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 extension

[UnixSphere]

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

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.

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 [cweiske.de]

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

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

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"

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.

Virtual Identity

[ccarr.com]

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

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.

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).

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 [citadel.org] does the job quite nicely. Mail, calendar, contacts, all server-side and end-to-end, 100 percent open source.

Thanks for asking. :)

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.

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. :-)

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: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: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 [mozilla.org] or Sunbird nightlies [mozilla.org].

External Editor

[crabbz]

No one mentioned the External Editor [globs.org] 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.

Re:inefficiency of splitting mozilla

[Dog-Cow]

I know that you had to bash Windows because you're a typical /-hole poster, but the fact that Windows won't reuse the libraries in this instance is a feature, not a bug. I believe the change occured with Windows 2000, but Windows *used* to check loaded modules, ignoring the path to the module, before loading another copy. This caused one half of the problem known as DLL-Hell. Now, Windows will only reuse a loaded module if the path to the newly requested module is the same. This allows for applications to ship their own versions, which may be incompatible, and have both applications loadable at the same time.

So, in other words, it's you that is not smart.

Other good extensions

[Buckaduck]

AutoCorrect [extensionsmirror.nl] 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 [mozilla.org] 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 [jasnapaka.com] 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!