Thomas McMahon has knocked out some styles for the “Stylish” CSS-extension that produce brighter, better looking labels in Thunderbird.

The Stylish extension is a user style manager: “Stylish is to CSS what Greasemonkey is to JavaScript, and unlike other methods of using user styles, most styles take effect immediately.”

When you have installed Stylish, you can follow the instructions on Thomas’s web site to download some pre-made label styles that will turn your Thunderbird labels from this in to this:

And it’s not just a Mac-only solution as Thomas notes:

The new labels code has been tested in Thunderbird 1.5 and 2.0 on Mac and works great. It should work fine under Windows and Linux too.

thunderbird, mozilla, stylish, labels, CSS, hack, extension, not apple mail, not mail.app, email

Four months ago, Nick Kreeger announced the first release of Correo, a new open source email client for Mac — “Mac essence, Gecko powered” — that “blends technology from two popular Mozilla projects, Camino and Thunderbird, to create a polished native Macintosh application”.

The second public beta has just been released. Correo 0.2 adds several nice new features: Keychain support, Address Book integration, the ability to open messages in a separate window, attachment support, better message list support for IMAP accounts and a collapsable message header and attachment view.

Although Nick readily admits it is a work in progress, the interface already shows Camino’s good looks:

Address Book integration is the big leap forward for usability:

Also nice is the “auto-complete feature” in the To: and Cc: fields:

Underneath the polished exterior, it’s all Thunderbird. The account manager and new account dialogs will be instantly familiar to Thunderbird users.

And the rendering is all Gecko too, as the following ironic screenshot of the new “single window” mode illustrates:

Nick hopes to implement features as the app’s development unfolds, including, plugin capability (to allow development of extensions such as PDA synchronization) and a tabbed window interface.

You can download Correo 0.2 from Nick’s web site and keep up-to-date with new builds through his blog .thunderbird, not apple mail, not mail.app, camino, mozilla, gecko, email, address book

Chris Landon emails with a reasonable request, something you don’t miss or even think about until someone else mentions it.

He points out one thing that Thunderbird and Mail.app can’t do, and that’s coloured mailboxes.

He writes:

Do you know if there’s such a plug-in, etc, for color coding a folder? I have over a hundred folders an it makes it difficult to get to a specific folder, quickly. I could have created more sub-folders than the bunch I already have, but this does not help my situation either.

Here’s an example (I was using Thunderbird at the time and it does not have it either)…

Would it also be difficult to write a plug-in for this?

I don’t know of a plugin that does this, nor do I know how difficult it would be to code, but my hunch is a lot of people would use it. mail.app, apple mail, thunderbird, mozilla, mailboxes, colours, labels, plugin

Robert Coleman has bravely made a commitment to compile and host the latest builds of Thunderbird with the patch applied that integrates with Address Book.

Many people hope that Thunderbird will one day support Address Book access, but although an Address Book patch has been created, movement on improving it or building into official Thunderbird builds has been slow.

In an email, Robert writes that he is now “hosting more up to date (ideally weekly) Universal Binary builds of trunk Thunderbird with the Address Book patch applied”.

The latest build on his site (3.0a1) was compiled on 6 December.

He also includes on his web page instructions and screenshots (and warnings and caveats) for adding the required preferences to Thunderbird’s pref.js file.

He warns that access to Address Book is currently read-only, that the code is a little unstable and that the build is not an official Mozilla one, so is not packaged with the usual Thunderbird branding.thunderbird, address book, hack, patch, universal build, email, mozilla

Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 is out.

While the release itself contains no new features, only general stability improvements and security fixes (full list ), the release notes mention a number of bugs and known issues, some of which affect Mac users in particular.

Four of the problems are described as known issues, the last of which may affect Intel Mac users:

1. If after you run the Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 installer, the extension compatibility and update wizard does not appear, go to the Extension Manager and manually check for updates.
2. If the Extension Compatibility and Update wizard appears but does not complete, first try to focus some other window and return focus to the wizard. If that does not correct the problem, hit Cancel and go to the Extension Manager and manually check for updates.
3. If the Extension Compatibility and Update wizard downloads and installs extension updates but those updates are not applied, open the Extension Manager and manually check for updates.
4. On Intel-based Macintosh computers, PowerPC-only binary extensions do not work unless users upgrade to an Intel-native or Universal version or turn on Rosetta. To turn on Rosetta, click on the Thunderbird icon, click “Get Info” and then check the “Run Under Rosetta” box.

Two more potential Mac-specific issues are detailed in the notes:

1. If you are running Thunderbird 1.5 or Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 on Macintosh computers with Intel Core processors under Rosetta, you will get upgraded to a PowerPC-only, Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 product via the automated update system. You will need to download the Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 Universal Binary build from www.mozilla.com to take advantage of the native support for Intel-based Macintosh computers.
2. There is no Talkback on Intel-based Macs when running natively or under Rosetta. The Apple Crash report program should launch in the event of application crashes.

not apple mail, email, thunderbird, mozilla, bugs, problems, extensions manager

A new version of Thunderbird is out and it’s a universal binary!

It is also more stable and contains a number of security fixes. You can see the full list of changes on The Rumbling Edge.

Thunderbird 1.5.0.4 is available from the Mozilla web site .

[Thanks, Bronson].thunderbird, mozilla, universal binary, security fixes, email

A post on the The Rumbling Edge, Mozilla’s site for cutting-edge developments, lists the features and improvements that will appear in Thunderbird 2.0 Alpha 1.0, which has not yet been released.

Top of the list are custom Folder Pane Views for things like favorites, unread and recently used email. You will also be able to tag messages, and open multiple messages in individual tabs.

The new version will offer built-in notification of new email, which may look something like this:

You will be able to get pop-up summaries of the contents in folders.

Security will be enhanced with an improved Bayesian algorithm and better protection from Phishing.

Lastly, it will offer support for “find as you type” filtering.

The post lists all the many more fixes and improvements in detail, including twelve Mac-specific issues.

I see nothing to tempt me away from Mail.app, but it is interesting to see how Thunderbird is developing.email, thunderbird 2.0, mozilla, new features, notification, folders,