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Bookmark Emails In Thunderbird

Martin Brinkmann — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 07:42:39 +0000

There are a few ways to take care of important emails that are arriving in the email inbox. The best way to deal with them is to react right away if possible. This sometimes does not work however if research, data or consultation is required before the email can be processed and replied to. The desktop email client Thunderbird comes with a few options to mark those important emails, one being the ability to add tags to emails which will color code them in the email client. Other email users prefer to move important emails into a special folder so that they can access the emails in that folder at a later time without having to search the email folder structure for them.

A third option is provided by the Thunderbird add-on eMarks which supposedly stands for email bookmarks. The add-on adds a new toolbar to the email client. Emails can then be dragged and dropped into that toolbar easily. This makes these emails available from every folder the user might be in. These emails are then accessible with a left-click of the mouse. Thunderbird will automatically switch to the folder the email is stored in and display it in the preview pane.

A right-click on any bookmarked email will open a context menu with options to open the email in a new window or tab and to rename or delete it. Users who prefer no additional toolbar in the email client can disable it and access the bookmarked emails from the file menu at the top. An emarks entry is added by the extension that can be used to access the bookmarked emails with three clicks of the mouse. Not as comfortable as the toolbar solution but better if space is an issue.

The eMarks extension for the Mozilla Thunderbird email client is available at the Mozilla Thunderbird website. It is compatible with all the latest versions of the desktop email client (including Thunderbird 3 beta).

Thunderbird Email Thread Visualizer

Martin Brinkmann — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:47:34 +0000

Mozilla Thunderbird is probably the second most popular desktop email client next to Microsoft Outlook. One of its main advantages is the extension engine that users know from the Firefox web browser which makes it easy to create extensions for the email client that increase its functionality. ThreadVis is an interesting Thunderbird extension that visualizes email threads in the email client.

Thunderbird by default does not link email conversations in any way. This means that it can sometimes be difficulty to locate all emails of a conversation in the web browser. This is especially true since those emails are usually located in at least two different folders (Sent folder and Email Inbox).

The concept that ThreadVis introduces can be explained with a few words. It processes emails from selected folders (or all emails if the user selects that option) and creates links between emails if they are part of the same conversation.

It then visualizes this conversation in the email header which makes it easy to jump to all emails that are part of it. The emails are color coded in the header. Green dots visualize emails that have been received by the user while red emails are those that have been sent. The time it took for each reply is also shown in the visualisation.

The Thunderbird extension will display a configuration dialog after installation which can be used to define the folders that should be processed and cached by it. It is important to process all relevant folders (e.g. inbox and sent). Some emails are otherwise shown as missing in the visualization.

The visualization can also be displayed in its own separate window which might be useful for some users. ThreadVis is a great Thunderbird add-on for users who want to have better control over email conversations in the email client.