Mozilla Thunderbird Message Composing Tip

I have been a longtime fan of Mozilla Thunderbird as my primary home desktop email client.

I’ve tried a number of alternative ones but just haven’t been convinced they offer me anything that T-Bird isn’t providing.

One side-enjoyment that I have is collecting fun and fascinating links I think my family members might enjoy based on their interests and hobbies.  My RSS feed list is pretty large and expansive and I usually find material for them without trying.

Once every few weeks I’ll sort the saved bookmarks and categorize them in Firefox, then I will copy the lot in the Bookmark Manager and paste them into a new message composition window in Thunderbird.

That works great but there is a single “space” between each of the links.

I like to split each URL link out on it’s own line and sometimes it’s hard to see just where that space is.

I could (temporarily) ramp up the font size formatting of the message content to make it more visible for the editing work, but that seemed silly. Could I just “zoom” the view up instead?

I looked and looked (and even tried some T-bird Add-ons) but they just didn’t work like I wanted, nor could I find a zoom control.

After just a minute of the Googles I found the solution was coded into T-bird for some time, but accessed via key/mouse hot-key combinations rather than a menu/GUI solution:

New in Thunderbird 10 | How to | Keyboard shortcuts - Thunderbird

Keyboard shortcuts

• The scroll wheel can now be used to zoom and unzoom a message in the message reader and compose window:
  Ctrl + |scroll wheel| Command + Control + |scroll wheel|. In the message reader only, with Ctrl + “0” |Command| + “0”, you can reset the zoom to 100%.

Say what?

Windows users…if you are viewing a message in the reading pane OR composing a message in the new message composition window, press and hold the “CTRL” key while scrolling your mouse wheel up or down, the viewable text size increases or decreases.  This does NOT change the actual font size coding of your message…just how large it is displayed for you you.

To reset the view size back to “100%” normal size -- in the reading pane view only -- press “CTRL” key and “0”.

Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be a reset method in the composition window so you will have to “CTRL” + scroll-wheel it back to what looks like your normal size.

On my system with Thunderbird version 17.0.7, it appears the zoom level you set is persistent. Meaning that if you close the zoomed/shrunk composition window, any new composition windows you open will retain that last zoom setting. YMMV.

Good enough for me!

Cheers!

Claus V.

P.S. -- Yes I hear you giggling at me Alvis with my “old-man” eyes…I’m blaming it on my HD 1920 x 1080 15.6-inch spanking-tastic super-fine laptop display. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

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T-Bird Development Slows…and some options

Just in case you missed it, the Mozilla Thunderbird development team recently announced that they will be scaling back development on new features to this fan-favorite email client and primarily focus on stability and security work.

It some circles it might be called “hitting a plateau.”

• Thunderbird: Stability and Community Innovation - Mitchell's Blog
• Thunderbird to Slow Down Development, Focus on "Security and Stability" Only - Lifehacker
• Thunderbird/Proposal: New Release and Governance Model - MozillaWiki
• Thunderbird Extended Release Support for Your Organization, Business, Enterprise - Overview - Mozilla.org
• Mozilla puts Thunderbird in maintenance mode - Mozilla Links

So what does that mean if you use Thunderbird as your email client?  Well. Probably not very much.

Thunderbird is a very mature email client and already packs almost all the primary features that one could need into it already.  Toss on the Lightning calendaring plugin and you have a full-featured email and activity duo. There are more than many Add-ons for Thunderbird.  Myself--aside from Lightning--I only use the following additional extensions; Color Folders, Attachment Tree, Extra Folder Columns, and AttachmentExtractor. That’s it.

So I don’t really have any concerns or cares at the present moment regarding T-Birds slow-simmering.

However, just in case that ever does become an issue with me--or maybe you are looking for some new email client platform--I did some looking around and found the following free email clients that are in active development and could be considered worthy replacements for Thunderbird. I tossed them all on my Windows 8 system and took them for a whirl. Here’s my alternative preferences.

Windows Live Mail - Microsoft. Who knows what Redmond will call it next year as they kill off the “Windows Live” branding and repackage it as something Win8’ish. Doesn’t matter. This email application is the very first one I recommend to most all family and friends. It has a dead-simple interface. It has decent email message handling security and rules/filter capabilities. And setup of a new email account (or multiple ones) is a breeze.  There isn’t much not to like with this one.

eM Client Email Client - eM Client. I would be lying to say that I had heard of this email client before yesterday’s search. I had not. However the reviews and comment'-feedback were ridiculously good so I had to check it out. I am amazed. A review of the Features left me highly impressed.  It supports both web-based email servers as well as the more traditional email server connections. It contains a full-featured calendar along with event management, task lists, and contacts.  Yes, you can import those items from most all other email clients. They have a free edition (registration required) along with a more featured ($) version. Installation was a breeze and setup was a piece of cake. The interface is really, really well designed and (hard-to-admit) outshines Thunderbird. I had no problems getting it going and feeling instantly at home. If T-Bird ever gets its goose burnt, eM Client will probably be my replacement choice, hands-down. Check it out!

DreamMail Europe Community - This free email client was also very easy to get going and set up. Like eM Client the user GUI is very approachable. All the major features you would want in an email client are present.

Pegasus Mail - David Harris. - This is a free email client that is much more advanced. It doesn’t have the same degree of “wizard support” like Windows Live Mail, eM Client, or DreamMail to get your web-based email accounts going. You will need to know in advance some of the more technical bits of your email system such as the POP3 and STMP server names as well as any special ports and security settings connections to them require. The user interface is more detailed than the previous clients mentioned. All this to day it is a more technically advanced email client than average users would probably want or need. However if you want a lot of control regarding your email client and accounts, and the advanced configurations don’t concern you, it is worth checking out.

Sylpheed - Like Pegasus Mail, this email client requires a bit of detailed work getting things going.  The interface is more simple to navigate than Pegasus, but you will need to feed it some more technical details to get it configured. Once running, it is very direct to use and is something most average users shouldn’t have any issues with.

i.Scribe - Has a very nice and basic interface. Configuration will require the POP3 and STMP sever details of your host. However I did find it very easy to navigate around in and find all the critical things needed to get it up and going.  There are message filters and advanced security setting options. All in all a nice little application.

Microsoft Outlook 2010 - Microsoft - Yeah, I know, it is neither free nor a very “light” email client. That said, if you have it as part of an already installed MS Office suite load, it might be worthwhile to give it another look. I know many folks who are so used to using MS Office at work that they feel right at home running and using it for their personal email client needs at home.

This isn’t a list of the “only” email clients for Windows out there. There are more, many smaller and many “portable”.  However these were the ones I considered myself most likely to use after downloading, configuring to a POP3 “web-mail” account, and running on Windows 8.

Cheers.

Claus V.

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T-Bird Note to Self

Just a note about Mozilla Thunderbird in case I forget.

I use Microsoft Outlook at work as my email client. I have Microsoft Office 2010 at home available to be used as my email client but that seems like overkill for managing my personal email accounts.

For most all my extended family (except Dad who prefers using Outlook both for work and home) I recommend Windows Live Mail 2011 since it has a very clean interface and the Ribbon and tabs and pretty (intuitive) icons seem to make this email-client a breeze for family members to use (and me to guide them through tasks).

All that said I continue to find Mozilla Thunderbird the perfect fit for my personal email needs.

In fact, it works so well, I have only four Add-On items that I run on it now:

Office Black :: Add-ons for Thunderbird - I really have grown to like this theme after having rotated through quite number of great themes over the years. The icons work nicely and are of a pleasant size. And the muted color palate seems relaxing.

Color Folders :: Add-ons for Thunderbird - Unlike the extensive and deep folder structure I have in Outlook at work, my folder structure here at home is much more simple and shallow. That said, I find myself manually moving items out of my Inbox mostly into a few regular folders.  While the text in the Office Black theme and settings isn’t bad, sometimes I have a hard time just dragging/dropping the message into the correct one.  Color Folders allowed me to colorize selected key folders to set them off from the rest.  Now if only Outlook had this ability…

Extra Folder Columns :: Add-ons for Thunderbird - This Add-On allows you to add additional columns to the Folders sidebar for size, unread # items, and total # items.   If you select the unread items column, then it removes the (#) item that Thunderbird puts on the folder name line to avoid redundancy. Suggestions for improvement? I wish that the “size” field displayed would be a little more sophisticated with the count.  Example: you have one main folder with three sub-folders. The columns for counts seem only to apply to the individual folder, meaning that the main-folder # only displays the number of items in the folder itself and doesn’t include sub-folder item counts. Collapse that folder tree and it still shows the number of items in the main folder and doesn’t aggregate the total to reflect all messages in that and the subfolders combined. Another minor quibble; the size-on-disk of each folder displayed uses both MB and KB values. 1MB or more and the size is displayed in MB while < 1MB and you get a KB value. I get the logic but you have to look carefully to understand what it is reporting to you.

Lightning :: Add-ons for Thunderbird - calendaring, scheduling, and to-doing made simple and right. Enough said.

For backing up/migrating my T-bird profile I rely on MozBackup. It’s never failed me. 

As a multi email client backup/restoration tool there is also KLS Mail Backup (free for personal use) which in addition to T-bird can also back up WIndows Mail and Windows Contacts, Windows Live Mail and Contacts, Outlook Express profiles and contacts, IE Favorites, Firefox profiles, Postbox profiles, Opera profiles, The Bat! profiles and IncrediMail profiles.

Moving on…

Claus V.

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T-Bird 3.0 versus Outlook 2010 (beta)

At work, Microsoft Outlook 2003 is the de-facto standard for email management.

At home, I’ve been using Thunderbird for years.

Due to a recent hard-drive (volume) failure at home, on the primary system our “master” email got managed on, I had to rebuild our email stores.

It wasn’t really any problem just took some time to migrate from Thunderbird 2.0 to 3.0.

Then I had to redo some of my email account settings in TBird 3.0 as I wanted to be able to choose which email account I wanted to respond out of, not just the default one.  That took some work with Gmail's documentation and TBird 3.0.

So here is my problem.  I’ve installed and configured Outlook 2010 beta to access my personal web-mail account and really, really like the familiarity and layout in 2010.  Really.  But I also like the dependability and ease of export/import options that Thunderbird offers me.

So now I’m in a real pickle!  Do I commit to one or the other?

Both do an admirable job but there will be consequences for committal.

Links below for my reference (and anyone else stumbling over these)

Outlook 2010 beta reference links.

• Outlook 2010: First Impressions - Matthew McDermott blog.
• Office 2010 Beta First Impressions: Outlook 2010 – Techn’@ weblog.
• Outlook 2010: Gmail IMAP Support – Addictive Tips blog.
• Importing Outlook 2007 PST Files to Thunderbird 2.0 - TheRage3K’s Weblog.
• projects:pst_import [OBM wiki] - “PST Import XPI is a Thunderbird plugin, based on readpst, that allows importing Outlook PST in Thunderbird, and select which email folder to import.”.

Thunderbird 3.0 reference links

• Thunderbird 3 Officially Released with New Features, Improved Look - Lifehacker
• Thunderbird - It’s All Yours – Official Mozilla download site for Thunderbird.
• Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition 3.0 - PortableApps.com. USB Portable version
• MozBackup - Backup tool for Firefox and Thunderbird. – Always works like a charm for me!
• Backup Thunderbird emails & profile (or restore from backup). – freemailtutorials.com – An in-depth guide to manual and automated backups and restorations of Thunderbird profiles. Contains profile path locations for reference.
• Thunderbird 2.0 - Gmail Help. I couldn’t find one for Thunderbird 3.0 and these settings should have worked but didn’t let me send outbound mail from TBird 3.0 through my Gmail account.
• Thunderbird 3 and Gmail • mozillaZine Forums. so then I eventually found the correct settings (or at least ones that worked) in this post from Pigdog89 and so.salty:

server name: smtp.gmail.com
port: 465
username: myname@gmail.com
use secure: No
Connection security: -

Lightning Project (Calendar for Thunderbird)

To help add calendaring functionality to T-Bird, I’ve relied on the Lightning project XPI add-on.  Only it isn’t quite yet ready for TBird 3.0 compatibility.

Here’s how I got Lightning working in Thunderbird 3.0

• Lightning - Project Home – Mozilla’s main page for the Lightning project addon.
• Release Status - Lightning for Thunderbird 3 – Long story short….it’s coming.
• Lightning 1.0beta1 release candidate is available – So to get Lightning going in Thunderbird 3.0 you have to be willing to try/use the RC/beta versions.  So far it’s been nice and stable on my Windows 7 system.

To install these builds in Thunderbird 3, please follow these steps:

1. Download the build for your operating system to a folder on your hard disk
   UPDATE: Please make sure, that you right-click on the links above and choose "Save Link as...". Otherwise Firefox will try to install Lightning and you will get an error message like "Lightning 1.0b1 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox."
2. Open Thunderbird, then open its add-on manager via Tools --> Add-ons (or the corresponding entry in your language)
3. Click on the "Install..." button on the lower left and navigate for the lightning.xpi file that you just downloaded.
4. Restart Thunderbird after the add-on installation has been performed. Voila!

Note: You will see there are two XPI files in the download.  Get them both; lightning-all.xpi is the main file while gdata-provider.xpi ties Lightning into your Google gCalendar.

• Calendar Weblog – ongoing information and news about the Lightning project (blog style).
• Index of /pub/mozilla.org/calendar/lightning/nightly/latest-comm-1.9.1/win32-xpi. – Nightly Lightning release source link.

IMAP vs POP

As best I can tell, I’m using POP settings/access for Thunderbird for my mail clients including Gmail.  However Outlook 2010 may be actually using IAMP settings for Gmail connectivity.  I’ve not had the time to dive into the settings to verify.  The Outlook 2010 setup wizard took what I fed it regarding my Gmail account and seemed very pleased.  Not 100% sure what it did just yet.

I’m not sold yet if I want to convert my Thunderbird settings to use IMAP as well or not.  I think so.

I think there is some benefit but my brain is tired from all the holiday food and distractions and I’m having trouble focusing.

• Use Gmail IMAP in Microsoft Outlook 2007 :: the How-To Geek.
• Getting started with IMAP for Gmail - Gmail Help.
• Enable IMAP in Gmail - Gmail Help.

For reference….

Claus V.

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Browser Linkfest Blowout

Like there hasn’t been enough web-browser news lately….

• Google Chrome Blog: A New Beta: Why slow down when you can speed up? – Google Chrome Blog – Nice roundup with lots-o-pics of all the newest features to be found in Google Chrome.
• Google Chrome Themes Gallery – I’m liking the “Earthy” theme myself.  How do you install them? It’s a bit confusing (and not clearly documented) but you click the “Apply Theme” button for the one you want and let the “csx” file download to your system.  Then Chrome will find and apply the theme and delete the file.  Worked OK on XP/Vista, though it took just a bit longer to “automagically” apply on the Win7 systems. 
• Google Chrome 3 continues to accelerate even as it adopts themes - Betanews. Accelerate as in rendering speed.
• Rethinking Chrome – TechBlog – Dwight likes it! He really, really likes it!
• Chromium Memory Usage – Chromium Blog – Some technical-level details on how memory is being used and how to better monitor it.

Claus’s thoughts on Chrome/Chromium.  I’ve got Chromium loaded on all my systems and use Dirhael’s (portable) Chromium Nightly Updater to keep my builds of Carsten Knobloch’s portable Chrome packages updated.

I really do like Chrome/Chromium.  It is fast, clean and each tab runs in its own process.  However it doesn’t have the extensibility/Add-ons that I just demand and rely upon daily at work and home with Firefox.  So it continues to be my go-to browser when doing presentations or viewing most on-line media for relaxation due to the simple (non-distracting) interface.  For production work, Firefox still wins hands-down; speed or no-speed.

• Newsfox the Firefox RSS reader I use has received a minor version update to V1.0.5.2.  mozdev.org - newsfox: installation
• Firefox 3.6a1 Released - The Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog – I’ve not yet had time to build a “portable/standalone” package of this alpha build.  Maybe I’ll have the chance soon.  The only issues I generally find are breaking of my fav add-ons.  Speed and responsiveness,including startup seem to be the primary focus of this build.
• Sure it’s Fast, But How Does it Handle? – Alex Faaborg’s blog.  Is speed everything in a browser..maybe but possibly not much longer. See also his What’s Next for the Perception of Performance? post.
• Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition 3 Beta 3 Released - PortableApps.com.  Lavie and I are still using the public version of Thunderbird 2.x to manage our home/Gmail accounts. 

I’ve not yet bitten the bullet but will likely be migrating our primary email store from the desktop system to my laptop as I rarely go in there to turn it on and pull down all the email locally. (The Valca girls have taken over the study where it is installed and it is becoming the laundry/storage room now…anyway they like my company in the family-room space when I am typing away at the blog.)  I’m considering bumping over to the version 3 build for kicks and grins.  Any GSD readers using it and have any insights or gotcha’s I should consider?

• Opera Desktop Team - Time to try Unite again! – Opera Desktop Team – Tweaks announced to Opera’s Unite product.  I’m still not sure how convinced I am on this “feature” that turns a computer running Opera into both a client and a server to provide content to other systems across the web.  Seems handy for some but a security administration challenge for system admins….  The Valca jury-foreman will be out in deliberations on this one for a while.
• Unite - Opera Unite – The Opera Unite team blog.
• Another day, another snapshot  – Opera Desktop Team – Another Opera 10 beta snapshot. Now adds stability to Unite as well as a Unite-based service called, wait-for-it, “Messenger” so you can chat on Opera with your pals. Other visual features also getting adjusted.

Now I’m not attacking Opera here.  It is a very nice alternative web-browser, behind Firefox, Chrome, IE, and Safari for Windows.  Really.  Very polished and fast in performance.  It’s got it’s own unique interface and lots of positives.  I do install it on most of my systems at home.  That said, I just see it continuing the “more-is-more” value march rather than going back to simplicity.  I wish “Unite” could be unbundled from the main Opera browser (can it?) for those of us who don’t want it. And I wish add-ons were truly integrated like Firefox extensions rather than this “widget” framework that is used.  I' guess I just don’t fully “get” Opera and the browsing experience they are designing for.  Once past those personal feelings, the interface and speed are very, very nice.

Cheers!

--Claus V.

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