Thunderbird left alone

So it appears that the Mozilla Foundation decided to no longer support, i.e. fund, Thunderbird.

There will be only security updates and patches, and the community is of course free to continue developing Thunderbird.

I guess email - and thus Thunderbird - is not innovative enough for Mozilla, and in a way I can see that. but then again, I've been using Thunderbird even as my corporate email client for about 10 years now and never regretted it. Or even envied the Outlook users. Quite on the contrary.

At least since Lightning, the Calendar add-one, got mature. For a global search (indexed, of course) I find Thunderbird even superior. Ctrl-K is (after Ctrl-Shift-K and Ctrl-M) probably the most used short cut for me in Thunderbird.

Well, let's hope the community continues to support it - I'd hate to go back to Outlook.

Firefox 13

So, yet another Firefox update.

Version 13 with the new homepage (featuring buttons to bookmarks, downloads, history, add-ons, sync and settings) and the new tab page looks  suspiciously chrome-y to me...

I don't think it will have a huge impact on me, but lets just see over the next weeks.

Weird Thunderbird Bug

Since I upgraded my Thunderbird to version 9 if could no longer paste tables from OpenOffice.org Calc to Thunderbird as a table... they always get inserted as graphics.
Paste-without-format would just copy the plain text, but - of course - no format.
The problem has also been reported with Microsoft Office and LibreOffice.

I did not really notice the first couple of times, until co-workers started to complain that they no longer could copy/paste elements from my "tables" because they were images.

Did some searching on the web and found the bug ... indeed introduced in TB9 supposed to be fixed in FB10 (have to test this on a vbox):

The actual problem is when Thunderbird parses the meta-data of the clipboard, it does a locale-specific parse of a decimal number (the version)... but the version string will always contain a dot (.) and never a comma (,), since it is not really a decimal number. So there is a difference between e.g. German and English system(!) locale, i.e. the problem will appear on German windows, but not on English windows.

Changing the decimal symbol to a dot (.) in the Windows system settings will actually "fix" (circumvent) this problem. I just tested this.
Not sure, which system-wide setting I should keep now...

As I noticed in the bug, the fix is to treat the version as a string, not a (decimal) number.... That's better.

Thunderbird 8 and Lightning 1.0

So, 2 days ago Thunderbird 8 has been released.

The major changes are:

• more restrictive handling of extensions/add-ons, especially those that come from other apps... those will be disabled by default... Thunderbird Installer will guide you through this.

• keyboard short-cuts for the various search options have been changed.

While it has been Ctrl-F for both, the Find within the current message and the QuickFilter for the current folder, it is now

• Ctrl-F for Find (within the current message)
• Ctrl-Shift-K for the QuickFilteron on the folder
• and Ctrl-K is unchanged for the global (indexed) search.

Took me 2 days to get accustomed to the Ctrl-Shift-K.
Well, almost. Not entirely. But I'll manage.

Also I had to "manually" upgrade 3 add-ons that were not declared compatible with TB 8, because no-one cared to update their install.rdf in the XPI file... quite cumbersome... See my rant earlier this year.

Ah, yes, and Lightning finally made it to official release 1.0 ... after years of beta.

Mozilla's new version policy

With Firefox 4 Mozilla introduced their new release policy, which basically means a new release every quarter, and also changing the major version number with every such release. Thus we got Firefox 6 only yesterday.

Since I'm not an enterprise, I do not have a problem with quarterly releases... some IT organizations do.
Also, I personally couldn't care less if they call their releases 4, 5, 6, 7, or Bob, Frank, Josephina, ... or IV/2011, X/2011, Fall 09... whatever.

If it were not for the add-ons... Usually you test an add-on you develop against a certain release, and also declare this in the install.rdf:

<!-- Thunderbird -->
<em:targetApplication>
<Description>
<em:id>{3550f703-e582-4d05-9a08-453d09bdfdc6}</em:id>
<em:minVersion>1.0</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>5+</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>

In the past you knew that the architecture would be stable for a major release, so if you'd tested successfully against a late Thunderbird 3 beta you could increase the maxVersion to "3+". And you'd not have to bother for the next 18 month, until the next major version would go to alpha or beta, you'd have a look at it, test your add-on against it, maybe a tweak here or there, and voila, maxVersion++; and publish it.

Now, you have to do this every 3 months; since everything is now a major version, you either have to declare the add-on as universally compatible (and it might break with version 8) or you have to update the install.rdf every 3 month. Even if there is no major change in Firefox or Thunderbird (as this week with v6).

From a users perspective the same happens, with every update you'll see a couple of add-ons as "incompatible" and disabled. And you either go to your profile and patch the install.rdf (which is what I do) or you have to wait a couple of days (at least) until the developers publish the new "version".

True for both Firefox and Thunderbird.
Somewhat annoying. There's a reason why the separation of major and minor version number has been introduced a couple of decades ago...

Awesome Thunderbird Plugin

So, the other day I sat down to write myself an add-on that was more than overdue for me... or for the way I use mail and Thunderbird.

At that time I called it Domain Specific Move, and it did exactly that. I took the most domain with the most occurrence in an email (scanning to, from, cc) and suggested a folder for this mail; and you were able to train it.

Through Max's comment I learned about the Nostalgy add-on. It actually is about defining keyboard shortcuts and stuff for Thunderbird:

Adds keyboard shortcuts to change folder, move/copy messages, with folder name auto-completion (using only the keyboard). 

The folder name auto-completion is the really awesome stuff. I just have to hit S (for Save == Move) and an entry field pops up at the bottom of the window and I only need to type two or three letters of the folder name and that's it.

When you really use nested folders like I do - with about 5-6 levels deep, this saves a lot of time.

Same for G as GoTo folder. And there's a nice B (whatever that stands for) that Moves the message to the folder and then goes to the folder (sort of S+G).

Great stuff. Thanks Max, for the hint.

Thunderbird hack: Domain Specific Move

One of the most frequent actions in Thunderbird is to move a message that I received from a business partner or customer to a message folder for exactly this partner/customer. Same for messages I sent to them.

However, as you communicate with more customers and partners, the folder hierarchy will become more complex and I already need about 6 clicks to select the specific folder.

Sometimes I'm lucky and it is the most recently used folder, then I can do it with the "move again" function directly in the context menu; sometimes, it is at least in the recent folder menu, still 3 clicks.

WIBNI if TB could just remember that I always move messages from domain A to the folder X, lets say from "ibm.com" to folder "/Vendors/IBM" or something like that, and then present me with a one-click option on the menu.

So I wrote an add-on for this and called it "Domain Specific Move".
It does exactly what I described.

I find the most frequently used domain in the email (counting all from sender, recipient, cc-list).
If I already find a setting for this, I create an additional menu item in the move message menu for a move to this folder.

If not, I present a "learn" menu item, that lets you train the extension on where to put mails for this extension (i.e. register a folder for this domain). You pick the destination folder yourself. No magic included there.

Once I thus learned and stored the folder for this domain, I can - next time this domain appears - present the "Move to " menu item as above.

Configuration is stored in the preferences under "extensions.domainmove.".
Currently I have no options page for this, so if you want to change or remove an entry, you have to go to the prefs.js file or the about: dialog.

Yes, I know, filters can do the same; but when I select to manually run the filter, it will not tell me what exactly it is up to... The beauty of my approach (IMHO) is, that I see it on the menu and can decide otherwise, because not always does the folder registered for this domain really match.

In essence this is only a short cut with an educated suggestion. No behind-the-scenes magic.

Todos:

• more flexibility with domains with more than 2 parts (e.g. at.ibm.com should map to ibm.com if there is no at.ibm.com)
• unlearn domains (without going to the about: dialog)
• option for domains-to-ignore; currently I ignore non-specific domains as gmail.com, a1.net, gmx.at, sun.com, oracle.com [1].
• ignore "my" domain (see comment re oracle.com)

Available for TB3+ only.

I will polish the code and implement some of the above todos, then I will post the first beta.

--
[1] well for me as an former Sun and now Oracle employee, all emails contain either an oracle.com or sun.com address and this domain contains no information on where to archive the email.

Regex Pitfall

I guess this was the first time ever that I had to search/match/replace with regular expressions across line boundaries.
Not the usual multi-line ("/m") operation; quite the contrary, I wanted the source string to be treated as one single line regardless of newline-characters in it.

In other words: the dot (".") should also match a newline.

Not that easy, it turns out.
Quoting from the Regex Tutorial:

The dot matches a single character, without caring what that character is. The only exception are newline characters. In all regex flavors discussed in this tutorial, the dot will not match a newline character by default. So by default, the dot is short for the negated character class [^\n] (UNIX regex flavors) or [^\r\n] (Windows regex flavors).

Changing this behavior is actually language dependent.
Since I needed it within JavaScript (XUL/Thunderbird) I had to revert to a [\s\S] instead of the .

JavaScript [does] not have an option to make the dot match line break characters. In
those languages, you can use a character
class such as [\s\S] to match any character.
This character matches a character that is either a whitespace
character (including line break characters), or a character that is not a
whitespace character. Since all characters are either whitespace or
non-whitespace, this character class matches any character.

Weird. Unreadable. Requires a comment.
But it works.

Extra Folder Columns :: Add-ons for Thunderbird

For the Thunderbird 3 users out there:

You'll probably be missing the Total/Unread/Size columns in your folder pane...
To get it back, install the Extra Folder Columns :: Add-ons for Thunderbird add-on.
It was specifically created for TB3, but did not support the latest betas and RCs... Now with version 0.4 it supports the final 3.0 release and also works with the smart folders...

Easiest way as usual: open the link in Firefox (or any browser), open the add-on dialog in Thunderbird and then drag the "Download Now" button from the browser to the add-on list in Thunderbird. Voila. No need to download and open the file afterwards (unless you want to archive the .xpi on your local disk)

Now that Thunderbird 3 is out...

... maybe the extension/add-on developers could update their extensions...

The beta-phase was long enough and gave ample time to update... (like I did).

btw: here are the release notes of TB3 in case you haven't installed it yet.

Ctrl-K everywhere

Just noticed the other day, that Ctrl-K (i.e. jump to searchbar) not only works in Firefox and Internet Explorer, but also (tata) in Thunderbird...

Now even more handy with the new indexed full search functionality in Thunderbird 3.0 beta 4....

Thunderbird 3 Beta 3 Released

The Rumbling Edge :: Thunderbird 3 Beta 3 Released: "Thunderbird 3 Beta 3 has been released"

I'm installing it as I blog this ;-)

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 is out

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 Beta 4
has been released April 27th, 2009.

"This is the sixth development milestone and fourth beta release of Firefox 3.5, the upcoming version of the Firefox web browser."

Coward that I am, I only installed it in my virtual box... quite some extensions still not ready for it, e.g. Cooliris, Context-Search and Delicious, so keeping it contained in the vbox is OK for now.

New tupalo search plugin

Since the guys at tupalo.com seem to have changed their search URL/syntax, I had to update the mycroft/opensearch plugin for Firefox accordingly.

The plugin is still limited to Vienna, because the search URL/syntax at tupalo.com is... once they change that, I'll follow suit.

Btw: the Tupalo Tools & Widgets page links to the search plugin, too.

Flickr GreaseMonkey script

For the flickr users amongst you:
if you are/were using the GreaseMonkey script for icon replies (the one where you place an icon of the person you reply to next to your text) has been updated to v3.5; the old version did not work anymore.
For details see here.

Extension from Thunderbird to Shredder

I now updated my extension to also work with Shredder (the Thunderbird3 beta).
Seems like - again - the internals of the mail popup menu changed:

• First of all the user agent now reports "Shredder" instead of Thunderbird.
• Then - after a lot of debugging - I had to replace the
  document.popupNode.getAttribute('emailAddress')
  with
  document.popupNode.getAttribute('text').
• Problem there is , that text contains more then just the emailAddress used to, and I had to parse it...

And XUL on Thunderbird/Shredder is still not easy to debug.

Mozilla Messaging is out

Finally Mozilla Messaging is "out".

"Out" as in "out in the wild", i.e. spun off of Mozilla.

And they announced the plans for Thunderbird3.

"Current plans for Thunderbird 3 include:

* Integrated calendaring (based on the existing Lightning extension)
* Radically improving search
* Many other user interface improvements such as faster workflow, improved feed reading, simpler user interface, automatic configuration, and more."

So, not a lot:

• Lightning (Calendar project) integration was to be expected,
• "radically improving search" is still not a lot if you think of the current search non-capabilities...
• and the items under bullet 3 I don't care for a lot.

Guys, what about a proper address book and social network integration ??

Firefox share up over 20% in Europe, mostly at expense of IE

Great news via Ars Technica: Firefox share up over 20% in Europe, mostly at expense of IE:



In the country breakdown Austria is reported at good 31,9%

Bugzilla RSS vs Google Reader

I've been monitoring the Mozilla Lightning bugs in bugzilla for a while now using an RSS feed of bugzilla into my Google Reader.
I frequently noticed that the information on some bugs was not complete, but did not really care.
Today's view however, was the best so far and comes with quite some aesthetic touch:


You can really watch as Google Reader tries to retrieve the feed and fails, tries again 3 hours later, gets some more date, and fails ... etc etc ... ad inf.

But it looks great.

New Flickr Uploadr

Flickr released their new version (3.0) of the upload tool, aptly called uploadr.
2 technical details worth mentioning:

1. It is open source.
2. It is based on XULRunner, the mozilla runtime.
   (and therefore Windows and Mac OS-X)
   

Actually it is the first XUL application (except for Mozilla and all the direct spin offs like Flock) I came across "in the wild".

As for the features:

• you can now manage a lot more attributes offline, i.e. still on the PC
• the user interface and layout are a lot more clear than in previous version
• since it is XUL it has - like Firefox and friends - an easy online update feature.
  

Sadly, though, the most important "Upload Photos" button vanishes unpredictably from time to time (for me). Hope this gets fixed...

Or no, it's open source, so I'll just check out the source myself, wont I.