I've published a great deal of information about Firefox and tons of extensions that have been developed for it but I've never done the same for Thunderbird, the email client that is developed by Mozilla.
I started using Thunderbird about a week ago when I imported all my emails from Opera to it and I like the email client a lot. It is fast, I can sort all emails the way I like it and the spam mail filter is awesome even without third party tools.
The list of extensions disappointed me a little bit, 297 add-ons is not much considering that Firefox has 1863 add-ons listed. I nevertheless compiled a list of the ten most useful Thunderbird add-ons according to my opinion, yours may and probably will differ on the subject.
Update: We have removed all extensions that are not compatible with the most recent versions of the Thunderbird email client.
Five more, good ones but specialized:
Two not so serious ones:
While all extensions are still available for download for the email client, it needs to be noted that some may not work anymore in the latest version of it.
Update: Time has passed, and lots of useful extensions have been created for the Thunderbird email client in that time. Here is a list of new extensions that you may want to consider.
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Ghacks is a technology news blog that was founded in 2005 by Martin Brinkmann. It has since then become one of the most popular tech news sites on the Internet with five authors and regular contributions from freelance writers.
Ahhha I was waiting for this post, since years. Everybody talks about Firefox Extensions… but Thunderbird Extensions go un-noticed
Thanks for this useful information.
I intend to pass it on through my blog.
Great article. Readers might also consider these, which I find indispensable:
Magic SLR – Adds buttons to download mail from all accounts
Quickfolders – Creates a toolbar to which you can drag mail folders; you can use drag and drop to place incoming messages into the appropriate folder easily.
Copy sent to current and Show InOut – Copies replies to the active folder so you can see immediately how you responded
CuteMenus – Crystal SVG Adds nice-looking icons to TB menus. Useless, but cool.
I’m not sure how the DoD extension made mention at all. Only a small portion of Tbird users would work for DoD… how does that make it one of the “most useful” (to the general populace, implied)?
Other than that, nice list.
Is there an add-on for displaying POP session messages or other diagnostic info?
I’m kinda new to Thunderbird, and I was disappointed that it had less troubleshooting info than Outlook Express. For example, OE would show you the total size of messages to be downloaded, and would produce an error message on un-clean terminations of the POP session.
In TB2, POP sessions seem to end un-cleanly with the normal new-mail sound.
TB2’s “error console” doesn’t seem to include messages abt POP.
Am I missing something?
gluino I agree, would like something like this in Thunderbird too, right now I have no idea what its doing when I check for mail.
Lightning appears to be out of development and working well.
Thanks for the list Martin.
Personally, I also like this add-on: http://eagleeye.sourceforge.net
It lets you sort your contacts according to their gender, the number of messages sent/received, if they are colleagues or not etc.
It also shows you your “email sinks” (people who hardly every replay) and who you still need to reply to yourself.