Thunderbird · Grey Nicholson

How To Make Thunderbird Well Sexy

2007-08-03T07:12:00+00:00

For Thunderbird to properly succeed in providing real choice and freedom, it needs to become the successor to Firefox, in the way that Flock is currently trying to be. (You can think of Firefox as “The Internet 1.0”; Flock as “The Internet 1.1” and Thunderbird as “The Internet 2.0” if you like.)

There are lots of people who use Firefox for day-to-day web browsing—great for HTML, CSS and JavaScript interoperability and ostensibly a win. But a large portion of that browsing consists of using “social networking websites” such as Myspace, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, even Blogger; or “instant messaging services” such as MSN, Yahoo! and AOL's instant messengers.

Each of these is closed and isolated from each other, particularly its direct competitors. Any interconnection is done at the whim of one of these companies, one service provider at a time. I can phone a BT line in Glasgow from a Virgin Media line in York; I can send an email from RandomMail to Mom's Friendly Email Service, even if neither has heard of the other. But if I write a blog post at Acmeblog, my friends using Myface won't see it.

For there to be true freedom, there needs to be an open, standards-based, social network through which people can freely conduct communication. (This is what the Internet is supposed to be in the first place.) And I don't mean “social network” in the limited sense of “a website where you log in and can talk to your friends lol”.

I mean a set of standard protocols by which anyone can communicate with anyone in any conceivable way. I'm thinking of open, federated standards such as email, Atom (including the publishing bit), Jabber, OpenID and OpenSearch (and avoiding saying “semantic web” even though that's pretty close to what I'm on about).

Flock takes a standard web browser and surrounds that with structured social network stuff. Thunderbird should invert that. It should start from a set of high-level concepts such as contacts, presence, subscriptions and messages. Then it should bring in bits of web browseriness as appropriate to display the content.

(By the way, I shouldn't have written this on Asa's website; I should have written it in Thunderbird, to: the web; cc: Asa.)

Imagine Thunderbird and Lightning, Pidgin, Skype (but Free), Miro, AllPeers and the Chandler project, all combined into the only communication program you'll ever need. Thunderbird should be that.

Tabbed Thunderbird

2005-04-03T01:53:00+00:00

I've been thinking (albeit briefly) about a tabbed interface for Thunderbird, or rather a one-pane interface. It looks pretty simple.

(Disclaimer: it's 02:17 BST so thoughts may appear partially-formed, deformed, misinformed and/or Nazi-uniformed; I'll proof-read this at an undetermined future time.)

+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| @ Mooquackwooftweetmeow Thunderbird                                                         - + X |
| File  Edit  View  Go  Message  Tools  Help                                                        |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|   @@@     @@@  |   @@@    @@@                                                                     |
|   @@@     @@@  |   @@@    @@@                                                                     |
| Get Mail  Stop | Compose  Etc.                                                                    |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  _______   _______   ___________   _______________________                                        |
|_|*Gmail*|_|Airmail|_|aRSSe Feeds|_|Newsgroups of the World|_______________________________________|
|  ____   _____   ______   ____   _____   _____________________   ________________________________  |
|_|Home|_|Inbox|_|Drafts|_|Sent|_|Trash|_|Re: Taking over world|_|*Compose: Re: Taking over world*|_|
|                                                                                                   |
| Subject: Re: Taking over world                                                                    |
| From: rb@virgin.co.uk                                                                             |
| Date: 2005-04-01 08:32                                                                            |
| To: billyg@mozilla.org                                                                            |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Friday sounds good                                                                                |
| --                                                                                                |
| Richard                                                                                           |
|                                                                                                   |
|                                                                                                   |
|                                                                                                   |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| ~ |                                                                     | Unread: 0 | Total: 4781 |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

The basic idea is that the current 3-pane system is condensed into a set of nested tabs. Each account's Home tab shows pretty options like Thunderbird's current server pages. Inbox, Sent and friends look much like the current messages pane. Messages' previews would appear beneath the messages' list item, in the style of webpage-bound, JavaScript-driven expandable FAQ lists. All of these tabs would be immutable.

When a message is double-clicked (or middle-clicked) or a Compose-like action is chosen, a new tab would be opened under the appropriate account. These tabs can be closed and perhaps rearranged, imitating Firefox's tabs. When sending a message, progress would be indicated in the status bar, not in a pop-up dialogue.

The Gmail Web Interface and How To Avoid It

2004-06-19T20:21:00+00:00

I have one fairly major complaint about Gmail's web interface - you can't open multiple emails in tabs by middle-clicking. (Pot+kettle sidenote: one can't middle-click links in this weblog either, but that's an XSLT fault in Gecko.) In fact, it seems the “links” one clicks to open emails aren't really links at all (right-clicking offers no “Open Link in New Tab/Window” options). This would put me right off using Gmail permanently.

Other, minor complaints are: the clock is in 12-hour format; I prefer 24-hour format. Also, the ad-frame isn't Adblockable (but I don't expect Google to want to fix that :) ). The clock problem could be fixed easily, and neither of these are at all important (just nits).

But I no longer have to use the web interface. Although it is much, much, much, much, much quicker, easier and better than Hotmail's, Yahoo's and mail.com's put together, I just don't like web interfaces. Not when I've got an excellent email client.

For Hotmail I've been using MrPostman as a web-interface-to-POP3 proxy. For the most part, it works well, although not flawlessly - if and when your account gets clogged up with emails, MrPostman is seemingly incapable of ignoring the “Buy More Space!” adverts added to the page, insists you have no new mail, and refuses to fetch the non-existant mail. But it's workable.

MrPostman is aimed at Hotmail, Yahoo.com (not .co.uk) and mail.com - not Gmail. Bobbins.

However, it's a good thing that I read an inordinate amount of Mozilla-related weblogs, and have the middle-click-every-link-in-the-text affliction (“tabbed-browsing syndrome”). For cheeaun led me to djst, whose comments led to PGtGM - a web-to-POP3 proxy for Gmail! Incidentally, the blurb mentions Thunderbird by name - extra marks. (It should also be mentioned that PGtGM is only for Windows.)

How to set up Thunderbird (or even Lookout Express) to use PGtGM isn't made obvious, but it's there - in the PGtGM interface, click Help/About PGtGM, then click the E-mail Client Setup tab to the left of the dialogue. If you're using MrPostman alongside (as I am), you may have to change the POP3 port setting in both PGtGM and Tb's Account Settings for the appropriate account, to something other than MrPostman's. Et voila - Gmail via Thunderbird!

How to remove the borders from Firefox and Thunderbird's toolbars

2004-06-17T23:25:00+00:00

Qute, Firefox's old default theme (and Thunderbird's soon-to-be-retired default theme) doesn't have borders on its toolbars (at least in the latest Firefox version; see also the Qute FAQ). Winstripe, the new default theme, does. Personally, I prefer no-borders - it looks cleaner.

The Qute FAQ provides some CSS that can be added to your userChrome.css file to reinstate the borders. Based on this then, to remove Firefox and Thunderbird's toolbars' borders, add this to your userChrome.css file:

/* Remove toolbar borders */ toolbar {border-top: none !important; border-bottom: none !important}