Reproduce removed header buttons in Thunderbird 78 (Message Header Toolbar Customize 2.0.6)

Message Header Toolbar Customize 2.0.6 is available for download.

https://hogi.sakura.ne.jp/hiki/?ExperimentalExtensions

This release includes a few new functionalities.

I think all the lost things in Thunderbird 78, regarding the header view toolbar, are reproduced by this update. If you have any improvements, please let me know.

Conversation, Tag and Forward As buttons

These header view buttons are removed from Thunderbird 78. I reproduce them by Message Header Toolbar Customize 2.0.6. The buttons work the same as they do in Thunderbird 68. The example is "Icon beside text" mode. Of course, the buttons can be shown with "Icon only" mode when you choose it.

After you install v2.0.6, these buttons are added automatically but they are hidden by default. Please open customize window and configure buttons you want to use as shown. You can move them where you want to place, too.

Note:

• The "Forward" button is shown as "Forward As" in the list above in order to distinguish between original "Forward" button and new one. On the other hand, the text in the toolbar is "Forward" for both.
• Conversation button is always hidden in the message window (open with new window), regardless the configuration. This is because the window cannot open conversation by a tab. This behavior is the same as Thunderbird 68; you can put the button to the toolbar but never shown.

Select multiple items in the list

There is one more improvement. You can select multiple items in the list of customize window by Ctrl+left-click/Shift+left-click. You can move them at once. You also can toggle hidden state for them. 

For example, if you want to show the newly added three buttons, select them as follows and click show button.

Other things

• When you opened customize window for message window, the "Show:" list was initialized by messenger(main) window's configuration. Now it is fixed.
• Buttons of customize window are disabled when they do not work for a context. For example, when you select top item of the list, Up button will be disabled.

Message Header Toolbar Customize 2.0.5

Message Header Toolbar Customize 2.0.5 is now available for download.

https://hogi.sakura.ne.jp/hiki/?ExperimentalExtensions

The update mainly aims to enhance customize window UI. Now icon of each button is displayed in the list.

Following is the list of changes:

• Suppress error messages on closing customize window
• Show and Hide buttons are integrated into one button
• Text is grayed out for a hidden button in the button list
• Add icons in the button list
• Coordinate font and button size
• Change button name: SPC->Space, SEP->Separator

Access permissions of Add-ons

When you install an add-on to Thunderbird 78, unlike Thunderbird 68, you will see notification of access permission.

In this post, I describe about the reasons of the permissions of my add-ons.

There are two types of notification.

Case1: Ask concrete permissions 

The notification is shown when you install an add-on written in purely MailExtensions/WebExtensions. The add-on does not perform other than it declares here. If it requests more permissions comparing to its functionality, you may carefully check the behavior of the add-on.

Case2: Request full access

This is the case the add-on uses WebExtension Experiments. It allows add-ons to access inside of Thunderbird. It is not controlled by Thunderbird. It means it may perform important operations, such as sending messages, deleting messages etc, without your permission if malicious code is included. So, it says "full and unrestricted access" by assuming the worst case.

The framework is used in many add-ons because the new API, MailExtensions, is very restricted and it is almost impossible to realize the same things performed on Thunderbird 68.

It has security risks, as Thunderbird says, but nothing is changed from Thunderbird 68. The same issue is in Thunderbird 68 too.

My Add-ons

Here I describes reasons of access permission requests of my add-ons. I never see and use your privacy data. Don't worry.

• Check and Send
• See your mail accounts and their folders
  Used to read identity information in order to realize configurations per identity and popup identity information in the check
• Read and modify your address books and contacts
  Used to read address book and its contents to check recipients based on address books. Modification is not performed.
• Read and modify your email messages as you compose and send them
  Used to interrupt sending process to check the outgoing message. It is also used to read and modify recipients, subject and body of the message.
• EnForward
• See your mail accounts and their folders
  Used to read identity information to show candidates used to forward message in option.
• Read and modify your email messages as you compose and send them
  Used to modify subject and To address to prepare the message for Evernote forwarding
• Read your email messages and mark or tag them
  Used to read available tags to show the tag boxes in option
• Access browser tabs
  It is not used. No process requires this permission is included. I'll remove it in the next update.
• Full, unrestricted access (WebExtensions Experiments)
  Used to create temporally file in local to prepare message to be forwarded
• Evernote Tab
• Access browser activity during navigation
  Open Evernote page by Thunderbird tab
• Access browser activity during navigation
  Open Evernote page by Thunderbird tab. It is also used to enable Cookies for the page.
• Maximize Message Pane
• See your mail accounts and their folders
  Used to detect folder selection change. It is used as trigger for restoring message pane.
• Read your email messages and mark or tag them
  Used to detect message display change. Attachment view in message pane appears every time when the display is changed. So, it is used as a trigger for collapsing the view.
• Full, unrestricted access (WebExtensions Experiments)
  Use to hide (collapsed=true) message pane and so on.
• Message Header Toolbar Customize
• Full, unrestricted access (WebExtensions Experiments)
  Used to hide and reorder toolbar button
• New Tab Button
• Access browser tabs
  It is not used. No process requires this permission is included. I'll remove it in the next update.
• Full, unrestricted access (WebExtensions Experiments)
  Used to open message in a tab. MailExtensions has an API to open web page in a tab, but it does not have API for a message.
• Priority Switcher
• See your mail accounts and their folders
  Used to know server type (IMAP or not) of a folder. It used to realize "Rewrite on IMAP server only" option.
• Move, copy, or delete your email messages
  Used to rewrite message source. It copy a message and rewrite it and then remove original message. The remove operation needs this permission. Rewrite is performed by WebExtension Experiments (full access).
• Read your email messages and mark or tag them
  Used to read priority headers such as X-Priority, read whole message source to rewrite, and judge a message is starred or not
• Full, unrestricted access (WebExtensions Experiments)
  Used to create temporally file in local and submit it to Thunderbird's database in order to rewrite X-Priority of message in source level.
• Tag Popup
• Read your email messages and mark or tag them
  Used to read available tags, read assigned tags of a message, add/remove tags to/from messages
• Access browser tabs
  It is not used. No process requires this permission is included. I'll remove it in the next update.
• Full, unrestricted access (WebExtensions Experiments)
  Used to detect click on message header view and customize tag labels shown in the header to toggle tags by the label clicking

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask here.

Adding space and separator to message header toolbar

Message Header Toolbar Customize 2.0.4 is now available for download.

Download

https://hogi.sakura.ne.jp/hiki/?ExperimentalExtensions

From this version, you can add space and separator to the toolbar as following.

The customizing window newly has SPC and SEP buttons. SPC button adds space and SEP button adds separator to the toolbar. The space and separator can be moved by Up and Down button. If you want to remove it, click the Hide button. Unlike the normal button, space and separator will be deleted by the Hide button.

You will also see the new checkbox at the bottom of the window: "Apply to multi-messages header toolbar too". If you check this option, the toolbar shown when you select multiple messages will also follow the icon display and order configuration. Please note space and separator will be ignored for the multi-messages toolbar. The following is an example of icons only display and hidden Archive button.

Customize message header toolbar of Thunderbird 78

Thunderbird 78 removes customization of message header toolbar. Toolbar buttons occupy large area of the header.

It is filed as the following bug but it seems a long term activity.

[Bug 1556261] Implement message header button customisation

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1556261

So, I created add-on to change the buttons as a workaround. Please feel free to use it if you need it too.

Download: Message Header Toolbar Customize

https://hogi.sakura.ne.jp/en/mhc/mhc.rhtml

The following is an example.

Thunderbird 78 default (without add-on):

Changed by add-on:

Icon only, Junk button is hidden, More menu is moved to end

Configuration

The customize window is invoked from the followings:

• Right-click menu on the toolbar
• Menu in the "More" button of the toolbar
  

Please note customization from add-ons' option is removed from v2.0.3.

From v2.0.3, you can customize main window and message window separately as Thunderbird 68 does.

Icon display

You can choose one from the followings:

• Icons beside text
• Icons
• Text

Order and button display

You can change order of buttons and hide unnecessary buttons. Up and Down buttons change the button order. If you want to hide a button, click Hide button. To show the button again, press the Show button.

In case you want to go back the Thunderbird default order, click Reset button. And then a message offers you to restart Thunderbird. After you restart it, the order is back to original.

 

Constraints

The add-on has some constraints:

• Toolbar button without ID is not supported.
• "Hide" just hides (collapsed = true) button. The hidden button may appear by some functionalities.
• Toolbar will go back to the default when you uninstall the add-on
• Temporally added button such as add-on debugging is not supported 

 

See also:

• v2.0.4 release note
• v2.0.5 release note
• v2.0.6 release note
• v2.1.0 release note
  
• About access permission 
  

MailExtensions Priority Switcher

Priority Switcher for Thunderbird 78 is now available!

Priority Switcher 2.0.1

https://hogi.sakura.ne.jp/en/psw/psw.rhtml

It is written in MailExtensions and works only with Thunderbird 78. For Thunderbird 68 usres, v0.8.1 is still valid.

Due to the limitations of MailExtensions, there are some differences with v0.8.1.

Displaying and Changing Priority

v0.8.1 shows priority in the thread pane and change it by clicking the icon. However, MailExtensions does not have API to do that so far. So, v2.0.1 display priority of a selected message by toolbar button icon as the following.

If you click the button, a popup will be shown and you can change priority of selected messages by clicking radio box. The "Reset" will restore original priority. "Rewrite Source" and "Delete with Priority Check" are explained later.

Similar items are in the context menu of the thread pane. You can do the same things from the menus.

Rewriting Message Source

By default, changing of priority is applied only to Thunderbird index file (.msf). It means a message itself is not changed. It has the following drawbacks.

• Priority will be back to original one when you rebuild file
• On IMAP server, other mail clients show original priority

In order to avoid that Priority Switcher has a rewriting functionality. If you change priority for a message and execute the "Rewrite Source" of the popup or context menu, a new message with new X-Priority value is created and old one is removed. Please note it takes some time since it includes copy, rewrite and delete operations of messages.

The rewriting can perform automatically when you switch priority. It is disabled by default. See the "Rewriting of Messages" section of Priority Switcher option. You can choose one from the following:

• Only rewrite Thunderbird database (do nothing other than change the index file)
• Always rewrite
• Rewrite only for IMAP server

I recommend you to select the first one considering imact on performance. If you want to share new priority among mail cliants via IMAP server, select third one.

Priority Headers

This new functionality of v2.x series. Thunderbird only reads X-Priority header. Priority Switcher can interpret Importance, Priority and X-MSMail-Priority headers. Please note it is only for toolbar icon display of Priority Switcher. Thunderbird still only considers X-Priority. For example, the priority column of the thread pane is based on only X-Priority.

It is disabled by default. Please check "Interpret Importance, Priority and X-MSMail-Priority headers too" option.

Each header value is shown as following.

 

Icon display	X-Priority	Importance	Priority	X-MSMail-Priority
Highest	1	High	Urgent	High
High	2	-	-	-
Normal	3	Normal	Normal	Normal
Low	4	-	-	-
Lowest	5	Low	Non-urgent	Low

Delete with Priority Check

Priority Switcher can alert when you delete messages with higher priority or starred. v0.8.1 overwrites Thunderbird's delete function. In v2.x, the Thunderbird ones remain as it is and the delete with check is implemented as Priority Switcher function. It is also due to the limitaion of MailExtensions.

When you delete messages with high priority by "Delete with Priority Check" of popup or context menu, the following alert will be shown.

If it is OK to delete, click the "Delete" button. If not, click "Cancel" or "X" button. If you delete with the "Exclude high priority messages" checked, the high priority messages will not removed.

The alert is modeless window. So, you can change message selection while it is shown. However, even though you changed the selection, deletion will perform to messages selected before the alert. Please note.

By default, it shows alert when you delete starred or High or Highest priority messages. You can configure the condition in the option.

It can invoke from keyboard shortcut but disabled by default. You need to assign keys before you use it.

Moreover, if you invoke it context menu or toolbar button (with Trash icon. Will mention later.) with Shift key pressed, messages will not be moved to Trash and deleted completely.

Configuring Toolbar Button Commands

MailExtensions allow only one toolbar button per one add-on. So, two functionalities are implemented in the button. You can configure the button as you like. In option, the follwing two items are available:

• Change priority
• Delete messages with priority check

Icon and behavior of the button becomes as follows according to combination of the options.

Change priority	Delete messages with priority check	Icon	Popup
X	X	Priority display	Shown. "Delete with Priority Check" is available too.
X	-	Priority display	Shown but "Delete with Priority Check" is not available.
-	X	Trash icon	Not shown. When you click the button, "Delete with Priority Check" will be invoked without popup.
-	-	Priority display	Not shown. Nothing is performed if you click the button.

The third one (Trash icon) is implmented as a workaround for users who have complaint against the delete functionality. The icon cannot change priority but it can be used as substitute of original one.

Brief explanation is all. If you find some bugs or enhancements, please feel free to comment here. I hope you like the new Priority Switcher too.