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

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?