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Thunderbird 38.7.2 will not access links that are longer than the link display at the bottom of the app. Running on Windows 10.

  • 12 replies
  • 2 have this problem
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  • Last reply by Matt

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When clicking on links inside of emails, if the link is longer than the display field at the bottom of the Thunderbird app, the link will not work. The indication that it is too long will show ... at the end of the link. I am running on Windows 10 insider preview build 14316. Links will work if they are fully displayed.

When clicking on links inside of emails, if the link is longer than the display field at the bottom of the Thunderbird app, the link will not work. The indication that it is too long will show ... at the end of the link. I am running on Windows 10 insider preview build 14316. Links will work if they are fully displayed.

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re :if the link is longer than the display field at the bottom of the Thunderbird app, the link will not work.

I'm asking you to help debug/rule out any potential causes.

You are claiming that urls that are longer than the status bar display field do not work. But this assumes you do not change the width of the window.

Please run the following test and report on the result. TEST: Find a link that is long enough to just fit completely in the status bar and works. So do not select a really short one. Confirm that link works - it opens in browser.

Then..Change the width of the window so it is a bit smaller, so that the same working link is now not fully displaying in the status bar because it is too long for the space. Click on link to see if it works - opens in a browser.

Report back on results. Did a previously fully visible in status bar working link suddenly stop working because the status bar text area becomes smaller?

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Thunderbird does not access http links, that is handled by the browser of your choice. The indication that it is too long will show ... at the end of the link. Just because part is not displayed does not mean it is too long. If it is too long for the browser you are using then try a different browser, but there are limits. Lengthy links can be created if someone is using a google search result url rather than the actual page.

Have you looked at the source code to see if the full http link info is displayed? Maybe that would give some indication of length. Select email to see in lower Message Pane. click on 'More' and select 'View source' You could copy paste it into something like Word to find out how many characters are used in the link.


Good conversation on the topic at this link:

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I would say this is true except that I am using Firefox version 45.0.2 on Windows 10 as my default browser. If I right click on the link in Thunderbird and then click on the copy link location selection, then paste the link into Firefox the link then works. If I click on links that are completely visible they also work.

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What about if you use edge or chrome as your browser.

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I am encountering the same issue with EDGE. I don't use chrome.

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re :if the link is longer than the display field at the bottom of the Thunderbird app, the link will not work.

Are you saying that if you change the width size of the window to make the Status bar length visibly shorter, then it will not open a link that you could previously open because the area for the link display is smaller ?


RE: Have you looked at the source code to see if the full http link info is displayed?

What was the length of the http link which said it was too long and would not open unless copy pasted into a browser?

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To answer the first question, no I do not do ANYTHING to the link to make it work. The shorter links that do not exceed the visible window work i.e. http://www.w3bsa.org work. The link below from the PC WORLD blog is an example of one that does not work.

Here is a sample link that does not work. http://link.pcworld.com/click/6532560.85464/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5wY3dvcmxkLmNvbS9hcnRpY2xlLzMwNTA0OTUvd2luZG93cy93aW5kb3dzLTEwcy1oaWRkZW4taGFyZC1kcml2ZS1wYXJ0aXRpb25zLWhvdy10by1maW5kLXRoZW0taG93LXRvLXJlbW92ZS10aGVtLmh0bWw_dG9rZW49JTIzdGsuUENXX25sdF9wY3dfdGVjaF9odG1sXzIwMTYtMDQtMTgmaWRnX2VpZD04ZWJhMjYzNzljZGIwOWU2NWNlYjlhYjAyNjk4Zjg5MA/569532ad487ccdca178c0555C07c9b71e

As you notice this happens to come from PC World.

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The issue here is to try and work out where it goes wrong. I notice your original post was from Edge. Have you actually tried another browser other than edge?

That Thunderbird passes the link out correctly with a copy link says Thunderbird is passing the correct thing to the operating system, or anti virus if there is one installed. What happens after that is nothing to do with Thunderbird.

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No my original post was NOT from edge it was from Firefox. I have tried both Firefox and Edge. It does not work with EITHER. As to your second statement that means that it appears that you are two ways to copy the link to the browser. Are you sure that you are not using two different subroutines to do the copy depending how you are copying??

Also, please note that I have spent 40 years in the IT industry so the inane explanations about how to troubleshoot aren't necessary and don't accomplish anything. Please just ask me questions and I will try to answer them.

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When I google this user agent string User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/48.0.2564.82 Safari/537.36 Edge/14.14316

I get told this is Microsoft Edge. See Here If that is wrong I am sorry. But as I don't have 40 years of IT experience so I tend to rely on Google a lot.

So I will keep my inane troubleshooting things to myself.

I suggest you read. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing:Memory_Usage_Problems and https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing:Antivirus_Related_Performance_Issues

You could also search the source here you can satisfy yourself of exactly how the link is handled internally. You could also search reported bugs here I am not aware of any bugs, but there is much I am not aware of.

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Chosen Solution

re :if the link is longer than the display field at the bottom of the Thunderbird app, the link will not work.

I'm asking you to help debug/rule out any potential causes.

You are claiming that urls that are longer than the status bar display field do not work. But this assumes you do not change the width of the window.

Please run the following test and report on the result. TEST: Find a link that is long enough to just fit completely in the status bar and works. So do not select a really short one. Confirm that link works - it opens in browser.

Then..Change the width of the window so it is a bit smaller, so that the same working link is now not fully displaying in the status bar because it is too long for the space. Click on link to see if it works - opens in a browser.

Report back on results. Did a previously fully visible in status bar working link suddenly stop working because the status bar text area becomes smaller?

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I am closing this as not able to be resolved. I had the opportunity to go through the open bugs on Thunderbird that may pertain to my issue and found a large number unresolved. I think that since Thunderbird is so old that more attention may be being paid to Sea Monkey or other email apps. Therefore I will be retiring Thunderbird on my systems In favor of other apps.

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Best of luck with that. You are certainly not the only person using Thunderbird on Windows 10. Most without issues So I think your being a little pessimistic.

Note: Seamonkey is on essentially the same code base as Thunderbird. So is probably about a identical as you can get. Except they have less releases. Did you check out the Seamonkey bugs while in bugzilla? Note that most "Real" thunderbird bugs are duplicated in the Seamokey product.