Thunderbird 3 and GmailUI
I recently upgraded to Thunderbird 3, and so far I like the switch.
One of the plugins that I relied on, GmailUI, isn’t compatible with Thunderbird 3 and doesn’t seem to be actively maintained.
I was able to find a way to replicate the main feature I use – using “y” to Archive emails to a specified Archive folder. (I’m a big fan of Inbox Zero and GTD in general and tend not to categorize my email much – more on that later.)
Here’s how:
1) Download and install the “Archive This” add-on.
2) Go to Tools -> Add-ons. Click on the “Preferences” button for Archive This.
3) In the “Presets” tab, specify the archive folder you wish to use.
4) In the “Key” tab, associate “Preset 1″ with the Y key.
5) Voila – you’re Presets tab should now reflect the Y key as mapping to the Archive folder you specified.
I also am a big fan of the Nostalgy add-on (go the development site for a Thunderbird 3 compatible version), which allows keyb0ard-based tagging of messages (which I use very much like gmail labels) as well as keyboard-based folder moves (which I only use for my “!ACTION” and “!WAITING” folders).
Hope this helps other Thunderbird/Gmail/GTD users.
December 10th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
I’ve also noticed that other popular plugins/add-ons are lacking support for Thunderbird 3. I believe a lot of things have changed with the new version.
February 11th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Matt is right — as of 3.0b3, the API to move messages around changed pretty radically. It is a dramatic improvement, but documentation is pretty scarce. I had to reverse engineer a lot of it to get Archive This working for the 3.0 release.
Anyway, while it is not a complete replacement for nostalgy, I have added some keyboard-based filing options to the 1.4 versions of Archive This. Upgrade to the newest version and give them a spin.