. I also have smart draft turned off. I have the SMTP selection box turned on.
When I draft a new message, sometimes I get the ID associated with the last account I used, sometimes I see the ID associated with the current account, and sometimes I see the bogus account (which I should always get). I always see in the SMTP box the SMTP server associated with the account. However, when I hit send, the message fails because it tries to send to my bogus SMTP server, which is not listed in the box. I must manually select the account in order to send, even if it is the same account that is showing. When I select the account, neither the account name nor the SMTP server change, but the send succeeds.
Something similar happens when I reply. It (the combination of correct_identity and virtualID) pick some account & SMTP server, and show that to me in the boxes, but the send attempts to use my bogus SMTP server and fails. If I am replying to someone who sent to one of my throwaway email addresses (the reason I use virtID), that address is available in the dropdown box, which is good. I select it and the send fails as above, even though the SMTP box shows a correct server. I must select the server, even if it is the same one.
My suspicion is that correct identity is coming along after virtID and reseting something inside firefox, meaning that what I see in the input boxes is not what firefox is seeing. Can’t prove it, though.
Note that if I draft a message, cancel that message, then draft a new one, that second message usually has my bogus address info in the boxes. Something is getting cleaned up when the message is canceled.
I use correct_identity only because I want the default from address to always be the bogus address so that the send will fail if I don’t set it. The behavior today is sort-of OK because the send does fail, but having it fail while seeing correct information in the boxes is strange. If virtID gave me the option of setting the default from address when drafting a new message (another sort of ‚draft‘ option), then I could stop using correct_identity.
Like I said, incoherent. I hope this is useful information.
I also have a problem with Virtual Identity selecting the wrong account. I’m not able to reproduce it right now, though, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
NB: When I used Virtual Identity earlier (0.3.x) I did not have this problem.
I thought I was having problems with Smart Reply, so turned it off. But the problem persisted. When I reply to a message, the last ID used for sending a message is used. If I then close the reply without sending, and even without correcting the ID, and then try replying again, the correct ID is chosen. It is correct from then on for that message. But goes back to this behavior with each new message.
Sometimes I even get the problem just by writing a new mail. I read mail on account A, click create new mail, and the From field is populated with the latest replied address from account B.
I ended up deinstalling v0.4.1 and installing v0.3.4 (with nightly tester tools on Tbird 2) instead. It works as it should.
Henrik,
Thanks for the suggestion. I also uninstalled v0.4.1 and installed v0.3.4 (enabled for TB2 with MR Tech Local Install) and life is good again. Hopefully Rene will be able to fix this and release a v0.4.2 sometime soon so I can have virtual IDs and smart reply.
jl
Hi,
sorry for being so quiet, but I’m currently and also for the next weeks very busy. But keep commenting, it won’t be forgotten. Just finished a bugfix release 0.4.2.
bugfixes:
Charles (Henrik, John)
* „When I draft a new message, sometimes I get the ID associated with the last account I used, sometimes I see the ID associated with the current account, and sometimes I see the bogus account (which I should always get).“ If Smart-Reply found (for instance) an existing identity, sending works ok and was not tampered by the extension. But Thunderbird doesn’t remove the window, it ‚recycles‘ the window. Next time you compose a message, this one shows the same old identity but uses a different one behind the scenes. So I changed Virtual Identity to remove Window completely if message was sended, Window-Recycling is thisway disabled.
Mark:
* „No matter how many possible virtual addresses it finds in the headers, nothing shows up in the „checklist“ that pops up — but they do appear in the drop-down menu.“ Yes, was broken, repaired it.
Dave:
„I have several newsgroup accounts that use the same email address as my mail accounts. With default header settings, it seems that VI picks up the email account. If I add „from“ to the headers for smart reply, it seems to pick up the newsgroup account instead. … Seems it should be sticking to email account identities.“ right, didn’t thougt of that. Connected usage of newsgroup accounts to the switch which enables Virtual Identity for newsgroups.
new feature requests:
Mark:
* „I receive email from a mailing list [example: group@yahoogroups.com], so none of my accounts show up in the headers. It would be GREAT if there were an option for „if..then“. (If the email is to „group@yahoogroups.com“ then automatically use my email address associated with that mailing list.)“ Create thisone as an identity and use CorrectIdentity or an other extension to choose the right one answering to a mailing list.
John:
„In Thunderbird’s Account Settings for fu@my.domain, I have an additional identity defined, fu@other.domain. Messages sent to fu@other.domain are forwarded to fu@my.domain, so when I reply to them, I want to use fu@other.domain. SmartReply recognizes the email address and fills it in, but doesn’t fill in the name from the Account Setting to which the identity belongs (when no name was included in the message).“ You can by now use a fixed name if no Name is recognized or Names are ignored (see options dialog). Maybe I’ll change this if this isn’t enough, don’t have the time by now, sorry.
John:
„When I receive messages from a certain account, I want to always reply from a different account than which the message was sent to. Is there a way to do this with SmartReply?“ Use Correct Identity for this feature.
Regards,
Rene
Thanks for the thorough responses, Rene! I have installed the other add-on you mentioned, as well as your recent release 0.4.2, and everything is going great! Thank you.