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Must-Have Extensions for Thunderbird 2.0
Operator writes "While Firefox has been in the spotlight for some time now, Thunderbird has yet to enjoy the same wide adoption or glowing praise despite being an excellent email client. It's no surprise that a popular topic has been Firefox's best (and worst) extensions while Thunderbird add-ons have gone largely unnoticed. In celebration of the recent release of Thunderbird 2.0 here are the best extensions for the program along with some honorable mentions."
It's not complete yet, but it's already worth using it, IMO. Having a calendar integrated with my mail helps me to check my schedule as regularly as I check my mail.
how on earth did this dire article make it through the editors process?
Its of abysmal quality and precious little substance.
Ahhh, you young kids are so amusing. The "correct" way to quote is to add your discussion after the text you're quoting. You should also snip out the parts of the email which you are not replying to. You see, that way you can actually read the discussion from top to bottom, just like a book, and have all the relavent information in proper order. Proper netiquette which, apparently, nobody remembers or follows.
Now get off my lawn.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Why is top posting bad? If it is a conversation you are all involved in, then you shouldn't even need to scroll down. I came from a camp of bottom posters, but now I just want the email relating to me at the top. I don't see a problem anymore, and I am quite happy to ignore the previously sent emails, so they should be at the bottom.
I used to feel this way too, being one of the more pedantic, elitist, hardcore, old school netiquette snobs around. However after having lived in the real world for a while, I find the practice of full bottom posting to be far more annoying than full top posting (where "full" means the entire quoted text is preserved).
On a mailing list or active thread among many people, it quickly becomes tiresome to constantly scroll down to the start of the reply for every new email that comes in. My old school snobbery still insists that the proper method is to prune your quoted reply text to the relevant context and reply inline. But for those who are too lazy to do this (nearly everyone except us throwbacks) and as a result end up quoting the entire email, I find in this case top posting to be far more practical and sensible than bottom posting.
Some of us don't want to have to reread or needlessly scroll through the entirety of multiple emails to get to the most recent response(s). Especially in longer conversations involving several people. If you've forgotten what the email was about, then you can do your scrolling. Otherwise, the part you need (the most recent bit) is right there in front of you. Efficiency!
But I guess that depends on if you're just a reader or if you're also a responder. People sending me email tend to want a response, so I prefer top-posting. YMMV. top posting is bad mkay?
Your friends probably dont need military grade public key cryptography along with a confusing install. Enigmail is pretty much the GUI for gpgp for thunderbird. Most users wont get past the point of "where do I click to make this email magically unreadedable to George bush!?!?" Its probably a lot easier to use the buit-in s/mime support in thunderbird than to add more confusing crypto products.
Oh course, considering the number of people who have shifted to webmail, its going to be interesting to see if any of these big webmail providers begin to support crytopgrahy. Are people going to trust google, yahoo, or hotmail with their private key? Do they even know what this means?
Sadly, the encrypt email revolution never happened (poor phil zimmerman) and thanks to webmail and an apathetic public it probably never will.
In other words: Theory? Meet Real World Practice. Practice? Say Hi to Ivory-Tower Theory.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"