Thunderbird

Making Firefox use Thunderbird for web feeds

Chris Ilias 17 Comments

I was saving this tip for today, because it’s a bit of a Christmas present, courtesy of alta88.

Users of both Firefox and Thunderbird may have noticed that when you get the feed preview screen in Firefox 2, and use the drop-down list to add the feed to Thunderbird, it does not work. There are bugs filed for this. One that I know of, is bug 350735.

To make it work, you’ll need to close Firefox, and go into the \components\ folder, in the Firefox program directory. (eg. C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\components ), and open the file FeedConverter.js in a text editor. You had better make a backup of it first. Because of the line breaks, Notepad won’t work; but Wordpad will work.

At around line 332, you’ll see text that looks like:

case "client":
var clientApp =
prefs.getComplexValue(PREF_SELECTED_APP, Ci.nsILocalFile);
//@line 393 "/cygdrive/c/builds/tinderbox/Fx-Mozilla1.8-release/WINNT_5.2_Depend/mozilla/browser/components/feeds/src/FeedConverter.js"
var ss =
Cc["@mozilla.org/browser/shell-service;1"].
getService(Ci.nsIShellService_MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH);
ss.openApplicationWithURI(clientApp, spec);
break;

Replace that (select, copy, paste) with:

case "client":
const PREF_SELECTED_APP_ARGS = "browser.feeds.handlers.application.args";
const PREF_SELECTED_APP_URIPREFIX = "browser.feeds.handlers.application.uriPrefix";

var clientApp = prefs.getComplexValue(PREF_SELECTED_APP, Ci.nsILocalFile);
var feedhandlerArgs = safeGetCharPref(PREF_SELECTED_APP_ARGS, Ci.nsIILocalFile);
var uriPrefix = safeGetCharPref(PREF_SELECTED_APP_URIPREFIX, Ci.nsIILocalFile);

var file = Cc["@mozilla.org/file/local;1"].createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsILocalFile);
file.initWithPath(clientApp.persistentDescriptor);
var process = Cc["@mozilla.org/process/util;1"].createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsIProcess);
process.init(file);

if (uriPrefix) spec = uriPrefix + spec;
if (feedhandlerArgs)
var args = [feedhandlerArgs, spec];
else
var args = [spec];

process.run(false, args, args.length);
break;

Save and close FeedConverter.js.

Next, open Firefox and use about:config to add the following preferences:
Add the String preference browser.feeds.handlers.application.args.
Set the value to -mail.
Add the String preference browser.feeds.handlers.application.uriPrefix.
Set the value to feed:. (Include the colon.)

Enjoy, and have a merry Christmas. 🙂

I don’t like the new Thunderbird theme.

Chris Ilias 21 Comments

I’ve been using Thunderbird branch builds daily, since before the new Thunderbird theme landed, two and a half months ago; and the new Thunderbird theme has not grown on me. It’s too beige. It’s too yellow. There’s no variety of colour. It lacks vibrancy. Every time I open the latest 1.5 release, it’s such a welcome relief on the eyes, after looking at TB2.

I’m sorry Arvid. I know you worked hard on the new theme. I understand the desire to have a visual difference between TB1 and TB2; but I don’t see the improvement. I don’t see the theory behind the changes (except for the background of the message-list pane); and after two and a half months of daily use, I think I’ve given it a fair shot.

UPDATE: Not labelling these screenshots was intentional. Show this post to someone who’s never seen Thunderbird, and see what they choose.

[screenhot od TB2]

[screenshot of TB1.5]

A note about Nightly Tester Tools

Chris Ilias 2 Comments

If you use Nightly Tester Tools to bump up the compatibility of an add-on to enable it on your installation of Firefox or Thunderbird, that does not guarantee that the add-on will work. Nightly Tester Tools is a tool for testing.

Add-ons are built on top of Firefox/Thunderbird code. When the Firefox/Thunderbird code changes (new version), that may break the add-on, or worse, the add-on may cause the new version of Firefox/Thunderbird not to work. This is why the whole “add-on compatibility” thing exists in the first place. Add-on authors can state which versions they know their add-on will work on. When you bump the compatibility, it doesn’t magically fix and bugs that may occur, when trying to use that add-on on a new version of Firefox/Thunderbird. You run the risk of breaking your installation of Firefox/Thunderbird.

For some add-ons, there may not appear to be a problem; but there’s no guarantee, because it hasn’t been tested. That’s the point.

XPAT on news.mozilla.org

Chris Ilias 5 Comments

[The Thunderbird 2 version of this can be found here.]

Every once in a while, someone on news.mozilla.org will enquire about receiving an error message “A News (NNTP) error occurred: xpat not supported“, when trying to search newsgroups on news.mozilla.org; so I thought I’d post my ‘stock’ answer. 🙂

News.mozilla.org is hosted by Giganews, who’s servers do not support XPAT commands.
To quote one of the Giganews support personnel:

“The XPAT command attempts to search through our entire spool of over 700 million articles, to match on a specific keyword, that is often found only in a handful of newsgroups. The command puts enough of a load on our servers, that several people using this at one time can affect the performance that all of our customers receive.”

Disabling XPAT support is not an uncommon thing. When using the “Search Messages” function in Mozilla Thunderbird [Edit–>Find–>Search Messages], the XPAT command is used to search that news server. The workaround for this is to make Thunderbird search messages locally. There are a couple of ways to do that:

1. Use the search bar [View–>Toolbars–>Search Bar].
[screenshot]

2. Before opening the search window, you can switch to offline mode [File–>Offline–>Work Offline]. There’s also an offline toggle icon in the bottom left of the Thunderbird window.
[screenshot]

Additionally, all mozilla.* newsgroups are archived on Google Groups, which is searchable using Google Groups.

Whole Lotta Theme Discussion Goin’ On

Chris Ilias 4 Comments

Those interested in giving feedback on purposed changes to the Firefox 2 theme, should head over to the mozilla.dev.themes newsgroup, where there is quite a bit of feedback/discussion taking place.

In addition, the SeaMonkey Council wants to give SeaMonkey a new default theme. Head over to the mozilla.dev.apps.seamonkey newsgroup, to give your feedback on that.

In other news;
we may get our first alpha release of Thunderbird 2 this week.

Give attachment names more room in Thunderbird

Chris Ilias 1 Comment

It’s been a while, since I’ve posted a Firefox or Thunderbird tip; which I assume is the primary reason I have any subscribers. I apologize. Here’s another Thunderbird attachment box tip, that I’ve found useful.

Thunderbird has a width limit on the display of attachment names, which means if an attachment has a long name, the full name may not be displayed. Instead you’ll get an abbreviated version. For example, “abcd…xyz.eml”.

You can increase the width limit, to fit your tastes. This is particularly useful for those with large screen resolutions. Add the following script to your userChrome.css file:
#attachmentBucket, .attachmentBox {min-width: 30em;}

“30em” is what I use, but you can modify that to your liking.