Apple Mail users can easily get their webmail, read and send it using httpmail (freeware), MacFreePOPs (freeware) or Mail Forward (shareware), three apps that fool webmail services into allowing access for Mail.app.

With the WebMail extension, Thunderbird users can play too.

It offers support for Hotmail, Yahoo!, Lycos, Mail.com and more, although you can now read your AOL mail over IMAP and get POP access to Gmail directly.

Installation is a two-part process, involving the master WebMail extension and further service-specific extensions:

You might need to adjust your port settings and fiddle around a bit to avoid the infamous “negative vibes” error.

WebMail is freeware and available from the extension’s web site .

NB: I only tested this with Hotmail, where it works fine.

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Mark Stosberg has posted a list of five power tips for serious Thunderbird users.

When Mark switched from mutt, he was “skeptical that any graphical e-mail program could rival Mutt for performance and efficiency, not to mention the simplicity of accessing it anywhere through a text-based console.”

But Thunderbird surprised him. Not only does it rival mutt, it offers “a number of new workflow improvements, especially easier filtering and labels.”

He outlines how he makes the most of Thunderbird’s filtering and labels to increase his productivity and offers four keyboard-enhancing extensions for Thunderbird.

He rounds his list out with “Master keyboard shortcuts” and a tip on using Unison to sync his Thunderbird folder between multiple Macs.

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Extensions now exist which offer Thunderbird users some of the rich extra functions provided by Mail.app plugins. Paolo Koasmos has written a collection of excellent extensions and Paul Tomlin’s Quick File gets close to the filing magic offered by Mail Act-on.

Paulo’s AttachmentRemember will catch messages to which you have forgotten to add attachments just like James Eagan’s missing attachments plugin.

Quick file by Paul Tomlin gives filing a tremendous speed boost over the “old drag ‘n’ drop”.

Select a message, hit a user-customizable hotkey (⌃Q works for me), and a dialog appears. Start to type and it offers a list of matching mailboxes that you can navigate through using the arrow keys. It’s quick.

Lastly, Paulo’s ExternalTemplateLoader brings MailTemplate to Thunderbird. It loads an external HTML file as the template for a message or a reply.

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If you use Thunderbird and are interested in “productivity” or just working your email smarter and more efficiently, you will like Quick File.

It is a Thunderbird extension that quickly files messages into the folder of your choice, the closest thing that I have seen to Mail Act-on for Thunderbird.

The extension’s preferences allow to set a user-defined hotkey to activate its filing window:

The developer suggests Control-Q for Mac users and that does work.

If you have selected a message and hit the hotkey, Quick File pops up a filing window:

Type in the first few letters of the folder into which you want to file the message, and it lists the matches. You can keep typing until there is only one left, or navigate through the options with the arrow keys. Hit return, and it’s filed.

You can get the extension from the Mozilla Add-ons site .

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Dmitri Popov has written a useful little tutorial on “using Thunderbird like a Pro” at NewsForge.

If you are into that sort of thing, you will find there a quick explanation of how to make smarter use of smart folders, an introduction to some useful extensions and details on setting up turning Thunderbird into a “collaboration tool” with the Calendar and SynKolab extensions.

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The world of email clients for Mac is seeing some significant change.

Not long ago Entourage got more Mail-like, gaining iSync and Spotlight support. Now Thunderbird gets more Entourage-like, gaining an extension that provides integrated calendaring and to dos.

Lightning adds a calendar to the Thunderbird interface, not unlike Boris Anthony’s mock-up for a possible Mail.app plugin.

The extension is already well-featured, offering to dos, scheduling, daily, weekly and monthly views, an auto-generated “Agenda” of upcoming events and more.

You read more about Lightning and see a screenshot in Eric Bangeman’s review on ars technica.

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