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."

Comments

enigmail extension

[UnixSphere]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon /71

Enigmail adds OpenPGP message encryption and authentication to your email client. It features automatic encryption, decryption and integrated key management functionality. Enigmail requires GnuPG (www.gnupg.org) for the cryptographic functions. Note: GnuPG is not part of the installation.

Lightning

[Nedmud]

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.

Re:Lightning

[ppz003]

> It's not complete yet, but it's already worth using it

It is better than nothing, but it is not a proper calendar either. BTW, is there any way to get rid of it temporarily if I don't want to use it? It takes up so much space that could have better use sometimes.

Anyway, if you need a real calendar, you have to go for a more powerful solution, such as Gmail, KMail, Evolution or Outlook. Note that the later two programs suck quite a lot. From an article not too long ago, you can use Google Calendar in Lightning or Sunbird nightlies.

dispMUA - Display Mail User Agent

[xTK-421x]

I find this extension to be helpful when dealing with certain email issues. It displays an icon representing the user's email software if it's in the known list of mail agents.

Home Page: http://cweiske.de/misc_extensions.htm

Extension Link: http://www.cweiske.de/files/download/misc/dispmua- 1.3.2.xpi

List of Supported Agents: http://cweiske.de/misc_extensions_dispmuas.htm

The list

[hywel_ap_ieuan]

The extensions in TFA, which is a one-pager: Minimize to Tray, Quicktext, Quote Collapse, Nostalgy.

Runners-up: Dictionary Switcher, View Headers Toggle Button, Contacts Sidebar.

It also mentions "Mozilla has three recommended extensions, Foxytunes, Enigmail, and an adblocker"

Wait for Penelope !

[Rastignac]

Now that the great Eudora is dead (no more updated), the Penelope project will bring Eudora's goodies to Thunderbird.
Just wait for Penelope, a better Thunderbird than Thunderbird !

Re:Wait for Penelope !

[Overzeetop]

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.

Re:Wait for Penelope !

[Wite_Noiz]

there is so much more features in Outlook Unless I'm mistaken, Thunderbird replaces Outlook Express, not Outlook.
There are huge differences between those two.

I agree that I'd like Thunderbird to handle more of Outlook's work, but there are extensions (like Lightening) that are slowly doing that.

the answer was at the bottom At least put some effort in!
Account Settings > [account] > Composition & Addressing > Select: start my reply above the quote

Personally, I use Thunderbird because I find it very quick and easy to use.
I do get the occasional inbox/email corruption, but that's why I keep my profile folder regularly backed up (something that's hard to do with Outlook Express).

Re:Wait for Penelope !

[Miseph]

Yes! Top quoters are simply infuriating!

Oh, and even if you aren't actually replying to a quote (because, for example, you use GMail and it already reads like a book), please for the love of God strip out all the cruft like signatures ads (I'm in a lot of Yahoo! Groups, which tack ads onto everything... come to think of it, so does plain old Yahoo! Mail), because the rest of us probably didn't want to read it the first time, let alone have it waste our visual real estate when we're trying to read a completely different email.

Re:Wait for Penelope !

[Tack]

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.

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.

Re:Wait for Penelope !

[Anonymous Coward]

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). The GP wasn't talking about full bottom posting. He was referring to what I call "contextual inline quoting", which is the practice of deleting all of the quoted text, except for enough to give contextual reference, and then quoting inline.

I have no big beef with either top or bottom posting, provided that the author can be bothered to trim his fucking quotes. Since we live in a world where the vast majority of people can't be bothered to actually do so, the practice of fully-quoted top posting has become the norm. It doesn't help that practically every modern mail client encourages the practice. I will agree that fully-quoted bottom posting is an absolute abomination.

Provided that the author trims his quotes to a minimum, neither is all that annoying.

Quote collapse

[Dachannien]

Alternatively, you can use my preferred method for eliminating the giant 200-line quoted message bombs that appear below a two-word response. Just bitch at the person repeatedly until they either start deleting the old e-mail quotes themselves or they just stop e-mailing you. Either way, problem solved.

Re:inefficiency of splitting mozilla

[dkf]

I still don't understand why I need to have multiple copies of gecko shared libraries / dlls in memory since the split-up of mozilla into firefox, thunderbird, and sunbird. How is this waste of space supposed to be more efficient?

It's because it makes distribution much simpler. If this bothers you (though why it should when even entry-level machines have vast amounts of memory available even after loading the OS) get Seamonkey instead and stop griping here.

wake up editors.

[Anonymous Coward]

how on earth did this dire article make it through the editors process?
Its of abysmal quality and precious little substance.

2 in a row?

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Taco are you trying to feed the trolls?

Slashdot : news for nerds, payed fpr by Mozilla and Google.

Because it sucks?

[thsths]

Sorry to be so blunt, I'll try to explain what I mean. Whichever way you look at it, Firefox is the gold standard of browsers. It is more standard compliant and easier to use than IE, more compatibly than Konqueror, and much more extensible and better looking than Opera. While you can find better browsers for niche applications (lynx on telnet), there is no general purpose browser that comes even close to Firefox.

Thunderbird on the other hand is just a lot of promises. It still uses folders, while labels are obviously the way to go. Threading is poor. Integration between different message sources is basically non-existent. The search function sucks really badly. There is no integration with any reasonable calender (and don't call sunbird reasonable). And it is actually difficult to use, certainly compared to the competition (Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, Opera, KMail...).

I mean seriously: can Thunderbird even sort threads on the date of the most recent message in a thread? Last time I tried it could not. GMail does that by default, and it is by far the most sensible way to order messages. Make Thunderbird not suck, and I will give it another try.

Re:Because it sucks?

[pebs]

Thunderbird on the other hand is just a lot of promises. It still uses folders, while labels are obviously the way to go.

Thunderbird 2.0 has tags, which if I understand correctly is the same as labels, except you get to (or "have to") use folders in addition to tags. It doesn't appear to store the tags on the IMAP server, though, which is bummer and makes it useless for me (haven't tried it myself, but read some forum posting that said it didn't). IMAP is of course still folder based, so eliminating folders altogether is not possible.

The reason I mention IMAP is because I couldn't imagine someone would use POP3 instead of IMAP (unless you're one of those fools who use a webmail provider that doesn't support IMAP *cough*Gmail*cough*)

There is no integration with any reasonable calender (and don't call sunbird reasonable)

I think you mean "Lightning". Lightning isn't that great, but at least I can understand those damn Exchange invites I get from time to time.

Re:Because it sucks?

[LWATCDR]

Tunderbird V2 adds tags but frankly I like folders. I do not see how tags are obviously the way to go. In fact that is the one thing I don't like about Gmail.
Yes you can sort however you like. It really isn't a problem.
And so far the search works well for me.
Kmail and Evolution only run on Linux and I have to use Windows.
Outlook has caused me more grief with blown PSTs and other issues than I can shake a stick at and it only runs on Windows and I have to use Linux.
Gmail and Yahoo mail? They are not bad but I need to access my office email server.
Thunderbird while not perfect.. Get a good calander interface going guys. Is a good email client. It just isn't a good calender client.

I have yet to see as complete of a solution as Outlook+Exchange yet. I am just not willing to pay the price to use Exchange.

A ways to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that Thunderbird has a ways to go when the #1 extension is minimize to tray??

Anyone know of an extension

[Rogerborg]

That allows message filters to run on the body of IMAP messages? That's pretty basic functionality for Thunderbird to still be missing, given how long it's been a known issue. And yes, I've tried the "might work-arounds", and they don't.

A True Must Have

[fishdan]

I agree, and in fact for me the article lost credibility for recommending against Enigmail -- Enigmail is a must have. If we're ever going to have digital signatures become the norm (something I'd like to see) then the advanced users are going to have to model it for the neophytes. Digitally sign every email you send, and when people ask why you do it, spoof an "I'm joining a cult" email from them to their friends. I'm pretty confident that eventually only signed emails will be delivered -- be ahead of the curve!

Re:A True Must Have

[Threni]

> If we're ever going to have digital signatures become the norm (something I'd like to see)

Most email users have never had anyone try and fake messages from them to other people. I can see the advantages, but non-nerds aren't going to jump through hoops to add the required encryption subsystem to their email systems when it offers no advantage. I can see encryption itself being marginally more popular, but not much so.

Re:A True Must Have

[keithius]

Most email users have never had anyone try and fake messages from them to other people. Errr... what? People get spam emails all the time with the "From" address faked - often from people they know, and sometimes even from themselves! (There's a strange feeling when you get an obviously junk/spam email and it claims to have been sent by... you!)

Re:A True Must Have

[CheShACat]

"Most email users have never had anyone try and fake messages from them to other people" Having spent some time working at an ISP and ICANN domain registrar, I know that pretty much anyone with a domain name has had their email spoofed at one time or another, if not all day every day. While this might not actually cover "most email users", the rest run the risk of their email domain (e.g. hotmail.com) being spoofed by spammers. In the case of spoofed emails, it's often the recipient that is at most risk, digital signatures that allow a recipient to verify that a mail's source was actually the domain it claims to be from are a great help in combatting spam.

Re:A True Must Have

[gad_zuki!]

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.

Re:A True Must Have

[digitalchinky]

Then why not use IMAP instead? It's frustratingly slow at times, just like web mail, with the added convenience that your messages are stored safely on a server somewhere out in the world.

Virtual Identity

[ccarr.com]

Virtual Identity is essential if you, like many of us, maintain more addresses per inbox than can be conveniently managed via Thunderbirds's stock identity manager.

Re:KMail

[MobyDisk]

I've used Thunderbird for years... and it quite regularly corrupts my local mail store. I have a bag of tricks for dealing with it. It is always in very minor ways though: Can't delete attachments, can't find an email via search even though it is there. A few messages that sort wrong, etc. The problem with most of these is they are intermittent so I can't reproduce them reliably any more.

Re:top posting

[gEvil (beta)]

I fully concur. I can't stand top-posting, but I have to deal with it (and do it myself), otherwise everyone at work bitches about how I'm "intentionally being difficult"...

I agree... unfortunately, everyone at work does it. So if I start at the bottom, and the email goes back and forth several times, you simply can't follow it anymore. It must have been outlook that started that nonsense.

Order by is configurable

[sidney]

You can order by receive date. Click on the icon on the right side of the column header of the preview pane to see all the column headings that are available, and select "Order Received". That adds a column to the display which is a message number that is incremented as each message is received.

You can sort messages by the contents of any column by clicking on the column header. Click again to sort in the opposite order. So once you have an Order Received column, click on its heading to have messages sorted by the received date instead of the Send Date. The sort order you select is remembered when you exit and restart Thunderbird.

Obligatory end-to-end commentary

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Before some random dork starts spouting about how Thunderbird sux0rs because open source doesn't have an end-to-end Outlook/Exchange replacement...

Thunderbird+Lightning connected to a Citadel server does the job quite nicely. Mail, calendar, contacts, all server-side and end-to-end, 100 percent open source.

Thanks for asking. :)

Re:top posting

[sarathmenon]

I fully concur. I can't stand top-posting, but I have to deal with it (and do it myself), otherwise everyone at work bitches about how I'm "intentionally being difficult"...

I agree... unfortunately, everyone at work does it. So if I start at the bottom, and the email goes back and forth several times, you simply can't follow it anymore. It must have been outlook that started that nonsense.

Yup, you definitely hate top posting.

Re:top posting

[mgblst]

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.

Re:top posting

[Stavr0]

Because it's difficult to read.

On 2007.04.25 9:35 Stavr0 wrote:
> Why is top posting bad?
>
> On 2007.04.25 8:40, KV9 wrote:
> > top posting is bad mkay?
>

TB thread sorting (was Re:Because it sucks?)

[cspruck]

can Thunderbird even sort threads on the date of the most recent message in a thread? If I understand the above: View > Sort By > choose Date, Descending (or Ascending if you want), and Threaded

Options usually work if you just try them. :-)

TagZilla

[T.E.D.]

The only add-on I use is TagZilla, which adds a randomly selected tagline from a file to every email. I'm so attached to this that I won't upgrade to newer versions of Thunderbird until TagZilla supports them.

I have people ask me all the time how I get those randomly selected tags on my emails. Of course the answer starts with "First off, you have to be using Thunderbird..." :-)

Re:inefficiency of splitting mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

Most computers have more memory availible now doesn't make loading who whole rendering engine and whatnot into memory multiple times. Its inefficient, and quite frankly silly.

Why not have each application plug into a single, standalone installation of XULRunner, or some such? Redundant libraries only get loaded once that way. It saves resources and boosts performance.

Firefox on its own already uses entirely too much memory. Throw in T-Bird, make it load much of the same libraries attributing to Firefox already eating up ridiculous amounts of memory, its absurd. It makes allot more sense to just share and load the same libs. Imagine if every other project did this, and you'd have eleventy billion copies of libc not only installed on your system, but loaded into memory, or if each KDE app installed and loaded an individual copy KDElibs into memory for each application, or if each GTK app installed and loaded its own GTK libs into memory?

It's inefficient, its a waste of resources, and that doesn't change just because its Mozilla doing it.

Re:top posting

[pwrtool 45]

Gah. This sounds like countless conversations that have long been done to death on Usenet all over again.

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?

Re:inefficiency of splitting mozilla

[Asztal_]

Since Firefox 3 and SeaMonkey 1.5 (and probably Thunderbird, too) will be based on XULRunner, this problem should be solved by then.

External Editor

[crabbz]

No one mentioned the External Editor extension yet? Nice to be able to kick off your favorite editor without cut-n-pasting. Something every mail client should have, but maybe I'm just old fashioned.

Forget the extensions, improve the app!

[MidnightBrewer]

I recently downloaded Thunderbird 2.0 and was surprised to see that it was basically the same application as before, except that the icons were slightly prettier and I could no longer find the junk mail controls. Address book handling is still obsolete, as well as editing entries (editing a person's name is awkward, as typing a first and last name may actually require you to edit *three* fields - go figure.) One particular annoyance is that you can only store two emails for each contact. Many of my close friends have work, home, and cell phone, so this is a bit of an annoyance for me. Rule editing is also crufty; you cannot move rules across mail accounts, and there is no way to base a new rule off of an old one - also, basing a rule off of a message is only useful if it is set to filter based on that particular sender's address. Threading is over-complicated, split across two sub-menus, and rife with unnecessary options that usually end up with new users unintentionally hiding their emails.

I have always had a soft spot for the children of Netscape, but Thunderbird hasn't seen a serious reworking since it was split off from the original program. Let me know when the developers release a serious update, and I'll take another look. Until then, I will continue to use the PortableApp version of Thunderbird to check my email at work; it's not that it doesn't work, it's just that it lacks elegance.

Re:inefficiency of splitting mozilla

[dkf]

It makes allot more sense to just share and load the same libs.

Nice dream. Doesn't work too well unfortunately except in highly centralized distribution schemes like those used by Linux distributions. Since the primary distribution mode of FF/TB is by direct user download, it is better for those programs to go out with the libraries that they need so that they work for people. The alternative, pitching ordinary users into library versioning hell, is far worse.

In other words: Theory? Meet Real World Practice. Practice? Say Hi to Ivory-Tower Theory.

Re:top posting

[Sax Maniac]

than top-post.
It's better to remove all quotes
which is a freaking pain in the ass.
message backwards
then I have read your
If you top-post,
we read top to bottom.
Because in English

gmail signing and encryption

[arabagast]

http://freenigma.com/ - the freenigma plugin for firefox offers encryption and signing of mail with gmail, I think they are planning support for yahoo mail also.

Other good extensions

[Buckaduck]

AutoCorrect not only allows you to fix common spelling errors automatically (using an autocorrect list that works similar to MS Office). You can also use it to define "abbreviations" for long bits of text you don't want to type repeatedly: addresses, instructions, HTML formatting characters, etc.

Slideshow is extremely useful for people who get a lot of pictures via email, and just want to look at them quickly.

Re:KMail

[Max von H.]

Just use MozBackup to backup and restore. Works with Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite and Netscape.

It allows you to backup and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache etc.

Been using it for ages, it's one of the handiest tools I've got.

Cheers!

Re:top posting

[ChrTssu]

In my experience, I only need the gist of the preceding email to know what the responder is talking about. What I really need to know is what the responder is saying *right now.* Also, I don't know how many times a part of a message has been ignored or misread, leading to all kinds of confusion. It's easier if past messages are not truncated, so a clarifying (or simply repetitive) reply can be quickly and easily made just by selecting "Reply," rather than going through old correspondence looking for the error. So, ease of reading, and more information right at hand are why I choose to ignore others' netiquette.

Re:Purge Button

[cecil_turtle]

Are you serious? Thunderbird has better IMAP support than any other client I've used (Outlook / Outlook Express / Evolution / Opera / Sylpheed / Windows Mail / etc.). Set it up to move deleted items to your trash IMAP folder and have it clear the trash folder on exit. Deleted messages get out of your way and there's no extra step.

I don't understand why every other IMAP client just strikes out "deleted" messages - why would you want messages you DELETED to hang around in your way until you "purge" or "expunge" it?