Five Power Tips for Thunderbird (Summersault Weblog) [LWN.net]

Five Power Tips for Thunderbird (Summersault Weblog)

Posted Jul 23, 2006 0:57 UTC (Sun) by hein.zelle (guest, #33324)
Parent article: Five Power Tips for Thunderbird (Summersault Weblog)

I'll have to try the Nostalgia plugin, I've been using the quick file extension so far, which works but is not quite ideal when you immediately hit the right folder: you still need to select it from the list before hitting enter.

Although quick file makes thunderbird almost a usable Mutt replacement for me, I still have some remaining gripes:
- I don't know how to configure the equivalent of fcc-save-hooks: I want to be able to specify where to save both incoming AND outgoing mail addressed to certain people. Especially at work this is vital, as I still tend to organize my mail based on recipient (due to heavy Mutt use).
- I think external editor support is still somewhat lacking. I've tried the plugin, but it wasn't always stable (hangs up both thunderbird and emacs). I type all mail in emacs, and am not willing to switch to another editor just for email, especially if it doesn't fully support emacs keybindings.

I do very much appreciate the ability to view the folder list in tree-view mode, so once thunderbird matures a little further I may try switching again. For now I've returned to mutt, and I'm not unhappy with it so far.

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Five Power Tips for Thunderbird (Summersault Weblog)

Posted Jul 24, 2006 20:11 UTC (Mon) by ceswiedler (subscriber, #24638) [Link]

I used to do a lot of filtering on sender or organization (work, organization, etc) but Gmail has proven to me that efficient searching beats pre-organization nearly all of the time. If you can search for all messages by a certain sender as quickly as you can open folder, why put them in the folder? Folders (or labels, as Gmail does it) can be useful for things that can't easily be searched on, but for me, I've ended up with exactly zero of them. The advantage for me is that I don't need to do any sorting of my own mail, and my ability to find stuff is pretty much the same.

I don't mean to say that everyone should use Gmail (local clients have their advantages) but I'd encourage you to look at a search-based organization method instead.

Thunderbird can work more like Gmail

Posted Jul 25, 2006 15:01 UTC (Tue) by markjugg (guest, #25986) [Link]

GmailUI is a Thunderbird extension that adds some Gmail-inspired interface improvements to Thunderbird. Notably, easy archiving with the "y" key, a more a powerful quick search, modeled after the quick-searching shortcuts that Gmail provides.

Thunderbird can work more like Gmail

Posted Jul 31, 2006 5:47 UTC (Mon) by sitaram (subscriber, #5959) [Link]

I often show a demonstration of GmailUI to people who might potentially switch to Thunderbird. Sometimes I even tell them (if I'm feeling really honest) that it's a separate extension :-)

Start with a busy folder with lots of messages. Type "/" (focus goes to the search field) then "f:whatever". Status bar say "141 matches found". As I keep typing " a:1" (mails with attachments), then " -some_common_word" and then " -one_more_common_word", and pausing after each term to look at the status bar, the matches found keep coming down until finally it hits "7 matches found". At this point a visual check finds me the email I want.

I haven't yet found another email client that can do this. In real time. On IMAP.

[Err, of course when I say "some_common_word" I'm only obfuscating my actual search terms for my privacy...]