For those who want more screen space, Thunderbird 9 (scheduled for release on December 20th) will give you the ability on Windows to hide the Menu Bar (File, Edit, View) like you can now in Firefox. Just like in Firefox, you can press the ALT key or F10 to temporarily display the Menu Bar. To permanently restore, press ALT then go to View > Toolbars > Menu Bar. Alternatively, if you still have the Mail Toolbar enabled, you can right-click and select Menu Bar as well. If you want to try to Thunderbird 9 Earlybird or 8 Beta,they can be…
Tips & Tweaks
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Update 10/17/2011: I have updated the links for both Lightning and Provider for Google Calendar add-ons. Also added the note about needing to know the version of Thunderbird in order to choose the correct version of Lightning. I started using Gmail (words I never thought I’d say) earlier this year because I needed a Gmail account to use with the Android Marketplace. Plus my college uses the Gmail system for their email and calendar. In the past couple months I started using the Google Calendar as well. In the past I have looked at and even tried using Mozilla Lightning…
With the recent releases of Thunderbird to the Daily, Earlybird and Beta channels, there are updates for both Lightning and Provider for Google Calendar (gdata-provider) add-ons. You can not at this time update via the Thunderbird add-ons manager, you will need to manually download and install the correct version for both add-ons in order to get your calendar working again in your developmental version of Thunderbird. Thunderbird 7 users are able to use the most up to date version of these add-ons which should have already been updated. For those using Thunderbird 8 Beta, Thunderbird 9 Earlybird or Thunderbird 10…
Stylish 1.2.1 which will work with Thunderbird (and Firefox) 6.0 is currently stuck in the AMO approval queue, so users who are updating to Thunderbird 6 are finding that Stylish 1.2 is being disabled. User can install Stylish 1.2.1 via this link, just click the yellow Download Now’ button and click through the warning. Looks like they submitted the updated on August 15th, the day before Thunderbird 6 was released. Likely will be approved by the end of the week and those have add-on update checking enabled will see it as an update when they restart Thunderbird.
Thunderbird 5, like Firefox 4 takes advantage of Windows Aero Glass effect on Vista and Windows 7. This results in a transparent menu bar, which some users find this transparency annoying. There are a couple ways to get around this. You can use a Persona or add these lines to your Thunderbird’s userChrome.css file: /*Removes Transparent Aero Theme Effect Windows Vista & 7 */ window, page, dialog, wizard, prefwindow { background-color: -moz-Dialog !important; } #toolbar-menubar { -moz-appearance: -moz-win-browsertabbar-toolbox !important; } “
By default every time you reply to a message, Thunderbird adds a colored line down the sides to ‘frame’ each particular reply. This can get rather distracting after awhile. Plus it makes the overall length of the email a lot longer as the message content area gets narrower with each reply. To eliminate this, add these lines of code into your userContent.css file [directions] located within the chrome folder inside your profile folder: /*Remove reply lines*/ blockquote[type=cite] { padding-left: 0 ! important; border-left: none ! important; border-right: none ! important; }
In Thunderbird 3.1 when you right-clicked on an address and selected Add to Address Book it would automatically add the address into your Collected Addresses book. In Thunderbird 5.0 though the behavior has changed in now that it places the address in the Personal Address Book and the name is only the user name. However, if you double-click on the star next to the email address you will get this pop-up where you can specify the contact’s name and which address book to place the contact within.
Yesterday, I did some more testing on Linux to see if I could still create the blank User Interface by running a profile from Thunderbird 3.1.x with the Add-on Compatibility Reporter installed in Thunderbird 5.0 on Linux Mint. So I made a duplicate of my Thunderbird 3.1.x profile which had the Add-on Compatibility Reporter installed using the ProfileManager tool and then attempted to run that profile in Thunderbird 5. As expected, the result was the same a blank UI and a dead profile. In another test, I was able to successfully ‘resurrect’ the ‘broken’ profile by launching the profile in…
Like Firefox 5.0, Thunderbird 5.0 takes advantage of video hardware acceleration to improve performance. Unfortunately, like in Firefox 5.0, this can lead to blurry fonts. A quick change of a couple values in about:config should clear this issue up for most users: In Thunderbird go Tools > Options… Click Advanced Tab Click the Config Editor… button at the lower right If needed, click the I’ll Be Careful, I Promise! button Filter for each of the below values and double click to change the setting from false to true gfx.direct2d.disabled layers.acceleration.disabled
Lightning 1.0 Beta 4 RC 2 (released today) works with Thunderbird 5.0 and can be obtained via AMO. While the AMO page does show Lightning 1.0 Beta 4 in the description it is still downloads 1.0 Beta 2. Warning: Attempting to force older versions of Lightning to work with Thunderbird 5.0 will not work. For those looking for the Provider for Google Calendar there is a new version available as well.