The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5) - Thunderbird

Thunderbird - Request for Help

Okay, I downloaded 0.5, and I am at a loss on a few things. I have been using Calpyso for a while.

My biggest distaste with e-mail clients is the 'permanent' folders. Outlook are the worst. "To do"? Who the HECK uses it?! Maybe 5% of the entire Outlook users? Why can't we just nuke that folder and make things much smaller so we can have bigger archive folders and still fit everything in one screen?

So I'm asking you guys if there are any way I could do within Thunderbird:

1. Automatically forward Inbox received mails to the General folder's inbox?

2. Delete each mail account's draft/templates/sent folders if I am auto-forwarding them to the General folder's versions?

3. Not auto-expand the mail folders (or even -- hide the parent folders) - so I only see the General folder?

4. Automatically provide a To:, CC: and BCC: field without having to use the drop down menu by default?

5. Have both the visible address AND the reply to address always matching (I'm not sure if this is true, but it seems to be implied that the sent address can be different than the reply to address. If I want to send an e-mail via my spam account, I want to guarantee that my real account does not go out as my 'sent" address.)

6. Are there any way I could import old e-mails from Calypso?

I checked the extensions. I tried to manipulate the filters. I just can not get this to work properly. People have raved about Thunderbird's ability to be adaptive. I do not see this to be the case here. Am I wrong? Any suggestions?

T.J.
Wednesday, February 11, 2004

what's a permanent folder? sounds like you want to hide the folder pane and live in your inbox.

mb
Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Try deleting Drafts, Templates, and Sent folders on 0.5.

You can't.

Anything that can not be deleted is considered as permanent.

And no, I do not want to just live in my inbox. I have 3 e-mail addresses, and I want to introduce several more. I do not want 3 main folders with 3 useless subfolders that can not be folded out. In fact, I do not want to have 3 main folders, one for each e-mail. I want one inbox with "receiptant" and "sender" visible. I want one sent mail. I want one drafts. I want one Templates.

In fact, I want to delete Templates which I will NEVER use as a feature, nor will the majority of e-mail folks.

I also found a 'feature' I dislike very much on Thunderbird 0.5 -- Try sizing the main window small enough, and you would notice that instead of resizing everything, it decides that it MUST be a minimal size, and crop the actual windows. If I want a small e-mail main window, do not crop the scroll bar!

In fact, there is no horizonal scroll bar on the main window. I will have to open the e-mail itself to see the entire wide e-mail, including the very-long-and-suspicious URLs that may be hiding the real address via a well known trick.

*sigh*

Anyone here have any suggestions on the problems I'm seeing here? Any workarounds or actual features I should be taking advantage of?

T.J.
Thursday, February 12, 2004

It's open source, do it yourself ;-)

Nigel
Thursday, February 12, 2004

Seriously though, I've noticed similar oddities with Thunderbird. For some reason, the designers use email completely different than me, I guess.

Nigel
Thursday, February 12, 2004

The release notes for 0.5 seem to suggest it's possible to configure multiple accounts under a single "identity". That sounds like what you want.

I don't know how to do it, I only use thunderbird at home for the couple of emails I get a week, and therefore haven't bothered to configure anything on it. :)

Sum Dum Gai
Thursday, February 12, 2004

Update:

Question #5 is a moot point -- I found the drop down menu that automatically update the reply to field. Nice trick there, can be a bit more obvious.

Identities. [1] According to the web site, it is a very brand new feature, and requires some hard core hacking. I will have to play around with it tomorrow after getting some rest.

Another 'feature' -- when you get new mail on more than one mailbox, only one is reported as "yew gotz mail" on a popup. Nice feature, just... can be a bit better, or tweakable to show all, including maybe some status ("Mail 1 got mail, with total 5 unread.")

[1] http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/identities.html

T.J.
Thursday, February 12, 2004

ah. in outlook, you can just ignore those folders and never use them. then set the settings to store drafts in your inbox. i don't know about multiple mailbox support, i'd handle that server-side in most cases (forward addressA to readaddress), outlook does support setting the From address.
can thunderbird do this? no clue.

mb
Thursday, February 12, 2004

Does anyone know how to create a filter that plays a sound in Thunderbird?

The Great Economist
Thursday, February 12, 2004

If you export the Calypso mail it puts it out as regular text, Thunderbird should be able to read that, but I haven't tried.

I recently upgraded from Calypso to Courier instead.

Simon Lucy
Thursday, February 12, 2004

I like Thunderbird, my 3+ mail accounts go to 3+ sections, which takes up a lot of screen real estate, but I can live with that. Mail is stored as plaintext, which is great.

The only thing I wish it did have was the ability to add "From" addresses without adding a new identity. If I sign up for a mailing list as listname@mydomain.com, I can't send mail from myname@mydomain.com and expect it to get to the list.

www.MarkTAW.com
Thursday, February 12, 2004

RTFM, dude.

Really, have you tried looking in the help section?

Bathmophobic skier
Thursday, February 12, 2004

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000062.html

Umm... dude, or something.

T.J.
Thursday, February 12, 2004

Of course I've looked in the Help file but it seems this kind of basic functionality is not built in. Maybe someone knows a workaround?

The Great Economist
Friday, February 13, 2004