Thunderbird Tips: adding many tags

Tag Toolbar acelerates use of tags in Thunderbird. However, there is one precaution for adding many tags to a message. Attached tags are stored in X-Mozilla-Keys header and a summary file whose file extension is *.msf. The most important fact is the length of the header is limited to 80 bytes. If the sum of lengths of attached tag keys exceeds the limit, overflowed tag keys are stored only in the summary file. Namely, the overlowed tags will disappear if you remove or rebuild the file. For example, if you rebuild a summary file by clicking "Rebuild Index" button in Folder Properties form, overflowed tags in the folder are all gone.

In order to avoid the issue, I suggest two tips. One tip is to make tags whose keys are short. If you create a tag named "long long tag name", its key will be "long_long_tag_name". It costs 18 bytes. If you create a tag named "a" and rename it to "long long tag name", its key is still "a" in spite of its long name. You can save 17 bytes by the latter way.

Another tip is to compact folders. If you compact folders by File->Compact Folders etc., mail data is reconstructed. During the reconstruction, the X-Mozilla-Keys is also reconstructed and all tags are stored in it, exceed the 80 bytes limit. Once all tags are stored in the header, it is OK to remove/rebuild the summary file. However, there is one note for it. The reconstruction will be conducted on the folders in which the messages are removed or moved.

I'm glad you could enjoy tagging messages with these tips and Tag Toolbar.

Tag Toolbar 0.7.00b1

New features are added to Tag Toolbar beta. In this version, you can add/remove all tags in the category you open at once. If you use Tag Toolbar in Text or Color mode, + and - buttons appears in the toolbar. If you use it in Category mode, two new menus are added in a category.

You can download it from my web site.
Please let me hear your comments.

Check and Send 0.8.00b1

Beta test for Check and Send 0.8 has started. In the build 0.8.00b1, the following functionalities are added:

1. You can set up to confirm if the keyword you specified don't appear in a message (available in both word and attachment check)
2. You can check only subject of a message (available in both word and attachment check)
3. You can check file extension of an attachment

See the screenshot of the option dialog too.

This build is early beta and experimental. Some functionalities may be removed in future update. If you find any problems or have requests/comments, please feel free to tell me.

Maximize Message Pane 1.0.00b1

MMP is designed to work on default Thunderbird: no extension and default theme. So, it will not work if an extension which changes layout of Thunderbird. In this version, I've added new hidden option to solve this issue. Note that this option is added for advanced users who can customize Thunderbird.

You can use this option by the following steps:

1. download MMP1.0.00b1 and install it
   
2. find out IDs of XUL elements you want to collapse by DOM Inspector etc.
3. open Config Editor
4. create new string pref: maxmsgpane.usr_idlist
5. set the IDs to its value (multiple IDs are set by using "," as separator)
   
6. restart Thunderbird

For example, if you want to collapse the status bar, set status-bar as the pref's value.

This option is experimental. It may be removed in future release.

Eudora 8.0.0b2 has tabs!

Eudora 8.0.0b2 is now available for download. It is based on the latest trunk of Thunderbird; it is considered as Thunderbird3.0a1 + Penelope extension version 0.1a22. So, it has tabs since Thunderbird3.0a1 has tabs. The tab is different from one I posted before. I think the Thunderbird3.0/Eudora way is superior to that.

You must note that it is beta and Thunderbird on which it is based is alpha yet. You should use it at your own risk. However, I think it is worth trying for all tab addicts.

How do you install add-ons to Thunderbird?

I am sometimes asked that I could make an extension to install add-ons to Thunderbird easily. AMO says you should download an add-on to your hard disk then install it by the form from Tools->Add-ons menu. Many users may think it is annoying. So, I suggest you a better way.

It is very easy way. Firstly, open a web page in which a link for an add-on you want to install exists by Firefox and open the Thunderbird's add-ons form from Tools->Add-ons. Then, drag and drop the link to the add-ons form. You don't need to download the add-on to your hard disk. I think it is less annoying than the way AMO says.

I tested it on Windows XP. I don't know whether it works or not on other OS.
Anyway, AMO seems to know the issue and work to improve it. Think it as a workaround.

Tip for installing extensions to Seamonkey

"Get before Send" and "Check and Send" are Seamonkey compatible. So, you can install them to not only Thnderbird but also Seamonkey. You can download Seamonkey compatible builds from my homepage.

However, there is a problem when you install to Seamonkey; You may see xul error after the install. It depends on how you installed Seamonkey. If you installed Seamonkey by Windows installer, the error may appear; by zip is OK. The bug have been filed as Bug 396908.

If you see the error after you install my extension to Seamonkey, uninstall Seamonkey and install it again by zip archive.

Priority Switcher 0.4.40 is released

Priority Switcher 0.4.40 has been approved by AMO.
A bug in the privious version is fixed.
Please update if you use v0.4.30.

Download

Check and Send 0.7.40 is released

I've update Check and Send.
Thank you for your contributions for the beta test.

This version includes the following update:

• add "Select All" and "Clear Selection" buttons to the alert dialog of address check
• bug fix: check for a list contain accentuated characters in its name does not work
• update for locales: English, Japanese, Italian, French, German, Dutch, Slovak are available now

You can download it from AMO.
If you are Seamonkey user, download it from my homepage.

Please feel free to post your comments and questions here.

Priority Switcher 0.4.30 is released

I've updated Priority Switcher.
This version includes the following update:

• add new locales: Italian, French, Dutch, Korean, Polish

You can download it from AMO.
If you are new to the extension, visit the link above and read the description.
Please feel free to post here if you have any questions.

Thunderbird 1.5.0.14 (not yet released)

Accoding to the latest log of the weekly staff meeting, Mozilla concerns to release TB1.5.0.14.
I think TB1.5 came to its end of life in October.
Does anyone know whether TB1.5 is still supported or not officially?

Anyway, the news is hopeful because I know some users using TB1.5 yet.

about:mozilla

Mozilla has started to issue a weekly news letter called about:mozilla. It is issued every Monday and you can get the latest news of Firefox, Thunderbird etc... I think it is worth reading for all Mozilla users.

This week's contents are:

• The Book of Mozilla
• Mozilla Foundation launches Directed Giving program
• Firefox 3 Beta 1 now available
• Proto: new Mac theme in beta
• Memory leaks and Mozilla
• Extend Firefox 2 add-on contest

You can subscribe it from here.

Check and Send 0.7.40beta

I've started beta test for Check and Send 0.7.40.
This version includes the following update:

1. add "Select All" and "Clear Selection" buttons to the alert dialog of address check
2. bug fix: check for a list contain accentuated characters in its name does not work
3. update for locales

I'm going to test it for a week then submit it to AMO if no problem is found.
You can download the beta from here.

Please join the test!

Tip for Check and Send

I've asked about keywords for attachment checking of Check and Send: one of my extension for Thunderbird. The user can finally check a message as he want but the trouble is one in which many users may involve. So, I write about it.

You can set multiple keywords for word/attachment checking by using "|" except for when you use regular expression. The user inserted blanks before and after the "|". The extension does not ignore blanks in the keywords, so it does not work as he want.

See the following example. Assume that you set "file| attachment | attached" as keywords for attachment checking and you wrote a message including "Please see the attachment." without attatchment files. You may think the "attachment" in the keywords will match with the sentence but, indeed, it does not match since "." follows the "attachment" in the sentence, not a blank. You should remove blanks from key words like "file|attachment|attached" if you want to match the keyword with the sentence.

Check your keywords if you cannot check a message as you want.

Search box

I've added the search box on the right pane of this blog.
You can search articles of this blog and contents of my homepage.
I hope this will help you.

Tabbed Thunderbird 2.0.0.9

Myk Melez added tabs to Thunderbird 2.0.0.9. You can download the build here. A tab functionalitiy is now enabled in the latest trunk of Thunderbird. Note that Myk's tab is different from the one in the trunk and it is not an official build of Mozilla. If you want to read a message in larger area like tabs in the latest trunk, my extension, Maximize Message Pane, would be a solution.

Tag Toolbar and labels of Gmail

I've received many questions about synchronizing tags of Thunderbird and labels of Gmail. So, I write answer for the questions here.

In order to synchronize Thunderbird and Gmail, you should use IMAP. On the Gmail's IMAP, labels of Gmail are converted to Folders then Gmail passes them to Thunderbird. When you move a message to a folder on Thunderbird, a label of a message is changed on Gmail; when you change a label of a message, a folder in which the message is stored is changed on Thunderbird. See the help for detail.

Namely, in other words, Gmail's labels are equivalent to Thunderbird's folders, not tags. Since it is a spec of Gmail, it is difficult to change the behavior or recognize a Gmail's label as a Thunderbird's tag. I think it is very useful if Gmail's label could be regarded as Thunderbird's tag, too. But I have no idea for Tag Toolbar to realize the request.

Anyway, Google, Mozilla and MailCo would know the issue, I think. Some solutions might be proposed by them. And if you have any good ideas, please tell me.

Netscape Messenger 9

Netscape Messenger 9 alpha1 is released. It seems that all extension for Thunderbird will work on Netscape Messenger 9.

It is based on Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 and a few functionalities related to AOL are added. However, they ask users new features they want to add in their blog.

Supported Languages and Call for Translation

All my extensions are translated at BabelZilla.
If you concern about translation of my extensions, please join BabelZilla and translate their strings.

And please tell me if my English strings in the extensions are incorrect or confusing.

Each extensions include the following locales:

• Maximize Message Pane: English, Japanese, Italian, Russian, Spanish (Spain), French, German, Portuguese (Brazilian), Danish, Slovak, Dutch, Ukrainian, Polish, Norwegian (Bokmål), Hungarian, Chinese (Traditional)

• Get before Send: English, Japanese, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Ukrainian, French, Spanish (Spain), Slovak, Danish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (Portugal), Polish, German

• Check and Send: English, Japanese, Italian, French, Dutch, Slovak, German, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Spanish
  

• Priority Switcher: English, Japanese, Italian, French, Dutch, Korean, Polish, Catalan, Portuguese (Brazilian), German, Russian, Finnish
  

• Tag Toolbar: English, Japanese, French, Italian, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Chinese (Simplified), Portuguese (Brazilian), Dutch, Spanish, German, Czech

• Gmail IMAP Account Setup: English (US), Japanese, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Bulgarian, German, Russian, French, Spanish (Spain), Swedish, English (British), Slovak, Indonesian (Indonesia), Turkish, Catalan, Hungarian, Korean, Arabic, Czech, Danish, Portuguese (Portugal), Ukrainian

• Google Contacts: English (US), Japanese, French, Spanish (Spain), Portuguese (Brazilian), Catalan, Italian, Chinese (Simplified), German, Russian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Portuguese (Portugal)

Thanks in advance :)

Tag bar will disappear from toolbar palette if you use Lightning

A problem of Tag Toolbar has been found; Tag bar will disappear from the toolbar palette if you put Tag bar to there. This occurs only in the toolbar in the main window of Thunderbird and with Lightning0.7.

If you don't need tag toolbar in the main window anymore, this is not a problem. If you want to back Tag bar to the toolbar, the Restore Default Set button in the toolbar palette and set the toolbar to default state. Tag bar will come back to the toobar after the operation. It will be troublesome to you because you need to customize toolbar again but there is no workaround other than it.

Tag Toolbar 0.6.10 is released!

Tag Toolbar 0.6.10 is approved by AMO editor. You will receive update notification soon. As the post in yesterday says some useful functionalities are added.

The following is the detail of the changes:

• Tag search functionalities
• Search tags on Tag Bar
• Search can be saved as a category like a saved search folder
• Search and select tags on Category Editor
• Remember the last selected category in a folder
• if you don't need the function, add ttb.remember_cat and set it to false by Config Editor then restart Thunderbird
  
• Add tag toolbar to the message compose window
• specified tags are add to the message saved in the sent folder
  
• Bug fix
• display settings will be changed when you cancel toolbar customization

Some screenshots and documentations are available on my homepage. Please refer to them too.

Tag Toolbar 0.6.10 (not yet released)

I've submitted Tag Toolbar 0.6.10 to AMO and it is waiting for approval now. In this version tag search functionalities are added. It searches tags by keyword/color and the search is saved as a category like a saved search folder in Thunderbird. Moreover, you can add tags to a sent message when you compose a message in v0.6.10.

You can see some screenshots and a documentation of v0.6.10 in my homepage. Please wait until it is approved!

Welcome to h.ogi blog

I've started blog for non-japanese speakers.
In this blog, I'll post various information of my extensions for Mozilla products(for Thunderbird so far): Maximize Message Pane, Check and Send, Get before Send, Tag Toolbar and Priority Switcher.
Please add a comment here if you have any suggestions or requests.
You can also post questions if you are in trouble.