Mac OS X's Mail.app has a nice little feature that changes the application's icon in the Dock when you have new mail (a little red circle with the number of new messages shows up in the upper right corner of the icon). I don't know how this is done, but it would be a nice touch for Mozilla to do the same kind of thing.

.

uh, i'm not a mail guy.

Marking NEW.

accepting...

Hope this helps slightly. http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Cocoa/Reference/ApplicationKit/ObjC_classic/Classes/NSApplication.html#//apple_ref/occ/instm/NSApplication/setApplicationIconImage: This is for Cocoa; I'm not sure if this is applicable to Carbon too. An article at Stepwise has some good info on Docklings that we might be able to use too. http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Technical/2001-03-30.01.html Can we come up with a more descriptive summary for this bug? Perhaps something along the lines of, "Dock icon image should change to display unread messages when mail received" or something? - Adam

Please note that the colon (:) has to be part of the link. Bugzilla isn't doing that. - Adam

I have some code that allow me to draw an image on the top of the dock icon, however, I have trouble to draw text (number of new message). For some reason, I cannot change the font face or font size!

When I filed this request, what I had in mind was that the icon be updated with an image that indicated whether you have new mail (such as an envelope icon that appears on top of the icon). I don't think it's necessary to tell the user the number of new messages.

To biff a user is to tell them that they have new mail. Xbiff does this with a 2-state icon of a mailbox, one with the flag down, one with the flag up. I use Mail.app and the number is usually too much information. For one, it tends to oscillate as filters are applied. I suppose that's just poor implementation though. The only time I use the number is when I send to a mailing list and there is then exactly 1 unread message - that's the one I sent. In every other case I just need to know that mail has arrived. The bigger issue for doing a number on Mozilla's icon, say 12, is "12 whats?" Mozilla is a multi-purpose app. A 12 on Mail.app is clearly 12 new Mails. A 12 on Mozilla could, in theory, mean 12 downloads in progress, 12 unsaved composer windows, or something else. James's envelope icon is a good one, though I suppose someone might have theme issues with that.

Bugs targeted at mozilla1.0 without the mozilla1.0 keyword moved to mozilla1.0.1 (you can query for this string to delete spam or retrieve the list of bugs I've moved)

Since Mozilla is more than just a mail app, there are probably other things we can indicate via the dock icon.

Omniweb displays a green "lightning arrow" when a bookmark has been updated. (A number superimposed on top of the arrow indicates multiple updates.)

How about a number on top of an envelope to indicate the number of mail messages? (Granted, I'd be happy with new mail notification of any kind, but the number would be a nice addition as well.)

Removing status as blocker for 102998

*** Bug 135247 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 177593 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 180891 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Changed summary to make it easier for Mac users to find it (most don't know what 'biff' is)

See Bug 180891 for an implementation suggestion where the user can indicate what is desired to see.

It appears that no activity has occured on this bug since November. Can anyone let us MacOSX users know if this bug might be resolved in the near future?

This is a problem for IRIX users too, and is a feature that was in Netscape 4.X. I think it likely applies to many, if not all, platforms/OSes - would someone mind changing this to All/All? Any chance someone could 'put this feature back'? Max.

Is anybody currently working on this bug? Surely there is a programmer out there who considers this an important feature to be missing from an email application. I have no programming experience, but I will be glad to assist in anyway I can.

I'll put this in my list as I'd like to have this for thunderbird but I don't own a Mac so I won't be able to actually work on it. We already have plumbing in place for platform specific biff notifications. Note: nsMessengerWinIntegration.h and nsMessengerOS2Integration.h Should be trivial to make a OSX only file which bounces the dock when new mail as arrived.

I'm not sure what the Apple guidelines say about it, but bouncing the Dock might not be the appropriate behavior. Probably changing the icon would be better--that's what the built-in Mail.app application does.

I haven't read the AHIG on this, but I think you are only supposed to bounce the doc when a user's immediate attention is needed. Obviously (i'm sure someone would disagree with this statement thoug) new mail arriving does not fall under the realm of "requiring the user's immediate attention." And a simple new messages counter on top of the icon (i.e. like Mail.app) is the best solution. Also I agree that there is no point in trying to get this into the Mozilla Suite so late in the game and Thunderbird is a better target. So should the product above be changed to Thunderbird? It still says Browser.

What you want to do is badge the app's Dock icon with the count of unread mail (which is what this bug originally requested) so that it's visible yet unobtrusive. You'd only bounce the Dock if you had a preference the user could set requesting that on new mail. And if you do add that, _puhleeze_ make it off by default. :-)

I agree that if bouncing in the dock is not set as a default it should at least be an option. For many people in business receiving notification of new mail is something that requires immediate attention. As far as the icon showing a count of new emails, that will not really be helpful until Thunderbird ignores messages automatically sent to the junk folder. I don't want Thunderbird to notify me that I have two new messages, just to find out they were both placed in the junk mail folder.

Right. And if you have hiding on for the Dock, you'll never see the numbers change on the icon. This is what drives me nuts about Mail.app. I actually like the dock bouncing (unlike a lot of people, apparently) because the icon animation will be visible even if the Dock is hidden. I'd like to see this as an option as well.

Since introducing an option to bounce the Dock will likely be more complicated than simply implementing the feature requested in this bug (changing the Dock icon to indicate new mail), perhaps those people who want the Dock-bouncing feature should file a separate enhancement request.

regarding comment 27, in Mail.app it only shows the number of unread messages in the Inbox. If messages have been moved to other folders (i.e. Junk), they are not included in the unread message count. Ideally thunderbird would handle it the same way.

Please no! I can't stand that feature in Mail.app. I have mail that gets filtered to various folders. Just because it's filtered, doesn't mean that it's not unread. I definitely would want filtered messages to count towards the total. Junk, however, should be ignored.

*** Bug 226457 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 232986 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

See also bug 217448, which has a patch to implement Dock icon bouncing for Thunderbird.

I've had some code that does this for a while now, but I've never been entirely happy with it. I'm attaching my version of nsMessengerOSXIntegration.cpp, maybe I'll find some time to tweak it soon or it might give someone else a starting point.

actually we just implemented this last night for Thunderbird. I haven't landed it on the trunk yet. But we aren't drawing the number in yet just placing a badge icon over the dock icon. That's too funny.

Great, as usual no clue in the bug about the work being done on the birds :-P. My version does draw the number *and* it works in the suite, are you planning to implement the drawing of the number too?

Speaking from a business perspective as someone who constantly fields requests from users wanting better notification on OS X..... 1. Notification on the icon is good, but the transparent background shown in the screenshot is too subtle - it needs to be a bright colour. That gets your attention that there IS MAIL with a glance, without having to focus on reading the icon to see the number. The number should be there, but with a red background like Mail.app uses, for example. 2. Mozilla suite, please! I'm not ready to migrate away from the suite, and this should surely be implemented there for OS X like it is for Windows. 3. Bouncing the dock icon is a good *option* to have, as many users at my site want blatant notification (e.g. a big modal dialogue that you have to dismiss is what they ask for, really). The dock bounce should be user-selectable among Once, Continuously, and None, with None being the default setting. (iChat does this, and the various settings are useful depending on the situation). Thanks, we appreciate the hard work greatly.

If you want to badge the icon with the number of unread emails, please follow the Mac OS X style and do it with a bright red star. There's sample code from Apple to illustrate. DockBrowser (http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/DockBrowser/DockBrowser.html) comes with the appropriate PNG images and some code to do the drawing (see DockBrowser.c's MyUpdateDockIcon()).

also note that it's not a one-size-fits-all image, but a group where the selected image depends on how many items there are (up to 5 digit numbers handled).

I based it on Apple's code and reused the images (dropped the ATSUI code since it was more trouble and it didn't look very good). The change in nsImapMailFolder.cpp is necessary to get notification when the new message count changes. As it is now, if I have one new message and a new one arrives we call SetNumNewMessages(1) and nsMsgDBFolder::SetNumNewMessages compares the new count to the old count (both are 1) and so we don't notify. I haven't found any explanation of what the semantics of SetNumNewMessages are, but the code as it's written seems to indicate it wants the total of the new messages in the folder. There's one thing left, I don't know how to differentiate biff from non-biff notifications (GetPerformingBiff always returned true for my IMAP account) so the code currently always overlays the icon with the number of new messages, even if the users did a manual "Get Messages". I find that behaviour to be ok, not sure what other people think.

Comment on attachment 158615 [details] [diff] [review] v1 Trying to get some feedback on this approach.Note that the pref doesn't have UI yet.

(In reply to comment #43) > (From update of attachment 158615 [details] [diff] [review]) > Trying to get some feedback on this approach.Note that the pref doesn't have UI > yet. > This looks good. I agree that 'number of new messages' is 'number of new messages' regardless of whether they arrived while minimised or when doing a 'Get Msgs'. Sometimes you just want to look at the dock icon and say, 'Now, how many messages do I have?'. Would be nice if 'Junk' were excluded, but whatever... Referring back to older comments (man, has this bug been hanging out forever), the bounce-icon-in-dock would be a nice additional feature if it were a separate option from the graphical biff, AND were off by default. The graphical biff as you're showing it should be ON by default. Good job. When will this be in a release? Or a nightly?

Any chance for this to be implemented for 1.5 ?

Comment on attachment 158615 [details] [diff] [review] v1 clearing some old review requests. We added this a long time ago.

Did we actually add _this_ patch? As of 1.06, we have a dock biff with a green circle that only shows the number of fetched emails. I don't recall it being any different for 1.5. This patch, IIRC, was to show the _total_ number of new messages, and to use the red starburst.

cc Kairo

I see this has made it into Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1b2) Gecko/20060819 SeaMonkey/1.1a. VERY NICE. :) However, I have "Animate the dock icon" set and the dock icon does not bounce when new mail arrives. It should, right? As noted previously, the animate option is important for those who hide the dock. As an aside, the biff gets prematurely(?) cleared along with the green arrows under the conditions of bug 344066. For the biff, this is probably not a bad thing, particularly if it is bouncing. Wonder if there's some way the bounce could be stopped once the new mail is somehow acknowledged. (Any sort of click in mail-news?)

I have seen the Dock Icon bounce now, but I can't reproduce making it bounce. The vast bulk of the time, it doesn't. (OS X 10.4.7, PPC)

Resolve worksforme per comment 50. This bug is only for the biff functionality. Making the dock bounce and premature clearing of the signal are outside the scope of this bug.

Which version of SeaMonkey will have this fix?

(In reply to comment #53) > Which version of SeaMonkey will have this fix? Every version starting with 1.1 Alpha, which will be released in the next few days (note that this is an Alpha, a testing version, no final, stable release yet).