Make Thunderbird the chat powerhouse: add chat protocols

Mozilla added chat capabilities to Thunderbird 15, the latest stable version of the desktop email client. This basically enabled Thunderbird users to add various support chat networks to the client to chat from within the program. Support for Twitter, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, IRC and XMPP was added at that time.
Several important instant messaging protocols were not included in that release, and it was not clear at that time if Mozilla would add support for them in future releases.
Additional Chat Protocols for Thunderbird [link] is a new extension for the email client by Florian Queze, one of the developers of Instantbird, that adds several new chat protocols to the email client. The extension adds support for the following instant messaging protocols on top of what Thunderbird is supporting by default: AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, GroupWise, ICQ, MSN, MySpaceIM, Netsoul, SIMPLE, Sametime and Yahoo. The add-on uses the Pidgin library for the functionality.
Simply download the extension from the official Mozilla Add-ons repository. To install it in Thunderbird, click on Tools > Addons in the email client, and there on the settings button next to the search all add-ons field on the top right of the screen. Select install add-on from file and follow the instructions here.
To configure new chat accounts click on Tools > Chat Status > Show accounts, and there on New Account which triggers the window you see below.
Select the account that you want to add to the email client, click on next and follow the wizard guiding you through the configuration of the chat account.
Thunderbird lets you sign in to every account on start up if you like, or manually only. You can chat with all of your contacts on each network that you connect to the email client, and use the program's search capabilities to search the chat history.
What's your take on chat integration in the email messaging client? Good move by Mozilla or something that you are not using at all? (via Sören)
You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!