Thunderbird Tweaks

If your interested in ditching Outlook like I was, here are some tweaks that make Mozilla's free Thunderbird mail client behave like you want.

First off, if you don’t have Thunderbird, you can find it here.

Why switch?  That’s really up to you; I switched because I use six IMAP email addresses.  IMAP stands for “Internet Message Access Protocol” and has the primary advantage of storing your messages on the server.  In POP (Post Office Protocol, a more common protocol), the messages are deleted from the server as soon as your mail client accesses them; all your messages are stored locally on your computer.  Since IMAP messages stay on the server, your inbox looks the same no matter where you access it.  We have two computers at our house and I have an iPhone, so I access my mail from up to three different devices.  By using IMAP, I don’t have to sync the mail accounts on all three.  Make sense?  I hope so, because I can’t hear you if it doesn’t.  If IMAP sounds cool to you, that’s because it is.  Talk to your mail provider to see if you can have it.  If not, switch!

Moving on.  Outlook was REALLY slow at accessing all six of my IMAP accounts.  I like Firefox a whole lot better than Internet Explorer; since Thunderbird is made by the same people who make Firefox and Outlook is made by the same people who make IE, it stood to reason that I might like Thunderbird better.  After installing it and setting up all my accounts, I was hooked.  The simple, clean interface was perfect, and accessing my accounts was significantly faster.  I immediately uninstalled Outlook.  Hours later, I went to reply to an email.  To my chagrin, I found that Thunderbird placed my signature at the bottom of the email, AFTER the original message I was replying to.  How annoying!  The fix: Go to Tools > Account Settings, then select “Composition & Addressing” under the desired account.  There’s a setting there to change where your signature is placed.  Done!

Next up: how to remove the double-dashes (—) from your signature.  You see, a lot of people put their company name and/or contact information in their signature.  Me, I have a stylized, graphical representation of my actual signature (minus the illegibility).  I don’t want the—above it; I’m actually using my signature as my signature.  This fix involves using a hex editor (read: DANGEROUS).  You can find that hack here.  Use at your own risk!

We’re cruising now.  Want to have Thunderbird sit in your notification area (lower-right hand of your screen by the clock) so you can leave it open without wasting valuable taskbar space?  Get this extension and this extension and enjoy.

Lastly, here are some tips for customizing the new mail popup that appears when you get new mail.  Go to Tools > Options and go to the Advanced tab.  Open the Config Editor and type “alert” (no quotes) in the filter field.  Here you will find options for how long the popup stays in view, how long it takes to slide into place (both in milliseconds [1000 milliseconds = 1 second]), and whether or not to show the sender and/or subject.

After implementing all these tweaks, I had Thunderbird working just the way I wanted it.  Hopefully you can, too.  Have a Thunderbird tweak that I missed, or want to know how to do something I didn’t mention?  .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or post a comment on this entry and I’ll see what I can do.