I migrated to Google mail from Thunderbird about 4 months ago and have not regretted the loss of an application installed on my computer and have delighted at the search speed and many good UI things.

Until I tried Google mail I was utterly bored by the thought of an alt’ ver of Hotmail. But the difference could not be greater. And I just 100% ignore the text ads on the RH side.

Select “Account Settings” from the “Tools” menu. Select the imap account which you would like to mark for offline usage. In this account select “Offline & Disk Space”. Here you can configure TB to automatically mark any newly created folder for offline usage (tick “When I create new folders…”). To select existing folders click on the button “Select folders for offline use…”.
You will be presented a tree view of the folder structure of the selected account including all subfolders (you may also select other IMAP accounts in this dialog) where you can mark all those folders you want to mark for offline use in one go.
Now close all dialogs with by clicking on “OK”.
By selecting “File->Offline->Download/Sync now” from the File menu all IMAP folders will be downloaded.

What I’m missing is a switch where I can say “Always download/sync folders”.

I hope I could express myself clearly (I’m no native speaker) and could be of some help.

Just went to the T-Bird site, and I see that on Windows, they do get to use the equivalent control-N.

~Grauw

1. Too easy to delete messages (esp. since the Delete key is also the Backspace key)

Delete message should be COMMAND-DELETE, just like the Finder. I’m big on consistancy.

I’ve inadvertently deleted messages by hitting the delete key when I’d highlighted text in the preview pane or even just placed the cursor there for editing (I guess that’s a behavior I’ve carried with me from Outlook, where that pane is editable). I’ve had the dog hit the key and delete messages too! Destructive procedures need to be made extra safe.

2. As touched on in the article, more settings should be account-specific. Maybe I want an alert sound played when email comes into some of my email accounts, but not others. Or they may need different filters. Maybe mail about mortgage refinancing or whatever could be relevant if it comes into one account, but would be spam in another account.

3. If you click in an inactive window, the cursor should be placed at the point where you clicked. I often see the place where I want to type, click there, start typing, and the text appears somewhere else, since it requires a second click for cursor placement. (OTOH, if you click on the scroll bar of an inactive window, it _does_ behave as if that’s really where you clicked, it scrolls.)

How so? I dug around the package contents for a while but never found the relevant image (or other file) that would allow that happen. I”m totally up for hacking to get the highlighting, so do tell!

There is a bit of tutorial on how to hack Mail’s nib files here.

My biggest clue of that was the fact that there”s no setting (I can find) to have the text insertion point placed below the quoted text when replying.

If a mail client is going to try to force me to top-quote, then that”s no client for me.

I knew I’ve seen that setting somewhere, and after some searching, I found it in Account settings under Composition & Addressing.

It”s possible for themes to do this

He was speaking of Mail, not TB.

the only one I know of that does is Noia 2 eXtreme (which is the reason I stick with it!)

CrossOver does, too.

It’s possible for themes to do this, the only one I know of that does
is Noia 2 eXtreme (which is the reason I stick with it!)

https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/1947/

First you need to install (if you haven’t already) Apple Developer Tools from the CDs that came with your Mac
Next open MessageViewerContents.nib in the package (Contents>Resources>English.lproj), this will open it in Interface Builder. Select the list view at the top, and bring up the Attributes in the Inspector (Apple-Shift-I). Tick the box for ‘Use Alternating Row Background’ third from the bottom. Save and reopen Mail…

If you want to change where the quoted text goes in Mail, go to Preferences > Signatures and tick the box “Place signature above quoted text”

Oh God no, that’s even worse. I want the quoted text at the top, the signature at the bottom after the quoted text, and the insertion point in between the two. That’s how Thunderbird acts, and so does Eudora.

Alternate row highlighting is coming as well – I had to hack mine to do it.

How so? I dug around the package contents for a while but never found the relevant image (or other file) that would allow that happen. I’m totally up for hacking to get the highlighting, so do tell!