Mozilla today, after releasing Firefox 10, has also released Thunderbird 10, a new version of the email software.

Thunderbird too is now flagging add-ons as compatible by default. Add-ons ship with minimum and maximum version compatibility information. The issue previously was that add-ons were flagged as incompatible if the author failed to update the version information in time. This made it difficulty for developers to keep their add-ons compatible with the latest releases.

Another change is the native integration of the Open Search extension in the email client. A right-click now displays an option to search for the selected term on the Internet. This is handled in the email client and not in the default system web browser.

The rendering component uses the Gecko 10 engine that the Firefox web browser uses as well.

Users who do not want their searches to open in the email client can set the preference mail.websearch.open_externally to true. This is done with a click on Tools > Options, switching to Advanced > General, clicking on Config Editor in the menu and filtering for the above preference. Just double-click it to toggle its value from false to true. Is there a way to disable web search completely? Not that I’m aware off. Maybe there is a preference but I have not found it yet.

Two new keyboard shortcuts have been added to Thunderbird 10, in addition to the changes outlined above. It is now possible to add attachments to messages with the Ctrl-Shirt-A (Command-Shift-A) shortcut. Named anchors can now be removed with Ctrl-Shift-R (Coammdn-Shift-R), and messages in the message reader and compose window can now be zoomed with the scroll wheel (Ctrl-Scroll Wheel).

Thunderbird users should have received update information by now in the email client. New users can download the latest version for all supported operating systems and languages from the Mozilla website.

A new post by Microsoft employee Dharmesh Mehta on the Inside Windows Live blog highlights core reasons why users might want to switch from Gmail to Hotmail, before explaining the actual steps that migrates their email account to the Hotmail email service.

• Hotmail & Facebook work well together. You can update your Facebook status, chat with Facebook friends, view their updates, and comment right from your Hotmail inbox. You can’t do this from Gmail.
• You can easily share lots of photos and large attachments. Hotmail lets you share hundreds of photos or other files in one message using the integrated online storage from SkyDrive. You can’t do this in Gmail.
• Hotmail works great with Office. Using the Office Web Apps, Hotmail lets you view and edit Office docs for free right in your inbox. Gmail doesn’t work well with Office.
• Hotmail lets you get a handle on graymail. With customizable categories and scheduled sweeps, you can quickly clean up things like newsletters, social updates, and daily deals so you only see the mail that really matters to you. Gmail doesn’t have Sweep.

These features alone won’t convince many users to move their email account to Hotmail. Combined with Google’s announcement however they could be enough to get some users to move their accounts.

It needs to be noted though that Gmail offers features that Hotmail does not offer. This includes IMAP support or two step authentication, both of which are not supported by Hotmail.

The guide to switch from Gmail to Hotmail lists three steps.

• Create a Hotmail account. If you don’t already have one, you need to create a Hotmail account. The best way to do this is to get a new email address either @hotmail.com or @live.com. Or, if you already have an email address you want to keep using, you can keep using it and sign up here. You don’t have to use our domain.
• Import your old messages from Gmail. You’ll probably want to keep your old email and contacts so we’ve made it simple to bring them in. TrueSwitch is an easy tool which will import your email and contacts and forward any new email to Hotmail for 90 days. Go to the TrueSwitch site and follow the steps there. When you sign back in to Hotmail, you’ll notice that it’s beginning to import your emails (this could take a few hours if you have a lot of emails to bring over).
• Connect your Gmail account. This step is optional, but if you want to make sure you receive future messages from Gmail, you can have Hotmail automatically get all new emails that are sent to your old Gmail account. These are the steps to connect your accounts:
  a. In your inbox, click Options and then More options.

  b. Click Sending/receiving email from other accounts.

  c. Click Add an email account.

  d. Provide your Gmail account details.

Step 2 and 3 address core issues that users who move mail accounts want resolved before they even start thinking about it. Access to all previous mail messages and the forwarding of messages that are send to the old account are covered in those two steps.

Are you considering moving your Gmail account to another provider?

The free Microsoft Outlook add-in Important Mail Alert changes this by allowing you to specify exactly when you want to be notified. The program installs itself automatically, and Outlook users find its entry in the Outlook interface after installation. The Ablebits tab displays a single button that displays or hides the add-in configuration screen in Outlook.

The program supports keyword based rules and will look in the mail subject and body for selected phrases. This is the core difference to Outlook’s own rule based system which can only be configured to look for keywords in the subject of the email.

Keyword only rules are somewhat limited on the other hand, as it is not possible to link keywords to senders for instance or integrate the system into Outlook’s own rule based system.

Alerts are then displayed as notifications on the screen and in the program’s alert tab.

A click on the configuration icon opens the list of mail accounts that you want the rules to be valid for.

Lets take a closer look at the benefits the add-in provides. We have already mentioned that it will not only search the messages subject but also the body text and the to field. That’s however not the only improvement over Outlook’s rule based system. Important Email Alert in fact runs completely independent, which means that you will receive alerts even if the message is moved by Outlook’s own rules system.

Important Email Alert besides that is compatible with Microsoft’s Exchange Server, and offers to open mails with a single click in its interface. The add-in is easy to setup and use, even though it would be great to have additional filtering options available.

Outlook users who want to be notified when email subjects, bodies or recipients are mentioned can download and install the Outlook add-on from the developer website.

The add-on is compatible with Outlook 2003, 2007 and Outlook 2010, provided they run on a 32-bit or 64-bit edition of Microsoft Windows. The add-in furthermore requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 to be installed on the system. (via Nirmal TV)

Sebastian recommended the HTML Temp add-on for the Thunderbird email client to switch HTML messages in Thunderbird on or off more effortlessly.

Download HTML Temp from the official Thunderbird add-ons repository. Once it has been downloaded open up the email client and click on Tools > Add-ons to open the add-ons manager. Click on the options icon on the left of the search all add-ons form there and select Install Add-on from file from the context menu.

Select the downloaded add-on on your local computer and install it in the email program. You need to restart Thunderbird before it becomes available.

The add-on adds the current message display preference in the lower right corner of the status bar. You can now right-click on it to switch to Simple HTML or Original HTML whenever you need to view a message in HTML. Once you are done you use the same method to switch back to plain text messages.

The add-on allows you to move a button with the same functionality to one of the toolbars. This can be helpful if you have disabled the status bar in the program or prefer to click on the button in the header area of the email client.

Update: Sebastian mentioned that the toolbar button behaves different from the status bar button. When you click the toolbar button HTML will be enabled only for the active email and no other. This means that you do not have to click again to restore the plain text message view.

I also have to say at this point that I’m not including add-ons in this guide. This guide only looks at the native options that Thunderbird offers. The majority of changes should also be applicable in other email programs.

1. Disable HTML messages

I get it. HTML messages look nicer. You can do all kinds of things with HTML messages that you cannot do with plain text messages. Plain text messages on the other hand only display textual contents and nothing else, which reduces the likelihood of exploits.

You find the setting under View > Message Body As > Plain Text.

2. Disable JavaScript

The developers have removed JavaScript in Thunderbird 3 for emails completely. There is no option to enable JavaScript for emails. JavaScript for RSS feeds is enabled on the other hand. Thunderbird users who do not use RSS or do not want JavaScript in their feeds can disable it the following way. Click on Tools > Options > Advanced tab > Config Editor to open the advanced configuration window.

Filter for the term JavaScript and double-click JavaScript.enabled to set it to false if it is set to true.

3. Use SSL

You should furthermore make sure that all of your email accounts use SSL connections to protect against snooping and eavesdropping. Click on Tools > Account settings, and there on the Server Settings listing underneath each email account.

Check the help pages or contact support if None is selected under Connection Security. You also need to click on Outgoing Server (SMTP) at the bottom of the listing to see if all outgoing servers are also using SSL for connections.

4. E-Mail Scams

Go to Tools > Options > Security > E-Mail Scams and make sure that Tell me if the message I’m reading is a suspected email scam is enabled. This basically checks back if the email is a known scam email and warns you if it is.

5. Master Password

If you are working on a multi-user PC or want to protect your email passwords from unauthorized access, you should consider setting a master password in the email client for that purpose. Anyone with access to the PC can look at all email usernames and passwords if they are not protected with a master password.

Click on Tools > Options > Security, and check the Use a master password box there to enable the option. You are then asked to enter a password which from that moment on will protect the password database from unauthorized access.

Thunderbird displays a form on start up that asks for that master password. The password quality meter visualizes the strength of the selected password.

6. Disable the preview pane

Thunderbird uses a layout with three panes by default. Email accounts and folders on the left, the email messages on the upper right, and the preview pane at the bottom right.

Email previews are automatically displayed when you select a message in the email client. You may want to disable that feature as it may be used for malicious purposes. Please note that this is unlikely, especially if you have disabled HTML messages and JavaScript.

The easiest way to disable the message preview pane is to press the F8 key on the keyboard. You can re-enable the pane easily with another tap on the same key.

7. Display All Headers

Email headers help you find out if an email is legit or fake. Thunderbird displays a compact version by default which cannot be used to verify an email address. You can enable full email headers with a click on View > Headers > All.

Please note that Thunderbird limits the space available for email headers on its page. You can scroll the page by holding down the left mouse button and moving the scroll wheel up or down.

Closing Words

Add-ons can furthermore improve security but that’s outside of the scope of this guide. Let me know if you are interested in a list of security related add-ons for the Thunderbird email client.

Have additional tips you’d like to share? Let me know in the comments.

Yesterday I started to look into the issue more closely to figure out if there was an option to create a new Hotmail email address from within an existing account. It took some digging through Hotmail’s page layout to find the page where new email addresses can be added.

Open the Hotmail main page and sign into your Hotmail account if you are not already signed in. You should now see the inbox and the frontpage of the account.

Locate the Options link in the top right corner and select the more options link from the context menu. This opens the main account control panel where you can configure the majority of account related settings. Click on account details under managing your account. Hotmail may ask you to enter your account password again before the next page is displayed.

Click on the your email addresses link under other options. This opens a page listing all linked email addresses and aliases. A click on add an email address allows you to create a new Hotmail or Windows Live account, or to link a third party account to the Hotmail account.

Just enter a new account name and select whether you would like it to be a hotmail.com or live.com account.

The address is automatically added to the account and you can start using the account right away.

You can alternatively open the following link to create new Hotmail email addresses right away. This opens the mail overview page right away where you can add or remove email accounts.

Unlike spam, graymail cannot be filtered out that easily, as it is way more versatile. Even more problematic, while email account owners may not want to see most of the graymail on a daily basis, they may want to see some.

Considering that newsletters make up the biggest part of the average user’s mail delivery, Microsoft decided to tackle the problem from that angle.

The Hotmail team started to create a new newsletter filter that would allow users to filter newsletters automatically. When you now open Hotmail, you see the new newsletters filter displayed in the top filtering row. A social updates, contacts and groups filter is available as well.

A click on newsletters displays only mail that Hotmail’s SmartScreen filter has classified as such. According to Microosft, about 97% of all newsletters get identified correctly by the machine. Hotmail users can change email classifications, which may be helpful when emails get classified as newsletters when they are not, or when newsletters do not get recognized as such. These user actions help to improve the filtering further.

The main question is this: How helpful is the new newsletter filter? Newsletters are still displayed in the inbox which means that they will crowd your inbox as they did before. The only real advantage that I see is that you now have faster access to newsletters. This can be helpful in determining which newsletters to keep and which to unsubscribe to. An automatic option to hide newsletters from appearing in the inbox does not seem to be available at this point in time. You can still configure email filters though to move newsletters to a new folder automatically, but that option was available before the update as well.

Creating a basic signature is actually pretty easy even though the process has changed with every new version of Outlook. You can create a new signature in Outlook 2010 by switching to the Message tab and selecting Signature > Signatures from the Include group there in the ribbon at the top of the program window.

Click on the E-Mail Signature tab there and select New, type a name and click OK. Start entering your signature text under Edit signature and use formatting and styles from the available selection. You can add an electronic business card, hyperlink or picture to the signature optionally. A click on OK saves it in the program.

You can then associate the signature with an e-mail account by selecting Choose default signature in the E-mail account list in the Signatures menu, or insert signatures manually into messages.

Microsoft Outlook Email Signature Creator is a handy tool that allows you to create professionally looking email signatures in a heartbeat.

The program displays a set of forms for you to fill out on start. Here you can add your name and job title, telephone, mobile and Fax, e-mail and web address, street address, footer or terms and a logo or picture.

A click on preview loads the created signature in the default web browser. The Outlook signature generator offers four different color schemes, blue, red, green and black, with the blue scheme selected by default.

You can furthermore change the text size from small to medium or large.

Once you are satisfied with the creation you can create the signature with a click on Create It. Microsoft Outlook Email Signature Creator can either create and install the signature automatically into Outlook, or only create the signature so that it is up to you to integrate it into Microsoft’s messaging software. Users who use a different email software may use the second option to create a signature for their email program.

Windows users can download the program from the official website. The software requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, and is compatible with Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 running on all versions of Windows from Windows XP on.

The Thunderbird add-on Account Colors changes this. The extensions allows to assign font and background colors to accounts or identities to visually distinguish them from other accounts set up in the email client.

The extension makes no modifications to the email client on its own. It is up to you to customize the program in the add-on options. Just click on Tools > Add-Ons and there on the options button next to the Account Colors entry.

Settings are displayed in five tabs in the interface that allow you to make modifications to the folder, thread and message pane, as well as the compose window.

Font styles and font sizes can be changed for different identifiers that are displayed in the email client. This includes account names in the folder pane, and subject names in message lists or message headers.

Font and background colors are taken from the account and identity colors tab. All colors are set to black and white by default, which you need to change during setup if you want to distinguish accounts from each other.

Other options include bolding fonts, showing tree lines in the folder pane, row stripes in the thread pane or increasing the row spacing in the folder or thread pane.

The main purpose of the add-on is to improve the visibility of email accounts. Assigning colors to email accounts makes it a lot easier to identify those accounts on first glance.

Thunderbird users can download the Account Colors extension from the official Mozilla Thunderbird add-ons repository. The extension has been tested under the latest stable version of Thunderbird (that is Thunderbird 9.0.1).

The release notes list several fixed security vulnerabilities which make Thunderbird 9 a mandatory update for all users of the email client. The security advisories page lists a total of seven security vulnerabilities, of which one has been rated critical and the other six as moderate.

It is however relative unlikely that Thunderbird will see attacks exploiting the issue, as it uses a crash when scaling an Ogg video element to extreme sizes.

The remaining list of changes is not nearly as spectacular. Thunderbird 9 uses the new Mozilla Gecko 9 engine, and an opt-in system to send anonymous performance and usability reports to Mozilla. The data is used to improve future versions of the email client. This is the same feature that has already been implemented into the Firefox web browser.

Windows users can now show and hide the menu bar when they press the Alt key. The change log furthermore lists better keyboard handling for attachments without going into details as to what has been improved in the version.

The only other features listed in the change log are additional support for Personas, and “several user interface fixes and improvements”.

Thunderbird 9 ships with another change that has not been mentioned in the release notes. Users who click on the Tools menu will notice a new Test Pilot entry there. This is a Thunderbird extension that the developers have installed in the email client. Test Pilot is used to “make Thunderbird better by running user studies”.

Silently installing the extension without giving users options to opt-out during updating or installation is definitely something to be criticized. Thunderbird users can however uninstall the extension in the add-ons manager.

Have you updated your version of Thunderbird yet? What’s your take on the new version?

I tried a lot of “internal” fixes, like removing the msf files so that Thunderbird would regenerate them, or reinstalling the program to see if that would resolve the problem.

Unfortunately though nothing did. I did notice that my mail was still there which was reassuring to say the least.

I first thought about backing up all emails to Mailstore and starting anew, but this would have meant that I would have to juggle between two programs (the new Thunderbird and Mailstore) for a while.

I kept the option in mind and decided to play around with profiles first. First thing I did was to add -profilemanager to the end of the Thunderbird startup command to launch the profile manager during start up.

You can do that by locating the Thunderbird shortcut in the taskbar or start menu. Right-click it and select Properties from the options. Look for the Target field and add -profilemanager at the end of the command. This launches the profile manager before the email client is started. A profile is like a new user account for Thunderbird.

I decided to create a new profile. This is a simple process, all you need to do is to click on create profile and enter a name if you like. Exit the window afterwards.

Now for the difficulty part. Locate your Thunderbird profile folder on your hard drive. Windows users find the profile under C:\Users\Martin\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\

Note that you should see at least two profiles listed there. For the sake of simplicity, we assume you see two profiles. First your original profile with all your emails, and then your secondary profile that you have just created. We are now going to move important data from the old profile to the new one. Important data in this regards are all emails, contact information and preferences.

Locate the Mail (and if you like ImapMail) folder in your old profile and copy it to the new profile. Look into the root folder of the profile and copy the following files to the new profile: all abook*.mab files, all prefs files, all signons files.

Once done start Thunderbird using the new profile. Please note that you need to enter the mailbox passwords again. All extensions and other customizations are not moved. I’d suggest to install them anew, but you could try and move them from the old to the new profile.

You should now see all your mailboxes in the new profile. The preferences should be the same as in the old profile, as we have moved the preference files to the new profile as well.

This process has resolved the issue on my end. I selected the new profile to be started with Thunderbird automatically, and removed the profilemanager command from the startup.

Have you ever experienced issues with an email client? What did you do to resolve them?

New email accounts can be created on the official Hotmail website. Please note that you can use an existing Windows Live account to sign in as well.

Schedule Cleanup

The new cleanup option is configured individually for each sender. It basically allows you to delete messages from that particular sender automatically. This can be handy for “daily-offer” emails, logs, notifications or any other kind of messages that are only relevant for a specific amount of time. You can alternatively configure the messages to be moved to another folder instead.

To configure cleanups select a message from the inbox, and then Sweep > Schedule Cleanup.

This displays an overlay menu with the following configuration options:

• Only keep the latest message from this sender
• Delete all messages older than 10 days (alternatively 3, 30 or 60 days)
• Move all messages older than 10 days (3, 30 or 60) to a specific folder.

One-click unsubscribe

This is a similar to Gmail’s unsubscribe from newsletter and notification option. Hotmail notifies the sender that the user wants to unsubscribe, and will furthermore configure filters to move existing and future messages into the junk.

Flag Important Messages

It is now easier to flag important message to locate them faster in the future. The new “Keep this message at the top of your inbox” option makes sure that important messages stay on top of the box and are not moved down with the rest of the messages.

The Hotmail team has created a short video demonstrating the new flag capabilities.

Photo Album, Attachment Improvements

Users who send photos regularly now see the photos in Hotmail when they are composing the email. That’s useful considering that you’d only see file names before.

Large attachments can now also be send using SkyDrive which resolves possible attachment size limitations. Instead of compressing emails or splitting them up to stay below the limit, it is now possible to store the files on SkyDrive instead.

The new forgotten attachment detector makes sure that you have not forgotten to attach files to the email. This is based on popular words and phrases that indicate attachments.

Instant Actions

Instant actions are one-click actions. Flag to stick mails at the top is for instance an instant action. Hotmail users can configure actions in detail. This is done under Options > More Options > Customizing Hotmail > Instant Actions.

Actions can be configured to always show or only show on mouse over. Flag is the only action that is always shown by default, while delete and mark read/unread are only shown on hoover.

Additional actions are moving and categorizing messages, sweep and junk. The order can be configured as well.

Folder Management

Hotmail users can now create and manage folders more easily with a right-click on the folder. Messages can now also be moved directly to folders that are displayed under Folders.

Hotmail for Android

Android users can now download and install the official Hotmail Android app. The app features email, calendar and contact synchronization.

It supports multiple Hotmail accounts on the same device and displays new mail notifications on the Home screen.

Of all the features, the option to stick emails on top of a folder is the one that I like the most.

What’s your take on the new set of features? (via)

Open Outlook and see what you always see: an interface. Brilliant, now where are the PST files? There are two ways to find them and it is very simple. In Outlook 2010, open the File menu and click Account Settings. In Outlook 2007, click the Tools tab and select Account Settings.

This will open a window with various tabs that help you organize your Outlook content. Click the Data Files tab and you will see your Outlook data files, including PST and OST files. They will be clearly indicated by name. Highlight the PST file listing and then click Open Folder just above the list.

Your PST files are saved in your User Data folder by default and this is the folder location that will open. Simply double click the listing for your PST files and there they are.

Alternatively, you can open your PST files directly from the User Data folder without opening Outlook. Open Windows Explorer and in the address bar, type:

%localappdata%\Microsoft\Outlook\

Press Enter and the folder will open. Once again, simply double click your PST files and they should open. If this leads you to a read-only file that you cannot open, right-click the file and select Properties. Under the security tab, you can make sure that you have allowed all permissions for the user account. The default account is often the SYSTEM user and permissions are restricted.
Click the edit button to define permissions for certain users, select which account you are using and all permissions. Click Apply and restart your system.
At that point, you can try the above steps again and it should work out. If this all seems like too much to bother with, there a applications that will find the PST files for you, but it is just as easy to try this first.

Other troubleshooting issues may be inactive services with Outlook and Windows Live. This can also cause problems accessing PST files. Check to make sure that all services associated with these programs are enabled and active.
Normally, you should not have any trouble retrieving the PST files from Outlook. If you continue to have problems retrieving PST files from outlook, also check for firewall issues.

So how does this break down and can we draw any meaningful conclusions about it?  There were a series of questions in the study designed to do just that.  It would appear that those most likely to check their work email are also those people most worried about losing their jobs, either through redundancy or something else.

This would seem reasonable as work anxiety can easily cross over into holiday periods.  Those more addicted to their email however are also more likely to check their email.  People in the 18-24 age bracket were the biggest age group while those over 50 didn’t seem to mind leaving work behind for a while.

Of the total figures, 31% of people questioned said they would intermittently check their work emails with 15% intending to check them regularly.  By contrast just 34% of people had no intention of checking their work email at all.

There can be no doubt that work email can impact negatively on the rest of your life.  The Work Foundation Think Tank told the BBC that “It suggests that about two thirds of all employees feel the urge to respond to emails immediately as they come through.”  This is common in my experience and a symptom of the general immediacy of both email and instant messaging.

It is becoming more and more difficult to get away from work email too, with modern smartphones all offering Exchange support and more and more people having multiple inboxes on their phones and home PCs.

Personally I’ll have a few email clear days but while I’ll check work email as I’m self employed I don’t expect anything to happen as the companies I tend to work with have clear closedowns.  It is an interesting phenomenon though so we’d like to hear if you plan to check your work email over the Christmas holidays and if you think there should be a clear switch-off from work when away from the office.  Why not tell us in the comments below?

That’s what Hotmail has added to their website recently. When you open the Windows Live Hotmail website you see the standard Hotmail sign in screen for the most part. If you look below the Sign In button you see this:

Not your computer? Get a single use code to sign in with

The sign in form changes when you click on the link. You are now asked to enter your Windows Live ID and the single use code instead of your regular password to log in to the service.

This is also indicated at the top where it states:

sign in with single use code. If you’re signing in from a public computer, you can use a single use code instead of your password for added security.

If you do not have a code yet you can request one with a click on Get one here on the same page. You are then asked to enter your Windows Live ID and a mobile phone number that is linked to the account. Microsoft will send a text message to the phone number containing the single use code that you can use to sign in to Hotmail.

If you have not linked a mobile phone number to your Windows Live account yet you can do so in the account settings. Open the link and enter your standard login information. Click on the Manage link next to Security Info on the page and then on Add New below Mobile Phone on the next page.

The mobile phone number needs to be confirmed before it can be used for single use codes. Hotmail sends an email to the linked account email address. This email contains a confirmation link that you need to load to confirm the addition of the mobile phone number to the account. This obviously only adds to security if you do not use Hotmail as your email provider for that account email address.

Once the number has been verified you can start requesting single use codes for your Hotmail sign ins.

Single use codes are actually available on all Windows Live sign in forms.

The addition of single use codes adds to Hotmail’s and Windows Live’s security big time. What’s your take on this? (via)

Probably better than that is the integration of Google Calendar information into the Lightning add-on as it integrates better with Thunderbird. The requirements are the following: You need Thunderbird 8 or later at the moment as Lightning is only compatible with that version of the email client currently. The developers however have stated that the next version of Lightning will again support previous versions of Thunderbird as well. Lastly, you need a Google account with Google Calendar enabled as a service.

Installing Lightning

Install Lightning in Thunderbird by dragging and dropping the downloaded add-on file into the program window. You can alternatively click on Tools > Add-ons to open the program’s add-on manager. Click the small options icon next to the search and select Install Add-on from File. Locate the Lightning add-on on your computer and select it to install it in the email client.

Restart Thunderbird after you have installed the calendar add-on.

Setting up Google Calendar

Go to the Google Calendar website and log into your Google account. Click on the options icon in the upper right corner of the screen next to the profile picture and select Calendar settings from the menu there.

Switch to the Calendars tab under Calendar Settings and locate the calendar that you want to sync with Thunderbird. Click on that Calendar and scroll down until you Calendar Address and the Calendar ID listed there.

Syncing Google Calendar with Thunderbird

Click on File > New > Calendar to create a new calendar. In the next menu select On the Network from the available options and click Next.

Select CalDAV from the available options and paste in the following url:

https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/[Calendar-ID]/events

with Calendar ID being the ID listed on the Google Calendar page.

You are then asked to enter a name, color, alarms and an email address for the calendar.

If everything has been done correctly the Google login credentials need to be entered on the next page. Once done the new calendar will be displayed in the Lightning calendar in Thunderbird.

With the release of Thunderbird 8 came the release of Lightning 1.0. We already mentioned that in the Thunderbird release review we posted yesterday.

Lightning in terms of compatibility has made a step backwards. The calendar only supports Thunderbird 8 and later versions, which can be a serious problem for users who do not just jet want to upgrade to the new version of the desktop email client.

Mozilla has this to say about Lightning:

Lightning 1.0 is the fully integrated calendar Add-on for Thunderbird that lets users organize their schedules and life’s important events as a natural part of their email experience. Lightning gives users the ability to manage multiple calendars, create daily to do lists, invite friends and colleagues to events and meetings, and subscribe to publicly available calendars. With over a million active users, Lightning 1.0 is the calendar solution that users rely on to help them manage their daily lives at work and at home.

When you look at the release notes of Lightning 1.0 you will notice that there are not really that many notable changes to report. Most of the changes are bugfixes that resolve issues of previous Lightning versions. Lightning 1.0 has received some cosmetic changes, most notable new user interface styles for all calendar views.

When you install Lightning in Thunderbird you will notice – after a restart – that it adds a column on the right side of the program. Here you see the current date and calendar week as well as events for today, tomorrow and “soon”. Lightning adds the Events and Tasks menu to the top menubar.

An import option is available supporting iCalendar and Microsoft Outlook comma separated value files. It is furthermore still possible to synchronize Lightning with Google Calendar and other remote calendar locations (via New > Calendar > On the Network).

New Lightning users should take a look at the known issues highlighted on the Lightning 1.0 release notes page.

Are you using a calendar application? If so, which?

Thunderbird 8 has just been released. Existing Thunderbird users may have already noticed the update when they have stared the desktop email client today. Users who have not can check for new updates by going to Help > About Thunderbird in the main menubar of the email client. This triggers an automatic check for new updates in the program itself.

So what’s new in Thunderbird 8? The beta release notes, which have been published last month list the following improvements:

• Add-ons installed by third party programs are now disabled by default
• Added a one-time add-on selection dialog to manage previously installed add-ons
• Improved accessibility of the attachment lists
• Several user interface fixes and improvements
• and numerous other platform fixes

The big new feature is the blocking of automatic installations via third party software programs. This is actually the same feature that made it into Firefox 8 released a few days ago. In addition, Thunderbird users now get a one-time dialog when the update in which they can manage installed add-ons. The email client will suggest add-ons that may not be compatible giving the user the choice to disable them to improve stability of the email client.

The official download site is still listing Thunderbird 7.01 as the latest stable version. It may take some hours or maybe even a day until the new Thunderbird 8 version is published on the official website. Download portals such as Softpedia or MajorGeeks are already hosting the new version, so grab it from there if you are in a hurry.

Update: The calendar add-on Lightning for Thunderbird has been released in version 1.0 as well today.

With Firefox it is another issue. The browser just stops receiving traffic from the Internet as if it is blocked by a firewall or as if the Internet connection died. The only solution here so far was to restart the web browser.

David Bradley now has found a solution that fixed the Thunderbird lag issue, and probably the Firefox no traffic issue as well.

David mentioned frequent stutter or lag in the browser leading to the “not responding” message that can last for a few moments. This was the same behavior that I experienced in Thunderbird.

The solution or fix here is to assign one specific core to the Firefox, or in my case Thunderbird, process. This obviously only works if a multi-core cpu is available.

Users who just want to test the setting can assign a specific core by opening the Windows Task Manager with Ctrl-Shift-Esc, right-clicking the firefox.exe or thunderbird.exe process and selecting Affinity from the context menu.

Here they need to select a specific cpu core or remove one from the listing to test the fix. Please note that this is only a temporary solution. A system state change, e.g. a reboot, standby or hibernation resets the affinity settings there.

A permanent solution is to create a new program shortcut and set the cpu affinity this way.

The command for Firefox is this one:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\” /affinity x firefox.exe

where x is the cpu core number. (cpu 0 = 1, cpu 1 = 2, cpu 2 = 4, cpu 3 = 8 and so on).

For Thunderbird the command is

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start “C:\Program Files (x86)\Miramar 3.3 Alpha 1\thunderbird.exe” /affinity x thunderbird.exe

The easiest way is to copy the shortcut from the start menu or to use Windows Explorer to open the folder where the program is installed. There you can right-click firefox.exe or thunderbird.exe and select to create a new shortcut.

It is likely that we will see an official fix in the coming days / weeks. You can then simply delete the shortcut or modify it again so that all cpu cores are used by the application. It is unlikely that this change has an effect on the program’s performance.

Windows XP users cannot make use of the command. The suggestion here is to use the freeware RunFirst which sets the process affinity automatically to one core.

Has this fixed your issue as well? Let me know in the comments. (thanks David, via)

The video announcement highlights many upcoming Gmail design changes and features. This includes a new look and feel that looks very similar to the Google Plus interface, and other new features like Gmail’s ability to adapt automatically to the windows size in which it is displayed. Users who resize their Gmail window will notice that the relevant information, for instance the sender, subject and date of each email in the inbox, are always visible on screen.

The options button at the top right leads to additional display density options. The default comfortable setting uses big margins and whitespace areas between posts which users can reduce by switching to the cozy or compact display density options.

Another new feature is the slider that allows users to increase or decrease the label or chat area on the left sidebar.

Google has uploaded new high resolution themes that users can switch to.

Conversations have been redesigned to improve readability. You will also notice that profile pictures have been added if available.

Google has updated search as well. If you are a Gmail user you know that search consists of just a single form that you can use to search.

The new search comes with filters that include from, to and subjects as well as words, attachments and date filters.

Filters can now also be created right from the search box. You can see the video with all the changes discussed in this news article below.

There is no official word yet on the availability of the new features but it is likely that they will be rolled out soon.

I’m not really affected by the changes as I’m using Thunderbird as my main email client. If you are a Gmail web interface user, what’s your take on the changes announced in the video? (via)