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.

So what is new in Thunderbird 6.0? The release notes, which are up already on the official website, list the following items that have been updated, changed or added to the email client.

• Thunderbird is based on the new Mozilla Gecko 6 engine
• Several theme improvements for Windows 7
• Support for Windows 7 Jump lists
• Several fixes when importing email from Microsoft Outlook
• Default mail client check now works with newer Linux distributions
• Various other user interface fixes and improvements
• Numerous platform fixes that improve speed, performance, stability and security

The feature list, as you can see, is rather small, and offers barely any new features for users of the email program. Windows 7 users benefit from jumplist support and theme improvements. Jumplists show up when a Windows user right-clicks on the icon in the taskbar. For now, Thunderbird users get links to their address book, writing a new message and the mailbox.

The update check from within the email client is already picking up the new version. This makes it possible to perform an in-program update to install the latest version of Thunderbird.

Users can do that with a click on Help > About Thunderbird.

The email client is also available for download at the official website for all supported operating systems and languages. Thunderbird users who want to take a closer look at the release notes of this particular release can do so here.

There they find troubleshooting tips and known issues, which are always worth checking out before upgrading or install a new version of the software.

The first beta of Thunderbird 6 is not introducing new groundbreaking features into the email client. Most notable change in this release is support for Windows 7 jumplists, which are accessible via a right click on the Thunderbird icon on the Windows 7 taskbar.

There are only options to write a new message or to open the address bar. A list of the latest emails would be handy for instance.

Other changes mentioned on the announcement page are Microsoft Outlook importing fixes, working default mail client checks on newer Linux distributions and other unmentioned fixes. Again, nothing to get to excited about. Still, users who want to download the latest beta version can do so right now from the official beta release page. The Thunderbird 6 beta release is available in all languages and for all supported operating systems.

With the rapid release process in motion, it should not take longer than one and a half month before the final version of Thunderbird 6 is released by Mozilla Messaging.

In related news. Designer Sean Martell has published new concept logos for the Nightly and Aurora channels of the email client.

The names are not entirely correct though. You may know that Mozilla has decided to use different names for the Thunderbird Nightly, Aurora and Beta releases. The two logos that you see above might make they way into for the Daily and Earlybird channels. Well done and nicely looking, what do you think? (via)

A new version every three months or so, and a confusing assortment of release channels makes it less interesting to keep an overview over each channel. With four channels for Firefox and Google Chrome alone each, it would mean to spend more time monitoring the development to stay up to date.

Thunderbird recently joined the rapid release process as well, with the beta versions recently jumping a version to version 5.

Instead of using Firefox’s naming convention, which is stable, beta, aurora and nightly, the developers have decided to introduce a new set of channel names. The nightly versions of Thunderbird are called Shredder, the Aurora versions Earlybird and the beta versions Miramar. The latest nightly versions are already at version 7, while the latest stable releases are at version 3.

We have already looked at the features that Mozilla Messaging plans to introduce in Thunderbird 5. You can get the full overview here.

Among the changes are a new add-on manager that looks identical to the extensions manager of the Firefox web browser. Other new features include a revised account setup wizard that has been optimized once again, an optimized display of email attachments including attachment sizes, tab reordering and a new troubleshooting information page.

Interested users can download Thunderbird 5 Beta from the early releases page over at Mozilla Messaging. The beta version is available for all supported operating systems and languages. Nightly releases are currently only available at the official ftp server.

What’s your take on the rapid release process and the new names for the different Thunderbird channels? Let me know in the comments. (via)

Bugzilla lists a total of 71 bugs that have been fixed in Mozilla Thunderbird 3.1.10, of which two have received the highest possible rating blocker. Additionally, 16 of the issues listed have received a severity rating of critical, and another four one of major.

Several of the fixes appear to be language related, for instance crash fixes when spell checking with French or Hungarian dictionaries, or update crashes when localized strings excess certain parameters.

Just check Bugzilla for the full list of fixes in this version of Thunderbird. The release, unlike that of Firefox 4.0.1 is already available for download at the official Mozilla Messaging website.

You can for instance download it from the official release notes page. It is likely that the email client will pick up the new release soon as well and display notifications in the application, so that in-application updates will become possible as well.

Clawkster is a GUI tool that allows the user to configure hidden configuration options for Claws Mail. That’s right, you can figure regular and hidden options in this already-flexible email client. But what all does Clawsker allow you to configure and how do you install it? I’m glad you asked, because I have the answers to both questions.

Installation

The first question I will answer is the installation. Installing Clawsker is a snap as it is found in the standard repositories (If you can install Claws Mail, you can install Clawsker.) Below are the steps to install Clawskter (assuming you already have Claws Mail installed.)

1. Open a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install clawsker.
3. Type your sudo password and hit Enter.
4. Accept any dependencies that might be necessary.

After installation is complete, you will not find a menu entry for Clawsker. Instead, the tool must be run from the command line. So to start Clawkster, do the following:

1. Hit Alt-F2.
2. Enter “clawsker” (no quotes) in the run dialog.
3. Hit Enter.

If you try to run Clawsker with Claws Mail running, you will be informed that Claws Mail must be closed first.

The Clawsker window will now open.

What you can configure

Figure 1

The Clawsker tool allows for quite a bit of configuration options. Some of these options are very useful, whereas some might seem a bit too obscure.

When you open Clawsker (see Figure 1) there are five tabs to choose from. These tabs are:

Behavior: Alter some of the behaviors of drag ‘n drop, ssl, and messages.

Colours: Alter the colours used for message view and log windows.

GUI: Alter coloured strips (in tree view, folder lists, and message lists), message lists, bolding of unread messages, scroll bars, and more.

Other: Enable detached address book edit, change message cache and time for cache elements and enable network manager.

Windows: Place the location of the Main, Message, Send/Receive, Folder, Addressbook, Accounts, Filtering, Preferences, and other windows.

Some of the more helpful configurations are:

Behavior:

• Allow writable temporary files.
• Don’t confirm deletions (only use this if you are careful about deletions.)

GUI:

• Coloured lines contrast (the higher the number the more contrast between message listings.
• Display To column instead of From column in Sent folder.
• Show Cursor in message view.
• Detachable toolbars.

Final thoughts

I confess that much of the Clawsker configurations are not important options for me. But for many there may be a need to handle some of the more obscure configuration options offered by this handy tool. And it’s quite nice to know such a tool exists.

With the addition of Clawsker, Claws Mail is, without a doubt, the most highly configurable email client available.

Installation of the Microsoft Outlook add-on should not pose a problem. Users need to make sure that Outlook is closed during installation. The wizard that is displayed after installation can be skipped by clicking next all the time, no personal data needs to be entered.

A new Text Lightning entry is added to Outlook’s toolbar which offers access to the add-in’s features. The add-in furthermore adds a sidebar to the right of the new email message window for quick access to pre-configured texts, images and files.

The main feature of Text Lightning is the ability to create and use text modules. The available text modules can then be added to email messages with a double-click, via individual keyboard shortcuts or drag and drop.

New text modules are added with the shortcut Ctrl-N or a right-click on the sidebar and the selection of Add Quick Text from the context menu. Text can be imported as well either from a file or a folder with multiple files. Supported file formats for single file import are Microsoft Excel xls and Comma-Separated text csv files, for folder import HTML, text and TextLightning files.

The add-in supports both plain text and rich text. One interesting option is the ability to add files to text modules which are then automatically added as attachments.

Another interesting option is product guessing. This basically can be used to configure products that Text Lightning tries to identify in email messages to only display relevant text modules.

Text Lightning can be downloaded from the developer website over at Xequte. The developers are unfortunately not listing compatibility information on the website. The add-in worked flawlessly under Outlook 2010. (via)

Web Application Tab (WAT) is just one of the possible extensions that offer that functionality. Its core advantage over other solutions is its simplicity. All it takes is to configure specific web addresses in the application to open them in tabs in the email client whenever they need to be accessed.

Say you want to have access to your Google Calendar, Hotmail Inbox or Facebook profile page. All of this and a lot more is easily done with WAT.

Web addresses are added in the options. They are accessible from the WAT menu at the top of the email client. A new application is defined by a name and an application url, for Gmail this could be Gmail and https://mail.google.com/ for instance.

The order of websites can be changed easily in the options, and it is possible to delete applications that are no longer needed. Each application is opened in a tab in the background by default with an option to hold down Shift to reverse it.

All added web applications are accessible from the WAT menu at the top. They open in tabs in the email client and can be used just like they would have been opened in Firefox. Having said that, it is possible to use all websites and applications that work in Firefox.

Applications in tabs stay open even after the email client has been closed by the user. Thunderbird does not come with forward or backward buttons by default. It is possible to right-click on a page to make use of the buttons or to use the shortcuts that are added by the extension. More information about those shortcuts are available at the extension’s home over at Mozilla.com.

Web Application Tab is a versatile, straightforward extension to open websites in Thunderbird.

I decided to investigate the issue to find a way to force compatibility in Thunderbird 3.3. The following guide should help all Thunderbird 3.x users who need to make an extension compatible.

I knew of three methods to force compatibility in Firefox and since the programs share the same core it felt natural to begin there.

The best working method after some tests is in my opinion to override compatibility enforcement in the email client’s configuration. This is done the following way:

Start Thunderbird and open the configuration window by clicking on Tools > Options first. This opens the options window. Go to Advanced > General and click on the Config Editor button there.

The config editor opens in a new window. The directive does not exist by default which means that it needs to be added first. The general format of the parameter looks the following way:

extensions.checkCompatibility.Version

The version is always separated with a dot, e.g. 3.3. If Thunderbird is a release version that’s all that needs to be added. Alpha and beta versions on the other hand need to be specified individually by adding an a for alpha or b for beta behind the version.

The compatibility parameter for Thunderbird 3.3 alpha 2 is therefor

extensions.checkCompatibility.3.3a

To add it right-click in the configuration window and select New > Boolean from the list. A form pops up. enter the parameter name, e.g. extensions.checkCompatibility.3.3a and click ok. Now you need to select if the Boolean value should be true or false. True in this case is the default value which means that Thunderbird will check for extension compatibility. Since we do not want that we set the value to false. Restart the email client and install your extensions. Inactive extensions that have been inactivated because of incompatibilities should show up as activated.

And this is the result in the extension listing

Please note that forcing compatibility is no guarantee that the extension will actually work in Thunderbird. It is helpful if an extension developer has not updated the extension yet that is otherwise compatible with the version of Thunderbird.

But how do you get your Thunderbird emails to the new computer? It is actually very easy to do providing that the old data is still available and readable.

First thing you need to do is to locate the Thunderbird profile directory on the old hard drive or computer. The profile stores all account information including emails in the inbox, send out, email account information and attachments.

Check the Mozilla Zine article for the paths. Make sure the data is available on the new computer, either by connecting the hard drive to the computer or copying the data to CD, DVD or removable storage devices.

Install Mozilla Thunderbird on the new computer but do not run it after installation if possible. The first run creates a profile on the new computer. Now copy the full profile directory from the old hard drive to the new computer or new hard drive. Make sure that you copy it using the right path information taken from the Mozilla Zine article.

If you already run Thunderbird you have a profile already. Do not worry, it is not that bad. You can simply copy the data from the old Thunderbird profile folder into the new profile. Please note that this will remove all information stored in the new profile which means that if you have setup email accounts and received emails, well, they are gone after that process.

If you do not want that you can copy the data next to the existing profile folder. It is not the best solution though as you can only launch one profile which means you would need to switch between profiles or find a way to merge them.

This also means that there is no official release log yet, only the beta release notes are available and they list several fixes to improve stability and security of the email client, as well as several fixes to the program’s user interface.

The security fixes alone should be reason enough for Thunderbird users to update the email client as soon as the new version gets released by the development team.

A quick look at Bugzilla lists a total of 84 different bugs that have been fixed in Thunderbird 3.1.7 including a total of 26 different critical issues and one blocker issue. Most issues listed are related to crashes in the email client.

Thunderbird users who do not want to wait until the new release has been officially announced can download the new version from the Mozilla ftp server, one of the worldwide mirror servers, or sites like Softpedia which usually carry only the English language version.

Sometimes email account information, such as the username and password, need to be retrieved. A user may want to configure the email provider on another computer, a mobile device like a smartphone or access the email directly if the provider offers webmail as well.

Thunderbird, like most other email clients, hides the passwords by default, but provides an option to display them in the password manager. This is similar to the way the Firefox web browser handles stored passwords.

For added security, a master password can be configured that needs to be entered before the stored email account information can be accessed by the user.

To recover or change Thunderbird passwords do the following:

• Open the email client Thunderbird. We are using the 3.1 branch in this guide.
• Click on Tools > Options, and switch to Security > Passwords.
• Click on the Saved Passwords button. This displays a list of all email accounts with a saved passwords. This list may contain old email clients that are no longer in use. Those can be deleted by the user by selecting them first and hitting the remove button thereafter.
• All email account passwords that are stored in Thunderbird can be displayed by clicking on Show Passwords. The very same listing displays the username, and site (that is the email provider) as well.
• To change passwords, simply select the email account that needs to be changed and click on the Remove button. Next time Thunderbird tries to retrieve emails from removed accounts, it will prompt for a password for that account.

thunderbird passwords

saved passwords

And that’s how you recover or change passwords in the Thunderbird email software. As you can see, this can also be helpful to remove passwords and email account information that are no longer in use in the email client.

The main purpose of email archiving and backup software is to offer fallback copies if the emails and mailboxes in case they get corrupted or deleted on the main storage device. Many desktop email client users do not backup their mail databases regularly, which can end in disaster if the mailboxes get corrupted. The same applies to companies and businesses, but with dire consequences.

As a side effect, archived emails can be moved to another storage device or server, so that they free up disk space on the hard drive that the email client uses to store the email database.

Today we are going to show you how to speed up the email client Thunderbird, by archiving part of the stored emails. The idea is to combine backing up emails regularly, with the benefits of being able to remove emails from the email client that are old and not needed on a regular basis. In case they are needed they can still be accessed in the archiving software.

Before we start, we are going to create a full backup of the Thunderbird profile with MozBackup. Just download and run the backup software, and select to backup the Mozilla Thunderbird profile. Make sure all data is included in the backup (default settings).

backup email client

The program can later be used to restore the full Thunderbird profile in case that is needed.

Windows users have the option between several email archiving programs. For the purpose of this tutorial, we are going to use Mailstore Home. The program makes it almost foolproof to archive emails from various email clients, including Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Google Mail and general IMAP and POP3 mailboxes. The program includes options to search and read emails directly in its interface.

mailstore home

It takes only a few clicks to archive emails in MailStore Home. A click on Archive E-Mail opens the archiving page of the software. Here it is possible to select an email client or protocol from the list to launch a wizard.

The e-mail archiving wizard looks like this for Thunderbird users:

Selection of the Thunderbird profile:

The default profile is the standard profile. Most users will probably only have the default profile, unless they are working on a multi-user computer.

archive mozilla thunderbird

Customization of the archiving options:

Here it is possible to select all email folders for backup, or only specific ones. It is furthermore possible to filter emails by data or status.

archive emails thunderbird

The archiving can take some time, depending on the number of emails stored in the Thunderbird mailboxes. MailStore Home displays the saved profiles in a listing on the archive e-mail page. The program saves all information, including email attachments and headers in its interface.

We suggest to archive all emails on the first run. This is important as it makes it easier to delete emails in the email client afterwards. Delete emails? Yes, to speed up Thunderbird emails need to be removed from the client.

The next step depends on the user and the folder structure. A user only working with the inbox may want to delete all emails older than a specific age, and do the same in the sent, trash and junk folders. This should reduce the size of the mailboxes considerably in the email client.

Finally it is important to compact the folders after deleting the emails in the mail client. Like other email clients, Thunderbird does not physically remove the emails from the mailboxes after they are deleted by the user. This is done by compacting the folders.

The option is available under File > Compact Folders. Before it is selected, a folder in the mail structure needs to be selected.

Hint: It is possible to configure Thunderbird to automatically compact folders by clicking on Tools > Options, switching to the Advanced tab, there to the Network & Disk Space tab, and enabling Compact folders when it will save over x KB.

Thunderbird may start up and feel noticeably faster after archiving and deleting emails in the client. This largely depends on the amount of mails that have been stored in the client prior to the operation. A user with a few hundred mails will probably not notice a speed improvement at all, while a user with tens of thousands of emails likely will.

Do you archive or backup your emails? Let us know in the comments.

The homepage has already been changed to provide visitors with information about Thunderbird 3.1, the latest available version however is still Thunderbird 3.0.5 at the time of writing.

Thunderbird 3.1 comes with several new and improved features including a quick filter toolbar to search and sort through mail folders in realtime, faster search results thanks to improved message indexing, an improved migration assistant to aid Thunderbird 2 users who migrate to Thunderbird 3.1 and a saved files manger that displays all files that have been saved in that session.

thunderbird 3.1

Thunderbird 3.1 is available in 48 different langauges for Windows, Macintosh and Linux systems. Downloads will likely be enabled later today on the official website and the automatic update in the email client should recognize the new version in the next 48 hours.

Thunderbird users who cannot wait to get their hands on the latest iteration of the email software can download it from the official Mozilla ftp server or one of the community mirror sites.

Update: Downloads have been enabled on the official website, no need to download the client from mirror sites.

Thunderbird 3.1 introduces several new features to the desktop email client, among them the new quick filter toolbar to filter messages in a folder temporarily or permanently, the saved files manager which displays the saved attachments of the current Thunderbird session and the migration assistant which improves the import of email accounts to Thunderbird.

Bugzilla lists five bugs that have been fixed in the second release candidate, among them one critical bug that affected the Mac version of the email client. A major bug in the migration assistant has been fixed as well which did not honor advanced IMAP synchronization settings.

Early adopters, tech enthusiasts and developers can download Thunderbird 3.1 RC2 from the official Mozilla Messaging website. The client is offered for all supported operating systems and languages.

Users who are already working with a previous Thunderbird 3.1 release can update the email software from within by going to Help > Check for Updates.

The final Thunderbird 3.1 version might be released as soon as next week if things go as planned.

Thunderbird 3.1 will replace the Thunderbird 3.0 branch once it is released introducing several new features in the email client including better message filtering, a saved file assistant and improved memory handling and stability.

The fixed bugs list of Thunderbird 3.1 RC 1 lists 54 issues that have been resolved in this new release including one blocker, eleven critical and four major ones.

Most critical issues that have been fixed were crash related but there are also minor fixes for better IMAP handling, interface and quick filter bar.

The email client release is considered stable by the developers but it still aims largely at developers and testers and not general users who are asked to wait until the final version of Thunderbird 3.1 is released before they migrate to the new client.

More information about the release are available at the blog post announcement, release notes and bugzilla.

Thunderbird 3.1 RC 1 is available for download for all supported operating systems and languages at the Mozilla website.

Firefox users can for instance change the mailto protocol, that is the protocol that defines the service or application used for emailing, from the default email program to Gmail or other web based services and locally installed applications.

Google Chrome does not offer this feature yet. There are however a few extensions that can make Gmail the default email client in Google Chrome.

Google has created an official extension for the Chrome browser called Send From Gmail which offers the functionality. The extension will automatically redirect mail links to Gmail. Some users have criticized it for placing a button in the Chrome address bar that leads to Gmail as well.

Those that prefer a version without button can install Send using Gmail (no button) instead which provides the same functionality but without the button in the address bar.

Please let us know if you have found another way of changing default programs in the Chrome browser.

Update: Send using Gmail has been disabled. Please use Send From Gmail instead.

The email Sender Verification extension for Mozilla Thunderbird integrates an automatic option to verify the senders into the email client. It basically tells the users if the sender that is shown in the from header of the email was the actual sender of the email. The extension uses the Sender Policy Framework and various reputation services like Spamhaus or Sender Score Certified to retrieve information about the domains.

The Sender verification add-on is compatible with Thunderbird 3. It adds a new column to the display of emails in the mail client which needs to be enabled. This is done by clicking on the header row icon that allows Thunderbird users to display additional columns with information in the client.

Sender Verify will look up all emails and display status information such as pass, fail, none or neutral to give the user an indication of the trustworthiness of particular emails.

The add-on displays information in the email’s header as well which gives further information that can be helpful to identify the email sender.

The Sender Verification extension is still in development but works fine as it is. The developer plans to add preferences, verification of hotmail accounts and other features to the extension in the future. The extension can be downloaded from the Mozilla website.

Bugzilla reports a total of 82 bugs that have been fixed in Thunderbird 3.0.4, among them 19 critical and 6 major bugs. Most of the critical bugs fix crash related issues in the email client, good news for users who have been experiencing crashes on a regular basis.

Thunderbird 3.0.4 fixes the following issue in Thunderbird 3.0.3:

* Several fixes to improve stability and security, see the Security Advisory.
* Several fixes to the user interface.

Thunderbird 3.0.4 is already offered for download at the Mozilla Messaging website. Users can either download the latest version of the email software from that website or update the version from within the email client if it is installed on their computer system.

Thunderbird 3.1 Beta is a preview release that fixes a total of 96 different bugs including crash, performance and security fixes.

One of the problems that we have experiencing lately for instance was the inability to save messages after they have been sent. This issue has been fixed in the new beta release of the email client.

The release notes point out that the following notable changes have been made to Thunderbird 3.1 Beta:

Several fixes to improve upgrading from Thunderbird 2.
Several fixes for auto complete, tabs, and activity manager.
Several design improvements and corrections to the interface.
Stability and memory improvements.

The full list of bug fixes and changes is available at Bugzilla which lists a total of 119 bugs of which 10 have been classified as critical and five as major. The majority of critical bugs are related to application crashes with the exception of the DNS prefetch security issue, a startup issue and one upgrade issue.

Thunderbird 3.1 Beta is available for all supported languages and operating systems. It is still a development release and should not be run in a work environment unless a proper disaster recovery option is available.