In this version, Mozilla brings plenty of changes, both visible and under the hood. Please remember that you can install Thunderbird via the usual software sources for any operating system. Linux users may need to find a different repository or just use the package from Mozilla’s website directly as plenty of distributions are possibly keeping Thunderbird 5 hidden away until the next distribution release and keeping you on the 3.1.x track for the time being.

New Changes

There are plenty of changes sprinkled here and there, but we’ll cover the larger and more noticeable ones.

New Account Creation

As is always the case, the first thing that will greet you when you open Thunderbird is the Mail Account Setup window. In this release, the window has got a slight makeover to make it easier to set up a new email account. Although it looks similar, items on the window are visually simpler, including simple changes such as emphasizing the “Create Account” button by making the other buttons smaller.

User Interface and Tabs

Once you get to the main interface, you’ll notice that there is a more transparent UI if you’re using Windows. As far as I know Mac and Linux users should see little changes with the look of the interface itself. However, all platforms will notice that the tabs look slightly different. Not only have the tabs have a new style, but are more functional as well. Previous versions of Thunderbird did not let you move around tabs, but Thunderbird 5 finally adds this capability.

Add-ons Manager

Probably one of the more major changes to Thunderbird 5 is the completely revamped Add-ons Manager. You can access it under Tools – Add-ons. Once inside, you’ll find many different categories, including a “Thunderbird Collection” of the most commonly used add-ons, other featured add-ons, and upcoming add-ons, and also a link to see themes and Personas. Use it to browse around and find some useful extra functionality that isn’t built into Thunderbird.

Troubleshooting Information

Yet another new feature is the “Troubleshooting Information” page. You can access it under Help – Troubleshooting Information. On this page you’ll find loads of more geeky information, including basic information about the version of Thunderbird you are running, email accounts that are set up, extensions (add-ons) that are installed, and any modified advance preferences. This information is very helpful for developers and user support to help resolve an issue that you may be having if you report it on Mozilla’s sites.

Other Minor Changes

Any other changes that I haven’t covered are very, very small. For example, when you receive an email with an attachment, a bar will appear at the bottom telling you about the attachment, now with the attachment’s size. If you would like to see all of the changes, you can check out the release notes that goes with Thunderbird 5.

Conclusion

Although the changes brought by Thunderbird 5 aren’t necessarily major, the changes that are indeed supplied do add another touch of polish to a generally successful email client. Many regular users of Thunderbird should be able to appreciate these changes and look forward to all the other changes still to come in future versions of Thunderbird. Until then we have enough time to enjoy the changes brought by this version.

The one thing that always bothered me about Thunderbird though, compared to using Gmail, is the fact that Gmail simply does a better job at organizing email threads. Only recently did I learn that there are actually a number of very cool Thunderbird add-ons that make Thunderbird rival even Gmail in terms of simplicity and organization.

You’ve seen a number of Thunderbird add-ons featured here at MUO, including Aibek’s older list of must-haves, as well as Damien’s older list of 10 must-haves as well. In this article, I’d like to freshen up those lists with 5 of the best Thunderbird add-ons that I feel transforms the email client into a better email management tool than Gmail.

5 Thunderbird Add-Ons That Enhance Your Email Experience

Thunderbrowse

Most decent email clients these days have the ability to quickly display webpages of URLs that are embedded in E-mail. The last thing you really want is for an entirely new application – your default Internet browser – to open just so that you can view the page.

Enter ThunderBrowse. In my opinion, this significantly enhances Thunderbird. Now you no longer need to depend upon your browser to the URL that your friend forwarded. Just install ThunderBrowse and you’ll have an embedded browser right inside Thunderbird.

There are lots of options you can set to customize how the window behaves, but the most important is to set whether you want the page to open in a new tab, in a new window, or in an external browser (which would kind of defeat the purpose of the add-on!)

When you click the URL, the webpage will appear in the lower pane where you would typically see the email preview. As you can see, the browser window opens in a new tab. You can still see the mail preview by clicking on the “Mail” tab.

Remove Duplicate Messages

Another problem I find that I have whenever I use Thunderbird is the fact that since I have multiple accounts all coming into this one email client, sometimes there are duplicate messages. This can happen for a number of reasons, but in my case I just have messages from an online service getting downloaded to two accounts, so in Thunderbird I receive duplicate emails.

You can deal with these quickly and easily with an addon called Remove Duplicate Messages.

You can configure the addon to compare just the subject and the author, or if you want you could have it compare the entire message, however this will slow down the addon quite a bit. Set it up to delete the first duplicate that it finds. Now, all you have to do is right click on the account that you want to clean up, and click on “Remove Duplicate Messages…”  Problem solved!

Mailbox Alert

Another very cool add-on is one called Mailbox Alert. Just like with your cellphone, where you can assign a different ringtone to different callers, with Mailbox Alert, you can actually set up a different Alert and Notification setup depending on which account receives the incoming message. After you install the addon, just right click on the account folder and select “Mailbox Alert“.

The functionality of this add-on is really impressive. Not only can you have it show a customized message and sound for each account, but you can even have the add-on launch a command whenever an email arrives.

If you are into Windows Scripting, then the uses for this kind of thing is really only limited by your imagination. This could be a very powerful email automation tool.

ThreadVis

This next add-on is my absolute favorite of all. It solves the biggest problem I had with Thunderbird compared to Gmail. Gmail has always been excellent about organizing emails into conversation threads. Thunderbird – not so much.

With the ThreadVis add-on, you get one of the coolest thread visualizers ever. Now, you’ll see email conversations organized into topic threads, just like on Gmail, but best of all there’s actually a topic timeline displayed in an interesting color-coded visual display, with each sender identified in the timeline by color.

Click on one of the points in the thread timeline, and that email message pops-up. Basically – you can work through an entire email conversation from the convenience of one single email window.

Display Mail User Agent

It’s always nice to have some extra information about the person sending you an email. If you’re curious what email client the person used to send you that email, install the Display Mail User Agent add-on, and you will know. It displays an icon for the email client on the right side of the email header.

Just hover your mouse over the icon to see what client the sender uses. No surprise on this one, James uses Apple Mail, version 2.1084!

As you can see, with just a few extra add-ons and tweaks, you can beef up Thunderbird to rival even Gmail. Try a few (or all) of these add-ons out, and let us know what you think!

Are you a Thunderbird fan? Have these add-ons convinced you to try it out? Share your experiences and thoughts in the comments section below!

FX-Foundry For GIMP

FX-Foundry is a great set of plugins for GIMP to make image manipulation a lot easier with cool effects. It’s more than likely that everything an active graphics or image editor will need is included in this pack, because the menu dedicated to FX-Foundry is pretty extensive.

The plugins can be installed from their website by downloading the .tar file and extracting all the individual files into the correct directories. In this way Windows users can use the same plugins. However, compared to the Linux way this is a difficult procedure. Fedora, for example, has these plugins packaged up, so it’s simply a matter of selecting the checkbox while you’re installing GIMP. You should check your distribution for whether they have the plugins packaged or not because availability varies from distro to distro.

Thunderbird Plugin For Libnotify

Many GNOME-based distributions often have libnotify as a common way to show notifications from multiple programs. The programs that come with the distribution by default will all probably have support for this notification system, but once you start installing other programs, things start to look a bit different. If the program doesn’t have native support for libnotify, then your only hope is for a plugin that will do the job.

Thunderbird has its own notification system and looks out of place when it appears. However, there’s a plugin to fix that! Simply get the plugin from here, install it, go over the settings, and you’re done! All the notifications should go over libnotify now. Don’t forget to turn off Thunderbird’s default notifications, otherwise you’ll see your messages twice.

GnuCash Finance::Quote Plugin

In case you’ve played around with the Windows version of GnuCash, you’ll maybe have noticed that a few select features do not work without the specific Finance::Quote plugin. Written in Perl, this plugin allows the program to download quotes about stocks, currencies, and whatever else the world offers. Since the developers can’t force you to install Perl on Windows (which isn’t exactly easy), they leave that plugin out and let you install it if you really need it. However, in Linux, that won’t be an issue. For all distros that I’ve ever used, the plugin came automatically with the installation of GnuCash. How cool is that?

Banshee Plugins

Unless you closely follow a handful of Linux programs, it’ll come as a surprise to you that there are currently Windows builds for Banshee, a great music player. I haven’t tried out the Windows app myself, but I’m pretty sure that they have added a couple of plugins. Though once you get to the Linux side, you’ll notice that there are a lot of plugins for this app. Just search for Banshee in your repository and handfuls of plugins will start showing up along with it, ready to install. Just look at the screenshot for some of the many that I have installed!

Conclusion

The highly customizable nature of Linux is demonstrated by these easy to install plugins that can definitely make your user experience better. The great thing about plugins that are installed via package management systems is that they automatically update when there’s a new release pushed to the repositories. New versions let you enjoy more features and tighter security.

Are there any plugins that you really enjoy in Linux? Share them with us in the comments!

Image Credit: Flickr

Why Use Mozbackup?

Backing up and restoring Mozilla profiles is useful for a number of reasons. One is straight up backup, so that in case your computer dies you will have a method of restoring your data. Mozbackup is useful even if you have some other sort of backup system in place because just backing up the directory of your profile does work, but it will take some tweaking to get it restored again. Mozbackup makes the backup and restore process dead simple.

If you are migrating to a new PC or even a new OS, Mozbackup can help you to migrate your old profiles and settings to that new machine.

Of course another reason to use it is that it is free, both for personal and commercial use.

What Programs Will Mozbackup Work With?

Mozbackup works with all versions of Firefox up to 4 and the latest Thunderbird mail client. It also works with:

• Firefox 1.0 – 4.0
• Thunderbird 1.0 – 3.1
• Sunbird 0.3 – 0.9
• Flock 1.0 – 2.6
• Postbox (Express) 1.0 – 1.1
• SeaMonkey 1.0a – 2.0
• Mozilla Suite 1.7 – 1.7.x
• Spicebird 0.4 – 0.8
• Songbird 1.0 – 1.7
• Netscape 7.x, 9.x
• Wyzo

As you can see, it works with the full suite of Mozilla products.

How To Do A Backup

Download and install Mozbackup to your machine (Windows only). When you run it, it will detect all of the profiles on your computer created by Mozilla programs, and allow you to select which program to backup.

You can also select which details you want to back up. This includes more general settings, passwords, bookmarks, history, extensions and more. In the Thunderbird profile you can select an option to back up all of your emails or just the account settings themselves.

After this option, you can select whether you would like to password protect the file or not, which requires you to enter a password before restoring it to another profile.

Restoring The Backup

Now that you are going to restore it, the process is very similar to the backup. You simply select which file you want to restore from, and then the specific features you want to restore. After it is done you will see a report which you can check to make sure everything went OK.

Scheduling Backups

To schedule a backup, you must generate a profile which you can then run from the command line. In the Mozbackup program directory, create a file named something like “Email.mozprofile” and add the following lines:

[General]
action=backup
application=Firefox
profile=Default
output=c:\path\to\backup.pcv
password=

Where the action is backup (if you are backing up), application is the program you want to backup. The profile will be Default unless you have multiple profiles on your system, and the output is where you want to back up to. Leave the password blank unless you wish to password protect your file.

After creating this backup profile, you then create a task in Scheduled tasks (Administrative Tools) in your Control Panel. The configuration should look like the following:

Select the mozbackup program for the executable and your profile name as the argument. It will then run the backup program as scheduled.

You can also place some variables in the file name. For example, the default entry is:

<application> <version> – <year>-<month>-<day>

These will make your backup files dynamic so you can keep track of how old the backup is from. Follow this link for more tips on automating backups with Mozbackup.

Migrating To A New OS

Mozbackup is only for Windows, so if you are moving to a Mac, you are stuck, right? Wrong! The backup file is basically the profile directory in a zip file. If you are migrating to a Mac, unzip the file and then import the contents into your Mozilla profile directory. This effectively gives you the same settings as the profile on your old computer.

Do you have any tips for using Mozbackup to keep your machine up to date and backed up? Let us know below!

Recently, one of my friends who runs an education-related blog asked whether it’s possible to use his email client to auto-respond and schedule emails. He uses Mozilla Thunderbird – one of the most well known desktop email clients available today. It’s cross-platform, full featured, and free; and it would make a good candidate to show us how far a desktop client can go.

Note: The following examples were done using the Mac version of Thunderbird, but they are also applicable to the Windows version, albeit with a slightly different interface.

Setting Up An Auto-Response Filter

Why would anyone want to set up an auto response filter? With a little creativity, you could think of many uses for an auto-responder. Here are a few examples that crossed my mind:

• To answer repeated questions from your customers, you could set several specific auto-responders for several different FAQ points
• To notify your friends that you will be unreachable during your holiday break
• To confirm that you’ve received your visitors’ messages and will reply to them as soon as possible.

The first step how to set up Mozilla Thunderbird with an auto-response filter is to create a message template.

• To do so, go to the “File – New – Message” menu or use the shortcut key combination Ctrl + N (Windows) / Command + N (Mac).

• Compose the message as if you are writing another ordinary email, set the topic and content according to what kind of response you want to send.

• Then save the message as a template by going to the “File – Save As – Template” menu.

• Repeat the process for other templates. Create as many templates as you need.

The second step is to set up the filtering system.

• Go to the “Tools – Message Filters” menu.

• A “Message Filters” window will open. Click the “New” button to create a new filter.

• Then set some rules that will trigger the auto-responder. The first pane is the place to add some rules. You can add and delete as many rules as needed using the “+” and “-” (plus and minus) button respectively. Set it to filter specific strings in the Subject and To fields.

• The lower pane is the place to set what action(s) should be performed if the above rules are met. For an auto-response filter, the most obvious action would be to reply to the filtered message using the pre-configured template. Choose “Reply With Template” and pick the template that you want to use.
• Don’t forget to set the “Apply filter when:” drop down list to tell Thunderbird when it should run the auto-responder.

• Click the “OK” button after you finish setting up the filter.

If you want to create other kinds of filters, here is the list of all the available filter rules that you can use. For example, use the “Date – After” and “Date – before” to set up a vacation mail. Set the start date to be the first day of your vacation and the end date to be the day you are coming back to the office.

And also the available actions.

Creating A Scheduled Email

Another unique feature that you can enable in Thunderbird is creating scheduled emails. It means that you can create emails that will be sent on a specific time in the future. This feature would be really useful to send reminders, either to yourself, your friends, or to groups of people.

To enable this feature, we will need help from an add-on called Send Later.

• Download the “.xpi” file to your hard drive and use the add-ons manager to install it.

• To open the add-ons manager, go to the “Tools – Add-ons” menu.

• In the add-ons window, choose “Extensions” and click “Install“.

• Locate the add-on, select it and finally click “Open” to install it.

• You need to go back to the add-ons window which will ask you to restart Thunderbird to complete the installation.

• After restarting Thunderbird, create a new message. This one will be the one that you will send using the scheduled email feature. Then go to the “File ” menu and you will see a new sub-menu there: “Send Later“.

• Click the “Send Later” menu and a small option window will slide out from the message. This window is the place where you can specify the exact time to send the message. Click the “Send Later at specified time” button to schedule the message to be sent at the time that you’ve set before. You can also use the quick buttons to send the message “15 mins later“, “30 mins later“, or “2 hours later“.

The two examples above show us that you can use a desktop email client beyond the realm of reading and replying to emails. If you know of other creative uses of Thunderbird, please share them using the comments section below.

When I originally switched from Windows to Ubuntu I was very interested in these cross-platform apps. After more than 10 years loyalty to Bill’s operating system, I had built up a trusted roster of often used software ““ but some of it was Windows only.

Here’s a selection of quality free software that works on both Linux and Windows machines.

Multimedia

VLC

The media player that just works. Most of the Internet has harped on about how good VLC is for years now, despite the program remaining fairly unchanged and well….a bit plain. Don’t let that put you off ““ simplicity is the key for this powerhouse of a video and music player.

If you’ve got a movie to watch or an album to listen to, rest assured, regardless of operating system, VLC will run it. A lightweight, codec-rich media solution that you should already have installed.

SMPlayer

An alternative to VLC, SMPlayer also does a stellar job of providing smooth, simple playback of your media. A frontend for the popular MPlayer, SMPlayer offers a slightly fancier interface and an improved playlist over VLC.

Features like automatic file resuming, a video equalizer, filters, sync control and the ability to search Open Subtitles directly within the program make this a very impressive package.

Boxee

Justin can’t get enough of Boxee, and I’m beginning to see why. Not to be confused with the set-top box you plug into your TV (that’s the Boxee Box) Boxee is a free media centre application for your Windows, Linux or even Mac computer.

Once installed you can simply use it as a front-end for accessing your local media, or plug your PC into your TV and access everything in your living room. You could even make your own dedicated Boxee Box out of an old PC. Fancy that, the Internet has arrived on your telly!

Web & Communication

Chrome / Firefox

Rarely do I group such applications together ““ especially when there’s fanboys lurking in the shadows, but Chrome and Firefox are two awesomely cross-platform browsers.

Chrome now keeps all your bookmarks synchronized with your Google Account, meaning you can log in from either OS with all your favourites intact. The Firefox 4 Beta offers a new feature called Firefox Sync which does the same thing.

Both Firefox and Chrome perform well under Windows or Linux (I find Chrome even faster on Linux), although you’ll need to install your extensions again.

Thunderbird

Especially useful to those who dual boot between Windows and Linux who demand a powerful email client, Thunderbird is the perfect solution. As modern Linux distributions can easily access data stored on a Windows NTFS partition, Thunderbird can be told to store all data on your Windows partition which in turn can then be accessed from a Linux environment.

This means you will never be out of sync with your email, even if you reboot your PC into another operating system. Clever, huh?

Deluge

One of the better cross-platform BitTorrent clients out there, Deluge is available for all 3 major operating systems. It has an interface reminiscent of uTorrent, and includes support for full encryption, a remotely controllable Web UI, plugins and more.

You can even control multiple instances of Deluge across the network, making it a very powerful BitTorrent solution for those that need it. Check out our full low-down for more information.

Pidgin

If you’re after an all-in-one instant messaging client for your PC, then give Pidgin a go. Formerly known as GAIM (way back when), Pidgin offers support for a startling amount of IM services.

These include AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo as well as some more obscure platforms and an IRC client if you’re that way inclined. As Digsby‘s not ready for Linux yet, Pidgin fills its boots nicely.

Adobe Air & Java

Technically not apps at all, Adobe Air and Java both work on Windows and Linux to provide cross-platform compatibility with a multitude of programs. As these programs use a framework, there is no need for separate Windows and Linux versions – they should just work.

With great apps like Tweetdeck at your disposal, you’re bound to find something you like. We’ve got some great Adobe Air picks right here, and more information on the Java platform here.

Office & Graphics

OpenOffice

It doesn’t have the “next-gen” interface seen in Microsoft’s latest Office suite, but OpenOffice gets the job done. For those of you with the simple demand of an Office suite that opens a multitude of file formats (including all Microsoft Office files) then look no further.

There are 5 programs included in the suite:

• Writer ““ A simple yet powerful word processor.
• Calc ““ A spreadsheet program.
• Impress ““ A presentation application.
• Draw ““ For creating diagrams and graphics.
• Base ““ A database management tool.

Funnily enough, I’m using OpenOffice Writer for this very article.

GIMP

GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, and it is the Linux equivalent of Photoshop. The interface can be tricky at first, especially if you’re used to Adobe’s efforts but there’s plenty of guides and documentation to help you on your way.

For those of you who would prefer a more Adobe-like interface from the get-go, then try GIMPShop, a hack that alters the interface to make GIMP more closely resemble Photoshop.

InkScape

For vector artists on a budget, InkScape steps up to the mark. Essentially a free equivalent to Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator and Xara X, InkScape is a community developed and driven project with versions for Windows, Linux and even Mac OS X. InkScape uses the W3C standardised Scaleable Vector Graphics format (.SVG) to save files, and as such is compatible with a wide range of advanced features.

Do you have any favourite software that works cross-platform? Maybe you’re searching for a Linux equivalent to a much loved Windows program? Get it off your chest in the comments.

Thanks to reader Robert Backlund for suggesting this article. Have you got an article you would like to see? Why not get in touch? Don’t forget MakeUseOf Answers for those tough techie questions!

Varun recently introduced you to this versatile program and provided a rough overview of its main features. I have put Spicebird under further scrutiny to reveal some of its less obvious features, as well as some of its bugs and possible fixes. In my summary I tie it all together and provide an outlook of what to expect from future releases.

Home Tab: Adding Google Gadgets

Home, sweet home. This is where all the threads are pulled together. At first this tab is empty and you are free to customize it, much like your iGoogle page. However, there are some pitfalls.

Click > Add Applets to start filling the Home tab. You can add multiple Mail Folder Views and set them to show unread mails or items of a recent time period. Likewise, you can add all or specific calendars.

One thing that caused me trouble was adding Google Gadgets (listed as Google Applet). Some gadgets are not compatible; others will install, but are useless because the template doesn’t load; yet others are not usable because they load webpages within the applet window, rather than launching your default browser. It is trial and error to find out which ones will work.

Fortunately, there are some great compatible gadgets, like calculators or converters. Finally, you might have to restart Spicebird to see the gadgets working.

Now let’s look at the tabs that will feed your Home tab.

Mail Tab: Importing Mail Accounts

The Mail tab is a reminder that Spicebird is based on Mozilla Thunderbird. It essentially is the same.

You can import existing mail accounts, address books, settings, and/or filters from Thunderbird, Outlook, Communicator 4.x, and Eudora. I had some trouble importing mail from Thunderbird. Now, since Spicebird and Thunderbird are so similar, you can manually copy the mail folders from one profile to the other. This simple fix worked very well for me.

However, please don’t try this with extensions. Although Spicebird does support them, sadly many extensions don’t seem to be compatible. It’s another case of trial and error.

Contacts Tab: Setting Up Chat Clients

The Contacts management is solid and works just like the Address Book you know from Thunderbird.

However, not all features of Spicebird are perfectly intuitive. The chat is one of them. Rather than living in its own tab, it is hidden in the Contacts tab, which is logical – but not obvious.

To set up your chat accounts, switch to the Contacts tab, then click > File > New > Chat Account… In the window that opens, > Select Protocol from the drop-down menu, enter your > Account name, and click > OK.

And this is where it gets really confusing. You only set up the protocol and your account name. Now you have to enable the new chat account and actually log in. In the Contacts sidebar find the menu below your Address Books. Click > Accounts, pick one of your accounts you just added, and click > Enable Account. You might have to restart Spicebird at this point to see your friends list. Your online status can be edited in the status bar in the bottom left.

With the chat I also encountered a major bug. I had some (spam) friendship requests waiting for me in my Yahoo! chat account. I denied them. And when I rebooted, they were back again. Every time. For some reason Yahoo! and Spicebird do not communicate well.

Calendar & Tasks Tabs: Missing Features

One thing that might be confusing at first is that the menu bar is different in each tab. It carries buttons and options useful only for the respective tab. This is smart behavior, but may leave you irritated for a moment if you are used to Thunderbird.

Per default, the calendar supports iCalendar, CalDAV and WCAP network calendars. I set up Google Calendar using ICS. Viewing the calendar is possible, however, it is ‘read only’. Unfortunately, the extension that enables syncing with Google Calendar in Thunderbird is not compatible with Spicebird.

The Tasks tab is pretty self-explanatory. Unfortunately, it seems that tasks that you mark as completed disappear instantly. This is rather annoying. In Thunderbird, the respective task remains in the list, but is crossed out.

There are indeed a few bugs to be ironed out. Here is a list of the major complaints I have:

• Importing multiple inboxes from Thunderbird is unreliable.
• Often, simple changes only become visible after a restart.
• Many Google Gadgets are not compatible / working.
• It’s unclear which Thunderbird extensions are supported.
• Chat is complicated and not intuitive to set up.
• Communication between chat clients and Spicebird is faulty.
• Google Calendar sync is not supported.
• Tasks disappear instantly when marked as completed.

Overall I fail to see where Spicebird comes in as a true collaboration tool. However, the Roadmap has features covered that will significantly improve this aspect. Future releases are envisioned to provide a more meaningful address book, multiple backends for tasks management, more views for calendar and tasks, integration with a CMS (Drupal), document management, and most importantly a Microsoft Exchange connector. That’s a mouthful and I hope they won’t forget to fix the bugs.

To wrap it up, I find that the current release of Spicebird has introduced some very useful features, most notably the Home tab. It is only a few bug fixes short of drawing level with an extended Thunderbird, although not yet good enough to replace it. Nevertheless, I’m excited to see the promised features, which will really make Spicebird a useful replacement for Outlook and a lot more.

What do you think? Could you imagine switching to Spicebird now or in the new future?

What really breathes life into Thunderbird is its ability to be personalized with themes, extensions, and plugins. Is your Thunderbird ready for a custom makeover?

Per default, Thunderbird does not come with a calendar. Fortunately, a full calendar can easily be integrated. Here are 2 extensions to add a full-fledged calendar and task manager to Thunderbird and 3 to make use of it.

You will find many more articles on how to best use and personalize Thunderbird at the bottom of this article.

Lightning

With Lightning you can easily upgrade Thunderbird to become your desktop time and task manager. Once installed, you will see two tiny new buttons on the very right of the tab bar: one opens a new tab for your Calendar, the other a tab for your Tasks.

As soon as you click the calendar tab, you enter a new world. On the left hand sidebar you see the current month and a list of your calendars. Click on > File > New > Calendar… in your Thunderbird toolbar to create a new one. You can add multiple calendars and color code them.

On the right is your calendar in either day, week, multiweek, or month (default) view, with all upcoming events listed at the top of it. Through the menu at the top left you can toggle the list of upcoming events to show today’s events, events in the next 7, 14, or 31 days, events in this calendar month, all future events, or currently selected day. You can also search your events.

I will not go into details regarding the Task features, but it’s just as easy to use, so I’m sure you can figure it out.

LightningButton

This extension adds a set of new calendar buttons to Thunderbird. These buttons are insanely useful because you can now automatically attach email contents to events. This will come in handy, for example if you’re invited to a party and the email contains directions on how to get there. Not only will you be reminded of the event, you also don’t have to dig for the email to retrieve any meaningful details.

After installing the extension, right-click an open space in the Thunderbird toolbar and select > Customize from the menu. This opens the > Customize Toolbar window. In that window find the buttons displayed below and drag them to their new home in the toolbar. Click > Done and that’s what you are.

The > Event… button becomes available when you select an email. The content of the email will automatically be loaded into the event > Description when you click the > Event… button. The > Task… button works the same way. The other buttons just give you quick access to adding a new event or task. The Calendar and Task buttons are redundant, but you may find them useful anyways.

ThunderCal

If you can’t be bothered to set up an extension and if you are already using Google Calendar, you will be delighted about this simple solution. What it does is add a toolbar button to Thunderbird that opens Google Calendar in a separate tab within Thunderbird.

Add the new button via the > Customize Toolbar window and enjoy!

You can actually run Google Calendar directly out of Thunderbird with Lightning. This will save you the Google log in every time you want to access your calendar. Check out my article How To Integrate Google Calendar Into Thunderbird for setup instructions. It’s easy and works like a charm!

ThunderBirthDay

Do you always forget people’s birthdays? Did you know you could add personal details, like birthdays to your addressbook in Thunderbird? If you have been doing that or if you’re looking for an easy reminder solution for upcoming birthdays, you must try ThunderBirthDay.

First, open your address book, go through your contacts, open them with a double-click, and add their birthdays in the > Private tab.

Since ThunderBirthDay adds events to a calendar, it requires Lightning. When this is done, install the ThunderBirthDay extension. This extension only works with its own calendar.

• Click > File > New > Calendar… in the Thunderbird toolbar.
• Select > On My Computer, click > Next.
• Select > Birthday from the Thunderbird addressbook.
• Choose the addressbooks to use from the drop-down menu.
• Click > Next to > Name and > Color code the new calendar.
• Click > Next again, and finally click > Finish.

Timeline

With this extension a Timeline is inserted above the status bar in Thunderbird. It displays events coming up during the next couple of hours or days. When you hover the mouse over it you can zoom in and out using the mouse wheel.

The vertical red line indicates the current day and time, while all other entries are events from your calendars. Unfortunately, no event details are shown. However, you can open the edit event window by double-clicking its entry in the Timeline.

Countless articles have been written about Thunderbird on MakeUseOf. Here are a few of my favorites:

• How to Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird to Send Mass Emails by Saikat
• Access Your Personalised Thunderbird Client On Any Computer WorldWide by Jack
• Synchronize Your Google Contacts, Calendar & RSS In Thunderbird by Mark
• How To Set Up Mozilla Thunderbird 3 For Multiple Email Accounts by Tina
• How to Set Up Message Filters In Thunderbird by Tina
• How To Recover Deleted eMails in Thunderbird by Tina
• How To Terminally Delete eMails In Thunderbird By Compacting Folders by Tina
• 5 Extensions For Tabbed Email Browsing In Thunderbird 3 by Tina
• 3 Best Thunderbird Extensions to Enhance Your Address Book by Tina

I will admit frankly that I slightly dominate this list!

If you’re using Thunderbird, what do you think makes it better than Yahoo! or Google Mail? Is customization a key element?

But now, this is no longer an issue with this simple hack. You can now access your Thunderbird profile remotely on many computers around the world. So say goodbye to logging into Gmail to read your emails when you are away from your main computer and say hello to the new power of desktop computing.

The Idea

To access Thunderbird remotely, the idea is to setup Portable Thunderbird and run it in yourDropBox folder. If you have no idea what I am talking about, Thunderbird is desktop email client to access your emails and DropBox synchronizes your files and folders across multiple computers. Portable Thunderbird is a version of ThunderBird which you don’t have to install to work thus allowing it to work almost anywhere.

To get this to work, first you have to install DropBox on the computers you want to access your emails on and have the Portable Thunderbird files inside your DropBox folder. If you are not sure about how to install these programs, scroll to the bottom of this post.

How It All Works

For those who are unsure of how this works, let me briefly explain it. DropBox synchronises any files you have in your DropBox folder with the DropBox servers. Every time you make a change in the folder, your computer will automatically synchronise the changed files with the DropBox servers. If you setup a DropBox account on another computer, the DropBox servers will synchronise the files with that computer and ensure that every file and folder is up-to-date on every computer.

The portable version of Thunderbird has all the settings contained in one folder so you can basically move that folder around anywhere you want and it will still work. Since it is in the DropBox folder, it will be synchronised with all your computers that your DropBox account is assigned to. Therefore, if you download new emails on one computer, DropBox will automatically synchronise the new emails to all other computers, so when you open Portable Thunderbird, your emails will be there, no matter which computer you access it on.

Haven’t Used Portable ThunderBird Before?

Once you have your Portable ThunderBird inside your DropBox folder, all you have to do is to set up your email service provider and create a ThunderBird Profile.

If you use Gmail, this tutorial will help you set up POP/IMAP access.

Once you are set up, download all your emails and you are good to go. The only thing left is to install DropBox on other computers so you will be able to access your them in other locations. It’s as simple as that.

Used ThunderBird Before?

If you are currently using the regular desktop version of ThunderBird, you can easily move to the Portable version of Thunderbird in a few easy steps.

1. Create a profile for all the different email accounts that you use in Thunderbird
2. Find the location of your ThunderBird profile on your computer by going to Tools –> Account Settings –> Server and Settings which is underneath your email account’s name, and go to the location that you see under Local Directory

   

3. Once you open that location, you will see the files for each of your folders in your ThunderBird Profile.
4. All you have to do to move them to Portable ThunderBird is to copy them to the path where Portable Thunderbird is installed. For me, the location will be E:\Jack\Documents\My Dropbox\ThunderbirdPortable\Data\profile\Mail\Local Folders. Your link will be somewhat different at the start and different at the end depending on your setup.
5. Open up Portable Thunderbird and all your emails should appear.

The Pro’s Of Doing This

By using DropBox and Portable ThunderBird, the are a few benefits. These are:

• All your emails are automatically backed up
• You do not have to carry a USB flash drive around with you
• You have the ability to share your email with others easily
• If you access your emails on a number of devices, this method can merge them all to one location, meaning no duplicates
• Great way to manage your emails if you are a light user
• You can access your email on any DropBox-enabled computer
• You do not need to use your email provider’s web-based interface

The Downsides

As always, I better make a mention of the possible downsides with this method:

• You only get 2GB of space or whatever your DropBox limit is
• You risk having multiple inboxes and files if you have several instances of Portable Thunderbird open simultaneously
• You need to ensure DropBox is completely synced before opening Portable Thunderbird
• If DropBox isn’t installed, you can’t access your email on ThunderBird and have to use the web-based version, or install Dropbox first
• Remember to unlink your DropBox account on computers that you do not need to use anymore, otherwise people can read your emails
• I have also heard that using System Restore may remove Portable Thunderbird from your DropBox folder.

For Those Who Want Installation Instructions

First of all, download Portable Thunderbird from Portable Apps. It is a small 32MB file. Then download and install DropBox. If you havn’t heard about DropBox in the past until now, MakeUseOf has covered a number of articles on what you can do with DropBox.

To install DropBox, simple go to the DropBox website and hit the big blue Download DropBox button and follow the instructions. During the DropBox installation, you will be prompted to login with your existing DropBox account if you have one or create to create a new one. When asked for your DropBox directory, you can select any file location you wish.

Now that you have your DropBox folder set up on your computer, it is now time to download and install Portable Thunderbird. Head over to Portable Apps, and download the program.

Once downloaded, run the .paf file and install it. However, when it asks for your installation location, don’t select your Flash Drive or your desktop; choose a folder inside your DropBox folder.

You have now set up and installed all of the required software to access Thunderbird remotely.

Other Ways Of Doing This

If you don’t think this method will suit your needs, Tina as wrote an article of 3 ways to sync your Thunderbird emails across multiple computers which you may find interesting.

What do you think of this “hack”?