Talk:Thunderbird:2.0 Product Planning

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Setting an other folder as Trash folder

Currently thunderbird creates automatically a folder "Trash" on an imap account. Would be nice if this folder would be adjustable (like the sent, templates and junk fodlers already are!) --aliB

Export / Import "Message Filter" & "Junk Mail Training Data"

I use Thunderbird on a Laptop, at work, at my home computer and sometimes at school. It would be fantastic if it were possible to keep all this settings synchronous. It also gives the possibility to store these settings for backup purpose. --aliB

Load .eml files

Thunderbird is already capable of storing an email into an .eml file. The new version should also be capable of opening .eml files. This would allow Thunderbird to completely replace Outlook. Currently, on Windows systems, Thunderbird cannot read .eml files, and Outlook is associated with them.


Store settings online (Roaming)

It would be cool, if Thunderbird was able to store all his settings (accounts, adressbook, signatures, filter rules, junk-learning-data etc.) in an online repository. This way, I could use different computers and didn't have to configure the client every time from scratch. You could use a web based repository, IMAP, LDAP, ...?

(This feature was once built into Netscape, I think it was called "Roaming".)

better offline-IMAP-support

it would be nice to have better offline-imap-support. At the moment you have to download the whole folder if you want to read Mails offline... And: if you read a message while you are online, this Mail ist also not available offline, if it is not downloaded again with the offline-function. It would be better if one can select single mails to download for offline-use, and if mails that are already opened and downloaded online, could be used offline. --sebi 06:21, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Search IMAP folder, especially the content of messages, not only adress, subject an other header data.

better Meta-Data usage like del.icio.us

The colour-coding of eMails in Thunderbird is a nice feature and with customisation I can do a bit of cross-cutting-concerns tagging. But I would love to use easy custom keyword like a column where I can type in things like "projectX", "projectY", "informative", "justMarketing", etc. Then of course sorting, filtering of these custom meta-data e.g into virtual folder: "projectX"+"informative" would be great. I think of del.icio.us for my eMails. If one could use the RDF infrastructure it would be sustainanble for even more complex meta-data-handling. Starting with RDFS where I can build small taxonomies/trees of keywords.

synchronize different inboxes

I'd like to have the possibility to synchronize different thunderbird inboxes (of different pcs), e.g. import all mails, import new mails etc., this way I dont't have synchronize by hand and make sure that i'm not importing the same mail twice or even more times.

PGP / GPG Support

I would like to see direct integration of enigmails PGP / GPG Support into Thunderbird, to make the setup for novice users as easy as possible. --Sleepy 06:49, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

not only integrate PGP / GPG. the setup should be easy - ok - but there should be also possibilities for other electronic signatures that should be integrated. perhaps include Enigmail more infos?

Palm Desktop/Adressbook Support

It would be nice to get direct access to your Palm Desktop addressbook when you're writing Mails out of Thunderbird instead of the build in addressbook. --Sleepy 06:51, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Centralized administration and administration plugins

What about central administration? It would be cool if there was a way control thunderbirds settings (especially account settings, etc.) from a central place. As there might be many ways to do this, the interfaces between thunderbird and the centralized settings could be done by plugins. For example: Imagine an MS Windows environment. Managing accounts with Active Directory would be cool. Under such a situation one would need an AD plugin. For other administration means or other platforms one could use another plugin. --mmweber 29 Nov 2005

More Usenet Features

I use Thunderbird even more as an Usenet-client than as an Email-client. So I'd like to see some enhancements there. Like scoring or better support for killfiles.

Perhaps a dynamic scoring like in Gnus. If i delete a message or did not read it, the sender score will be decreased and vise versa. --Driessel 07:18, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

I think users with mail-list-subscription for software developement would benefit from this too. (phj)

With current Thunderbird, it is hard to keep track of your watched threads when there is a lot of newsgroups with a lot of traffic. Some flagging on groups that have new replies in watched threads would be very helpful, see also this bug. --Jfrantzius

Ability to setup Workflows

What about this Idea: I get an email. This email is converted to a task (perhaps in Evolution or SunBird). When I finished the task the sender receives an message, that i have done the task. With some more meta data it should be possible to setup workchains. For Example:

Anne sends a document to Bob. Bob edits the document, when he finished his task, he is asked if he wants to notify Jane (she is the next in the chain). If he says yes jane will be notified.

This needs a more powerfull filter (perhaps send some XML-files aus attechment, with the meta data). It should be possible to develop this as an extension. --Driessel 07:32, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Ability to select menus that should appear in context menu

I'd love to have the possibility to determine which menu items should appear in the context menu on a folder/mail etc... without having to hack XUL. I especially miss the ability to run junk filters and message filters from the context menus.

Ability to answer to an already sent mail without changing To/CC

I would like to have the possibilty to "Reply to All" a mail in my Sent folder without having Thunderbird change all the To's into CC's and adding my own address as a new To. This would allow to send some kind of a follow-up without having to edit the whole header. --Bornheim 08:51, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Additional Mailing List Functionality

  • Mailing list automation
  • mailman automation, registration and notification
  • detect that a message has been sent to a mailinglist and make it visible (special tag, icon, label, etc.)
  • support RFC 2369

Mail Content Analysis and Classification

  • language identification (with flags)
  • using baysian and existing language identification algorithms
  • "groups" of senders, e.g. buddy list, using the address book

mail-merge letter

i sometimes had the wish to to create simple mail-merge letters with predefined variableslike xml-tags or something like this and data from adressbook

protection of unwanted opening of junk-mail

mails declared as junk should not be opened at once, but after clicking a button with a warning "this email is declared as junk! do you really want to open it? [Open]" in the email display-field. especially users with less experience often tap into this 'trap' when they want to delete the mails in the junk-folder finally by drag and drop or whatever.

quota

there is an extension which displays in the statusbar on the right side the current quota, with a fillstand bar and the used space in per cent. would be nice if it would full implemented

minimize to (sys)tray

nearly all os except mac force the user to have thunderbird openend with a minimized window in the taskbar. with a build in function to minimze it always to systray would save a lot of space in the taskbar. i use it with an extension, which is a little bit buggy. So thunderbird can be started like a service, which watches all mailfolders without standing all day in the forground.

e-mail folders for each contact

- E-mails should be sorted automatically to folders of my addresses (one folder for each contact person in the address book) in order to get an overview of all in- and outgoing e-mails

- E-mails should be easilly exported / backed up and synchronized periodically

Ordering of any Folders via D'n'd (was: Ordering of E-Mail Accounts)

It should be possible to order the diffrent E-Mail Accounts individually, e.g. per Drag and Drop, such that e.g. one's faovite account can be easely moved to the top.

It should be possible to rearrange the order of any items in the folders pane per drag&drop in general, i.e. accounts, folders within accounts, newsgroups within ng account, etc.. -- Jfrantzius

Proper E-Mail 'Bounce' Functionality

One should be able to "bounce" incoming mails to another recipient. The entire mail content (including sender and subject information) should be left entirely untouched. I.e. the mail should appear as originating from the original sender to the new recipient(s). Cf. bounce functionality in eg. 'mutt' and other popular clients.

"Multi-Replies" -- reply to several messages in one outgoing mail

When participating in discussions on mailing lists, it often saves time and space if one replies to several messages in one go, as follows: You mark the messages you want to reply to and start the reply. The editor then opens a single reply with all the messages quoted. A separate quote header ("xyz wrote") is inserted for every message. You then edit out the unneeded quotation from each section, inserting your reply. The message is then sent back to the sender of the first message in the selection or all recipients (but see below).

This feature might need a separate menu entry and/or button, or should be restricted to mailing lists only -- depending on configuration or usability issues. Maybe TB could also guess if the user wants this functionality by looking at the recipients of the marked (replied to) messages -- if the recipients for all mails are the same, the above described use case is entered; if not, the old behaviour is used.

Allow Filters not only for Inbox

It would be nice to be able to set up Filter Rules that work on an arbitrary Folder, example:

For Folder |Sent| :

[ ]Match all of the following [x]Match any of the following

|Age in days| |is| |30|

Perform these actions:

|Move Message to| |Trash|

--Stebs 30 Nov 2005

Allow adaptive filters not only for Junk

Similar to not only allow Filters for any folder it would be nice to have different adaptive filters apply to different folders/collections of messages. So one could possibly train a filter to match the most interesting items on an RSS stream, and use the same filter on a folder where the mails from a newly subscribed mailing list with similar content goes. Used in this way, the adaptive filter would be a positive filter, which could be used in filter rules. Each adaptive Filter would have name and a message could be matched by more than one filter (where the highest priority rule succeeds).

This kind of adaptive filtering would greatly improve searching through news items as tastes and interests would manifest themselves in the adaptive filters.

--heron 30 Nov 2005

Miscellaneous Stuff

I would highly appreciate to see a function that all open (unsent) mails are automatically saved in the background while editing and recovered to the draft folder when Thunderbird restarts the next time after Thunderbird itself, the OS or the power supply had crashed. --Longnose 22:32, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

I would love to see an email response tracker.

Here's how it should work:

When sending an email, there should be an option (only if a corresponding switch in the Thunderbird preferences is not switched off) to switch on response tracking, plus some clickable fields for specifying the maximum amount of hours or days until a response is expected (maybe even a text entry for numbers of hours and days).

Optionally, Thunderbird may add an additional text line like "please respond within XXX days" to the sent email. This text should be configurable, and Thunderbird should insert the amount of hours or days into that text at a specifiable place.

After sending the email, Thunderbird should check the inbox for a response for those emails that are to be tracked.

If the email arrives within the specified time, the response tracking is switched off for that email. If there is an email for which no response arrives within the expected time frame, a popup or an email in my inbox will be created to remind me that there was no response for an email - subject and sent time will also be mentioned. Plus, the email in the Sent folder will be marked so that one can easily see for which email no response has arrived. Emails for which no response arrived for a multiple of the tracking period (configurable) should be marked differently, and response tracking should be switched off for those emails.

An additional option when sending the email or in the preferences will make Thunderbird send a automated reminder email to the recipient each time the tracking period is expired, in addition to the popup or reminder email to the sender. Plus, Tunderbird optionally marks all email senders in my inbox and/or in my address book as "very reliable", "not always reliable", or "unreliable".

I think the email response tracker can be very powerful when using it together with the "Ability to setup Workflows" idea of user Driessel.

--Fingerling 14:01, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Improved handling of quoted text passages in the plain text editor. The angle brackets marking quoted passages should not become part of the text and thus move around when such passages are edited, but stick to the left margin like the bars in the HTML editor do. Also, editing quoted passages often leads to "comb quotes" when the mail body is rewrapped at sending. In short, the angle brackets should be decoupled from the text during editing and rewrapping and only be inserted into the actual mail body afterwards.

Groupware integration (sunbird, lightning); administration of IMAP ACLs and sieve scripts with a GUI; write access to LDAP addressbooks including creation of address lists--Bollin 13:48, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

A function which automatically changes the sender identity specific to the folder i'm in, when i create a new email (at the moment it changes only specific to the accounts). (see the bat).--RMM 13:40, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

I really miss the easy backup and restore options known from The Bat. For Mac OS X i would like a better integreation, easy migration from mail.app to thunderbird and the Option to use the Mac OS X address book.--Jan-42 13:30, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

hello, I wish to have the posibility to add a photo to a contact in the adressbook (don't know if this is already realized in 1.5).
An other more complex idea is that Thunderbird could be able to sort your mails automatically to multible different folders after a learning period, similar to the actual auto-learning junk filter. --Nimix13 10:03, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

filter mails from IMAP-folder automatically to offline folders --Skurt 09:14, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

set more then one person from adressbook to BCC with sparse clicks. building groups of adresses would be great --Skurt 09:13, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Import/export adressbook to Outlook, synchronization would be greatest --Skurt 09:13, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

To make the migration from Outlook Express to Thunderbird easier for non IT freaks, it would be nice to integrate the "Contacts sidebar" extention and have the 3-pane-window as default look... --Yann 29 Nov 2005

Change the Address Book. Currently if you have an address in more than one Address Book (e.g. friends and company) and you have to make changes (email-changed...) you have to make this changes in EVERY Address Book. Something like categories or links would improve the usability. I would prefer categories like the Address Book in KOrganizer. --aliB

I would like an easy way of reporting spam to DNSBLs (i.e. spamhaus.org). An assistant might help removing personal information from the mail (i.e. the reporter's email address) and send it to several DNSBL servers at a time. (rumpelstielzchen, 29 Nov 2005)

I currently miss an easy way to "convert" a POP3 account to IMAP. Many mail providers support both, so switching from POP3 to IMAP should be made simpler. Furthermore, it should be possible to explicitly archive mails from IMAP accounts (a kind of "offline" mode that stores them on disk only and removes them from the server). A lot of IMAP providers severly limit the disk space, so archiving mails within Thunderbird gives you the "best of both worlds" (POP3 & IMAP). --phantasm 29 Nov 2005

The Bayes Filter should not only classify Mails als SPAM, it should be able to learn classify Mails as I move them to Folders (e.g. "Newsletter", "Work", "Friends" ...a self learning Inbox Filter) (GOI)

Would be great if Thunderbird would support email templates. For example I create everyday a report containing the current date in the subject. Creating a template with the subject "Report: <date>" would be great. --aliB

I'd love to see an option to hyperlink phone numbers in the address book. Either to "sip:" or better still to any URL, so that a CGI script could connect to an Asterisk server to initiate a call.--Libits 05:41, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

It would be nice if the addressbook is integrated with the evolution addressbook (for the GNOME Desktop).--Driessel 03:42, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

It could be also interessting if calendar appointments could be storred in the evolution-datacenter-server.--Driessel 03:42, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

More integration in the corresponding Desktop would be nice --Driessel 03:42, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Perhaps these things could already be handled with with the existing plugin structure? If not it would be nice to to make this possible with some extensions. --Driessel 03:42, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Spotlight integration, Metadata support, Slideshow features like mail.app optional Dashboard Widget, better integration into existing iWork & iLife product --Chunk 05:17, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

UI Face Lift for the 3-pane Window: I like the 3-column view that Outlook 2003 has. It features a column with the mail folders (left), one with the headers, but every msg gets two lines (middle), and one column showing the actual message. --f00f 14:20, 29 Nov 2005 (CET)

I would appreciate a more flexible way for date-formating in the message list. Another nice feature would be the possibility to sort messages in the order of reception. --f00f 14:20, 29 Nov 2005 (CET)

I would appreciate microsoft entourage and apple mail support for the 'import of local mail' tool (Mac OsX version).

Mail notification and filters: Currently I'm notified of a new mail regardless of wether it's filtered away to another folder or not. I would like to filter unimportant mail and only be notified if a mail is filtered in a special folder or not filtered at all. : Swift 05:30, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)


Another features: - The ability in MS Windows to minimize Thunderbird to the Systray like MS Outlook.

- Prevention of showing HTML E-Mails (show text only). View->Message Body As->Plain Text

- Ability to show additional Header Informations in an extra windows - not on the message itselfs

- Ability to mark Messages (Done, Undone, Status : red/green/yellow...) Try the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 keys.

- Ability to say 'download all folder contents' on IMAP Thanks ! --Neversaid 05:37, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Generate a task in Evolution, Outlook or Sunbird from an email message. This should be done through an extension --Driessel 05:39, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

RFC 3028 Sieve/MANAGESieve Support http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-martin-managesieve-05.txt

Support maildir format internaly. See Bug 58308. People have given enough arguments why this would be nice, but it would make it possible and fairly easy to write a mdimporter for mac os's spotlight (spotlight integration). Ibn 14:39, 29 Nov 2005 (CET)

Better integreation in Mac OS X: 1) Spotlight plug-in to search Thunderbird's e-mail (as mentioned above) 2) The Option to use Mac OS X's address book instead of Thunderbird's. --Setrok 05:46, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

PS: @Neversaid: A shortkey to change quickly between Plain Text/HTML view (only for this message) would be nice. I normally use the Plain Text view, but sometimes a messages requires (grumble) HTML. In that case, such a key would be nice.--Setrok 05:50, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

display connection errors in a dropdownlist above the statusbar and do not open a messagebox (try navigating in an imap-account when disconnected). Could look like "The Bat!" (screenshot - look at the dropdownlist at the bottom containing "FETCH ...").

ability to store searches in subfolders, even if real subfolders in imap-accounts are not allowed (e.g. gmx.net imap).

I would like to specify in which folder to store the answered mail (the original) together with the copy of the outgoing message. Like in the mailer mulberry: I copy the respective mail AND my answer in a folder I select (this feature is in the mulberry email window available as "Copy to: (list of all folders) followed by a check box "_ Also copy original message"). --gep

You can specify to store a copy of an outgoing message (Options -> Send a copy to -> ...). But you can't change the settings after you have chosen a destination, and you can't see wether you have chosen to save a copy at all. It would be nice to have an indicator in the status line or at least be able to check the settings in the menu. --Swift 07:03, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Related to the previous entry: when a copy of an outgoing message is enabled, a copy will be stored even if I only store a message as draft. In my opinion a copy only should be save when I really send the message. --Swift 07:03, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

i would like to see the cabinet concept (like virtual folders that can group folders from different account (not quite like the favorites mentioned!)) of mulberry implemented in thunderbird. This includes the possibility to tie identities to cabinets/folders. --bnz

I would appreciate a feature to delete all mails in junk folder with one click in the contextmenu of the junk folder or with a shortkey. (see Mail.app Mac OS X) --Elmexz 06:54, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Additionally to the "Empty Junk Folder" feature Elmexz mentioned, a global setting that Junk is really deleted (and not first sent to Trash) that works for all delete methods (contextmenu, "Automatically delete junk messages older than..." feature etc.) would be nice. --Stebs

I'd like to have a data source interface as provided by the KDE Kontact suite: One can chose between different data sources and has a flexible tool to access and merge his data.

I am using kaddressbook with an imap addressbook ressource. Since thunderbird is already able to handle imap folders and even store them in offline mode, it would be cool to be able to use addresses from such an imap folder in my addressbook.

The same holds for sunbird: Korganizer can store its appointments as ical-Files in an imap folder (basically as e-mails with ical content). If Sunbird were able to use an imap folder (provided by Thunderbird) as data source, I could also synchronize my calender data.

While you are at it: Storing the mail filter rules on the imap server would be great too. (If it's an easily parseable format maybe someone even writes something to update mailfilter or procmail scripts for serverside filtering) --Elm 16:32, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Make it possible so that while viewing Message Headers sorted in descending order (=default, and automatically reset after "compact folder"), deleting a Mail does move Focus up to the next newer Message (and not move down to the next older one). --Stebs

Native Widget Support (GTK+) on Linux

I would be really nice to have native GTK+ widgets for the file dialogs in thunderbird (ff, too). In windows everything works quite well, so I would be happy to see this for linux, too.

handle of mails

It would be helpful to have a possibilitz for marking a mail with a different state. The best would be to give the user the right for creating the different states. for example.: Todo; answer later; privat; etc.

other is give a mail a answeringdate like it is coming in at that day.

other would be to send a mail at a differnt date.

Possibilitz to change the subject in an recieved mail. or to have a second mysubject-line for comments.

handle of attachments

a good thing would be to have the rights to delete an attachment in the mail. so it is possible to ceep the mail-message without the attachment. It would be good to make a note in the mail that there was an attachment.

Sorry for this rude striking, but this is already possible with TB 1.5 (and we talk about TB 2.0) --Stebs

A nice feature would be to strip attachments from mails automatically and save them to an extra folder. This would ease virus scanning, keep mailboxes slim and therefore speed up TB dramtically. However, I don't know whether the mailbox format allows references to files in a folder, but if, it would be most valuable.

Addressbook Management

In the current Thunderbird, I often get stuck when managing Email lists. Suppose you want to create an Email list for 10 out of your 200 entries. You have to open each addressbook entry individually, copy the Email address, open the list again, and paste it as a new list entry.

It would be much smoother if Email lists could be handled by drag and drop, and if the List entries worked just like the address fields in the compose window.

Anybody who regularly works with Lists under Thunderbird should be pleased by such features.

Configurable display for mail header fields

It would be great if there would be the possibility to add special header fields to the header display, which is currently containing subject, from, to and date. An example would be the display of the user agent or any other header, if existent.

Support for Mixmaster / Mixminion remailers

What about support for anonymous, secure remailers like mixmaster / mixminion? It would be a major contribute to be able to use those from within thunderbird. --Eisman 23:04, 29 Nov 2005 (PST)

Customizable print output

It can be very usefull to customize the printout. I suggest a template like system, so that a user can change the look of a printout without programming abilities.

Pocket PC sync

Sync Address book and Calendar like Palm-sync in MOZ

Update Vertical View Layout

I like the vertical view layout, but it's not useable on 1024x768 pixel screens. The middle column with subject, from, date infos is to wide. Two lines (one for subject, one for from, date) will be the answer to 1024 screens. Example (Outlook)

Backup recovery/profile import

The last time I totally rebuilt my workstation (formatted HD, new XP installation), I just had a backup of my profile dir. After installing TB, I was forced to create a new email account, then I replaced this dir by the backed up one. Please tell me it's already possible in the current release to import a saved profile in a more comfortable way - otherwise, I'd appreciate such a feature in a future release.


It would be very nice to export / inport all user data in a EASY way... If you plan to make a new installation of your OS, you would like to save emails, accounts, rules and so on. there are some extentions, but it should be integrated... It would be a good function for people who don't have good IT-knowledge --Yann 29 Nov 2005


Intelligent folder handling

The next step for email clients would be to massively facilitate folder handling. For example, when dragging an email onto folders, it should be possible to type the initial letters of a folder name (while pressing the mouse button), and the matching folder(s) would automatically be expanded and scrolled to. For corporate users with a large set of folders, this would be very helpful.

Even better would be a Bayesian filter (much like the junk mail filter) that detects the most likely folders for an email, and shows them as drag-and-drop targets in a toolbar above/below the email content, so that the user can drag the email into one of these most likely folders. If he wants to use another folder instead, he can use the regular folder list.

But these Bayesian filters could do even more: When the most likely folder (or set of previous emails) for a new email is determined, the previous emails (and their replies) could be used to pre-fill a new reply email with the correct address (taken from previous replies).

Another thing: How is copying of emails to local folders done right now? If this is a full copy, an improvement would be to have aliases (placeholders) that would point to an email. In this way, I could file an email under several folders (e.g. under 'customers/ACME' AND under 'complaints'), without copying it.

Searching for addresses in message window

I hope, that I haven't missed anything. Sometimes I get e-mail with a very big distribution list. To check whether a specific recipient is addressed, I'd like to search for it using <ctrl-f> in the message window. Currently I have to do it via the message source <ctrl-u>.

Up to date search folders

Search folders should not only be cached, they also should be kept up to date when new mail arrives. This way you you can see in what kind of category a mail falls without moving it to a different folder. A bit like the views-concept of the Opera mailclient. Some automatic search folders for contacts, priorities, attachements and stuff could also be included. Also add some functions to the context menu of those folders. Like delete all, mark all read and so on (which should be on every folder by the way).

Multiple email addresses for sending

I've got lots of email addresses at different providers, but they all share the same server side inbox (e.g., they are all collected by a Yahoo! mailbox). Wouldn't it be nice to be able sending emails with all of these email addresses without having to create a dozen inbox accounts? At the moment (TB1.3) you can specify several SMTP server but you can't use them unless an account. --Manuel (talk) 03:56, 30 Nov 2005 (PST)

IMAP: Let me chose in what folder to save sent messages

In order to hold threads together I would like to be asked before sending a message in what folder to save the message. If it is an answer or a forward, the folder where the original message lives in should be the default.

New structuring and visualization features

Implement new mail structuring and visualization features like done in IBM remail

Colored EMail index

In the mail index, the text color should be customizable for each message. Depending on whether messages match a certain pattern. For example, with a certain configuration all mails from the linux kernel mailinglsit should be shown in red and all from the thunderbird developers mailing list should be shown blue.

Synchronize locale messages with POP3 server account

Since 90% of the users have POP3 accounts it should be considered to add a better synchronization of locale stored messages with the messages on the server account (see also "http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=135107&highlight="). The intention ist to give the user the most possible control over his POP3 account and allow to retrieve messages to several computers. This also allows to use the POP3 account as a backup store in case of a locale failure, allows to mark messages as locked (never deleted), etc and allows to delete stray messages on the server which should have deleted before.

Folder selection through popup box when folder pane hidden

This allows to still be able to switch between folders even if folder pane is hidden. This popup box may be show always or only when folder pain hidden (see also "http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=18172&highlight=" and "http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=60707&highlight=").

Verbose E-mail folders

Currently, you can only browse through your email by clicking the emails and reading them, or you must read the often not so useful subjects. I suggest to introduce a view into thunderbird with summary panels for every email with the traditional information, together with attachment names, first few lines of the email, maybe link to meeting scheduled in the mail etc.

Extended Filter options

Filters in current versions of TB have an option for 'any of the following' or 'all of the following' which is either a giant union or intersection of all filter rules. It would be very useful if we could make more complex boolean expressions, like adding OR and AND between the different rules. Furthermore, it would be helpful if you could import filters into filters.

unify mailing list, newsgroup, and feed interfaces

(from [my blog post on the subject])

Users participate in discussions and receive announcements via a variety of delivery methods, including mailing lists, newsgroups, and feeds. Although these methods are all technologically different, users interact with them in roughly the same ways. They subscribe to and unsubscribe from a source of discussion/announcements, collect its messages into folders, sometimes save those messages indefinitely, and other times periodically delete old messages.

Users don't care about the technology providing communication, they care about the communication itself. So the UI of a messaging client like Thunderbird shouldn't arbitrarily differentiate between delivery methods but rather focus on what users actually want to do with the messages they receive. Thunderbird's UI should include the following features:

  • ways of subscribing to sources (in this one regard, the UI may vary noticably between methods, since users tend to stumble upon them in different ways, and it may be difficult to hide some details of the subscription process);
  • when a user subscribes to a source, the client automatically creates a collection (a.k.a. "folder") in which to store the source's messages;
  • global and per-source options (with sensible defaults) for receiving messages in the Inbox, in a collection, or in both places;
  • readily-available contextual options (f.e. toolbar buttons, context menu items, buttons embedded into the message display, etc.) for managing sources (i.e. unsubscribing from them, changing their settings);
  • when a user receives a message from a discussion/announcement to which he isn't subscribed, readily-available contextual options for subscribing to it;
  • global and per-source options for deleting messages after a certain amount of time, a certain number of messages, or a certain amount of storage space;
  • a way to browse the list of all subscriptions and manage them;
  • a distinction between turning off message reception (either temporarily or permanently) and removing the source and its messages completely (not sure which should be called "unsubscribing"; probably the former);

Note that unsubscribing from a mailing list is technically very different from unsubscribing from a feed, since mailing list subscriptions are stored on a list server. But from the user's perspective, it's irrelevant where or how the subscription is stored, since either way she wants the same thing: to stop receiving the messages. Users shouldn't have to learn two different UIs for doing the same thing just because the technology behind their behavior differs, just like they shouldn't have to learn different ways of accelerating depending on whether their car has a carburetor or fuel injection; Thunderbird should handle those details under the hood.

For feeds, that means no longer polling the feed. For mailing lists, it means interacting with the server to cancel the subscription. And even though there's no standard way to unsubscribe from a mailing list, most lists are run by one of a small set of list server packages which are identifiable from the headers they add to messages, so it's possible to implement a few package-specific handlers that can automate unsubscribing from 99% of lists.

better Thunderbird source->folder mapping management

Thunderbird users may have only a handful of accounts, but they have numerous discrete serial sources of information, including mailing lists, individual newsgroups, and feeds. With filters, the global Inbox, and Forumzilla's arbitrary feed->folder mappings, users have a great deal of flexibility about where they put their messages. But the more source->folder mappings they add, the harder it is for them to remember which mail goes where, and adding mappings is challenging for ordinary users.

Thunderbird's UI for source->folder mappings is scattered across multiple Account Preferences pages and Filters dialogs. Forumzilla adds yet another dialog for managing feed subscriptions. Users need a better way to view these mappings and change them.

I suggest we add a "sources" pane to the left of the Thunderbird folder pane. The pane, when displayed, would feature a list of sources with arrows pointing from them to their folders. Users would be able to drag arrows to different folders to change where sources write their messages. And they'd be able to double-click a source to get more detailed configuration options, which could be just the existing account, filter, and feed preferences dialogs.

Changing a source->folder mapping for a feed means changing its "target folder" preference. For a mailing list it might mean creating or updating a filter. But these are backend differences; to the user, it's the same action, and it should work the same for all sources.

Mark unanswered E-Mails automatically clearly visible

Unanswered but read mails should be automatically clearly marked as unanswered. This should occur in a visible way, like you normally label Mails! If some one migh change this appearence he should be able to do it in the Options Menu.

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