In the battle over email application supremacy, Thunderbird has been one of the most highly developed for web application next to Google’s Gmail. Consistently we’re treated to new releases, updates, and efforts to make the user experience more comfortable and seamless with other email providers as it works to be the catch all for all of our digital communication. Most recently Thunderbird introduced a bevy of plug-ins over the summer that increased the usability of the application, but also made it more fun. Millions of dedicated Thunderbird users keep this email client in constant development and whats being released this week is no exception.
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Thunderbird is an Outlook like email client that is free to download and is made by Mozilla, the same company that makes Firefox. The best thing about Thunderbird is that developers from all over the world are able to make addon tools to use, unlike Microsoft and Outlook. Thunderbird is multi-platform and multi-lingual. Here is our list of the top 10 Thunderbird addons.
(1) Contacts Sidebar – handy addon that lets you display all available address books in Thunderbird sidebar. This lets you easily access all your contacts from the main window, quickly edit contact details, drag’n drop files on top of a contact to send it as an attachment and more… (Thunderbird: 1.5b – 2.0.0.*)
(2) QuoteCollapse – automatically collapses all the quotes within any message, making it look neat and less cluttered. To expand quotes back to standard view just click inserted ‘+’ button. (Thunderbird: 0.7 – 2.0.0.*)
(3) QuickMove – must-have addon letting you quickly file messages to your frequently used folders using keyboard shortcuts. (Thunderbird: 0.5 – 2.0+)
(4) Signature Switch – allows you to create multiple email signatures (Private, Business, etc.) and quickly switch between them right from the main toolbar. Also provides configurable signature auto-switch option based on the email recipients. (Thunderbird: 0.7 – 2.0.0.*)
(5) Remove Duplicate Messages – helps you quickly locate and remove duplicate messages from the selected folders (and its subfolders). (Thunderbird: 1.0 – 1.5.0.*)
(6) Nostalgy – lets you assign single-key keyboard shortcuts to common thunderbird operations i.e., move/copy/delete messages, change folder, add/remove/view tags, add attachment, scroll the message while keeping the focus on the thread pane and lots more. (Thunderbird: 1.5 – 2.0.0.*)
(7) GMailUI – adds Gmail-like mail archiving and powerful message search (i.e. ‘from:Makeuseof to:Aibek’) functionalities into Thunderbird. Makes excellent addition to already existing ‘Saved Searches’ feature. (Thunderbird: 0.8 – 2.0.0.*)
(8) Attachment Extractor – integrates one-click attachment extract option from selected messages. Once attachments have been extracted it can delete, detach or mark messages as ‘read’. Way easier than going through messages one-by-one. (Thunderbird: 2.0 – 2.0.0.*)
(9) Auto Zip Attachments – adds an ‘AutoZip’ button to the compose toolbar allowing you to compress all attached files to a single ‘zip’ file. (Thunderbird: 1.5 – 2.0.0.*)
(10) Send Later – integrates extra ‘Send Later At’ (’Ctrl+Shift+Return’) feature to the message compose window, allowing you to send messages on a particular future date and time. It can be a contract cancellation notice, a ‘Happy Birthday’ or a friendly ‘Don’t Forget’ note. (Thunderbird: 1.5 – 2.0)
Hotmail has now made its POP3 email feature available worldwide to all Hotmail accounts. POP3 also called Post Office Protocol version 3 is an Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a remote server over a TCP/IP connection.
Enabling POP3 access from Hotmail allows you to easily access your emails using the e-mail software on your computer (like Thunderbird, Outlook) or mobile devices such as a Windows Mobile phone, iPhone, or BlackBerry.
Here are the email client settings you need for starting POP3
POP server: pop3.live.com (Port 995)
POP SSL required? Yes
User name: Your Windows Live ID (full email address)
Password: Hotmail or Windows Live password
SMTP server: smtp.live.com (Port 25 or 587)
Authentication required? Yes (same POP username and password)
TLS/SSL required? Yes
