Top Add-Ons for Saving Time and Hassle in Mozilla Thunderbird

by Sam Dean - Apr. 24, 2008Comments (10)

While many users of Mozilla's Firefox open source browser and Thunderbird open source e-mail engine are hip to useful Firefox extensions and efficiency tips, there are a lot of really useful add-ons for Thunderbird too. These can help you search through your e-mail more effectively, allow you to browse new messages within other applications, integrate how you use Firefox and Thunderbird together, and much more. In this post, I'll round up a series of useful Thunderbird add-ons that I use. These can save you much time and hassle.

Simile Seek adds faceted browsing features to Thunderbird, giving you several ways to search your mail most efficiently. You can watch a screencast at Simile's site to get a quick feel for how it works. The extension presents you with a sidebar within Thunderbird's interface and a Seek option within Thunderbird's Tools menu for filtering messages meeting criteria that you set. You can view messages according to when they were received, what content they include, and much more than that.

I happen to be a fan of Google Calendar. Provider for Google Calendar lets you use Lightning, Mozilla's calendar that works with Thunderbird, to read and write to Google Calendars from Thunderbird--very handy.

ThunderBrowse is a flexible way to browse links in Thunderbird without jumping out to a browser. It can save you a lot of clicking and waiting time.

StackedView is an add-on that gives you extra flexibility in how you view messages and threads. You can stack folders and threads in partial-screen views and have more screen real estate for viewing messages, and more.

ContactsSidebar lets you customize how you view your contacts in three-pane windows. You can toggle the view you want on and off as you work.

Do you have any favorite add-ons for Thunderbird?


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10 Comments
 

Plaxo can be quite useful, actually... Check it out...

0 Votes

Good call. Here's the Plaxo link:

http://www.plaxo.com/downloads/thunderbird

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I live and die by nostalgy, which adds keyboard shortcuts to move or copy messages to another folder, and to switch folders. Really helps me sort incoming mail into folders fast.

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Nostalgy, hadn't even heard of it!: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2487

Sam

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I have tried everything I can think of to get this in Thunderbird . . it always defaults to netscape. I use Firefox and Thunderbird. Got a clue?

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I second the vote for Nostalgy -- the single most used productivity tool for me on any given day. I also love the abcTajpu extension to insert foreign language characters. The Mail Redirect extension lets me "bounce" an e-mail to someone else, allowing them to reply directly. Last, but not least, the Stylish extension, with some code (a script) you can find on the web, lets you color your tagged e-mails much more visibly (hard to explain, but check out http://www.twistermc.com/blog/2007/04/10/thunderbird-labels).

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One word: Enigmail :)


http://enigmail.mozdev.org/home/index.php


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No Thunderbird installation is complete without the "disable drag n drop" extension. Here in the office I can't tell you how many times I had to recover folders inadvertently hidden or deleted by fat fingering the left mouse button... Disable Drag N Drop ended all of that.


https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4591


0 Votes

Good Post !


Would like to add one another addon which i found very useful.


We might forgot to attach the files , how about having one addon which will alert you b4 sending if you are not attached the file (Analalyzes the mail body and alrerts).


Attachment Reminder addon.


https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/5759


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'Seek' provides turbo-charged search in Thunderbird! Even if Thunderbird has some pretty good options for organizing and finding messages if that is not enough then maybe the extension 'Seek' (http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Seek) will interest you. It adds something called faceted search to Thunderbird. This basically means that the information concerned - in this case the characteristics and content of your emails - is indexed and characterized and can then then be searched against a whole range of 'facets' like dates, recipients, tags, etc., plus free-form searches. It's basically a way for you to provide information to the search engine so that it narrows down the search. It's a really powerful technique definitely worth trying. The only issue I have with Seek is that while you can open and read messages you've found with Seek 'engaged' it seems it isn't possible to actively work with (e.g. reply to) them. For that it seems that you have to 'disengage' Seek (using Cntrl K). But that can be lived with for the power of the searches possible.


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