Comment 40 for bug 357864

Re: Comment 39

"To disable incoming server functions, uncheck them in Mail & News Acct Settings
| System Settings."

Yes you may tell it to not check for new messages but Drawback #1 is it won't
allow you to put in bogus information very easily. For instance try putting in
the same server name and username for each bogus account. It won't let you do
that. You have to have different usernames. This is tricking the program
rather than having native support for alternate identities w/o associated
incoming server settings.

Also, I thought this avenue applied to customizing the headers in the From
field because you could add as many identities as you want through to wizard.
You don't have direct access to customizing the From field which should appease
those who do not want to be able to easily forge email addresses and spam
others while still allowing everyone complete customization over how they want
their email address to appear via a drop down menu. If you trick Mozilla into
having POP accounts with invalid and disabled incoming mailservers you are
still stuck with seperate mailboxes for each account. (Drawback #2)

My suggestion allows you to have 1 basic mail folder (Local Mail) and have many
different account identities that are not associated with incoming mail. (They
are associated with outgoing only) *and* most importantly it is configurable.
(If you don't want all those extra folders for each identity you don't have to
have them. If you want some extra folders all you have to do is add a folder
and setup your own filter.) Either way you wind up with a way to edit the
contents of the From field without having any of the other drawbacks.

However, comment #12 would be a fine way to handle it as well. Either way
would give you the opportunity to have more than one from address without
having to have some bogus incoming server settings. My way has an added bonus
of allowing you the ability to have custom signature files, From Names,
Organization (et al.) for each seperate identity you add.

In summary, Current version has a couple drawbacks in how it handles From
addresses.

#1, To get it to give you a custom From selection you have to have a valid
account associated with it, trick it to use an invalid account, or hack
together your own kludge of a user.js file.

#2, Currently people want a way to customize the From (and Reply-to) header but
they don't necessarily want seperate mailboxes for each from address. My
suggestion of adding a "Add an Identity Only (No Email Retreival)" option when
adding accounts would give you complete customization over how you want your
From field to display including other customization abilities while making it
hard for Joe Spammer to edit the From field right then and there to spam people
on a whim.

I may be a little offtrack from the original idea but I'm trying to find a way
to fold the original idea into something that will allow more control over how
you want your information displayed and this idea already works if you manually
put together your own user.js (prefs.js) file. Most of the work in designing
this feature is already done. They would just need to make a UI for adding
that type of account and set the options accordingly.

Thanks for your feedback on this matter.