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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."
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.
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.
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.
- 1.3.2.xpi
Home Page: http://cweiske.de/misc_extensions.htm
Extension Link: http://www.cweiske.de/files/download/misc/dispmua
List of Supported Agents: http://cweiske.de/misc_extensions_dispmuas.htm
"TK-421, why aren't you at your post?"
Runners-up: Dictionary Switcher, View Headers Toggle Button, Contacts Sidebar.
It also mentions "Mozilla has three recommended extensions, Foxytunes, Enigmail, and an adblocker"
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 !
-- Rastignac was here.
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.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
how on earth did this dire article make it through the editors process?
Its of abysmal quality and precious little substance.
Taco are you trying to feed the trolls?
Slashdot : news for nerds, payed fpr by Mozilla and Google.
I like muppets.
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.
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.
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. BB
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.
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.
This guy's the limit!
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.
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.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Yup, you definitely hate top posting.
Microsoft: "You've got questions. We've got dancing paperclips."
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.
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?
>
Options usually work if you just try them.
"Programming is the fine art of making a machine that has absolutely no intelligence act as though it does."
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..."
"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.
CheShA: Manchester Breakcore / Drill and Bass Yes I'm a s
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.
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.
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.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
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'!"
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!
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.