It looks like as one really annoying thunderbird bug will be patched in the near future.
The current version always uses “Date: header” as “mail date”, which can be easily faked by spammers. The patch will provide the setting “mailnews.use_received_date”. When set to true “mail date” will always be obtained from “Received: header”.
I wonder why the Firefox 2.0 Beta – download page takes me to the download of Firefox 1.5.0.6 at the moment … anyway … The binaries of Firefox 2.0 beta 2 release candidate 2 can be found on the mozilla ftp server.
The webdeveloper extension is not only useful to webdevelopers.
Show password displays the password in password-fields. So you can see what you type. (If there is nobody standing behind you, there is no need to hide characters behind asterisks.)
If you use the firefox default settings and you search google and use a link provided by google to visit the found page, the google search-parameters (e. g. the keywords) are sent to the computer hosting the visited webpage. The same applies to link-collections.
Disable referers protects your privacy. The webpage you visit is not informed from which webpage you come from.
You can also disable meta-redirects, Java, JavaScript, the popup-blocker, css, …
You can convert post-forms to get-forms. Many websites supports get-parameters although they use posts. Int his case it is easy to create an URL to a webpage that can only be reached by submitting a form.
Most of the many other features only make sense to web-developers I think.
The Tunderbird extension Mailbox Alert seems to be really useful. I think: It internally adds a folderListener and and let the user define an external program, that is called every time the number of unread messages has increased. At the moment Mailbox alert does not allow to define actions for virtual folders. But I fear there are other problems, too:
When “Mailbox Alert” is installed and activated I get a message-box containing the following text:
Warnung: Nicht antwortendes Skript
Ein Skript auf dieser Seite ist eventuell beschädigt oder es antwortet nicht mehr. Sie können das Skript jetzt stoppen oder fortsetzen, um zu sehen, ob das Skript fertig wird.
Here is the translation:
Warning: Script unresponsive
A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now or you can continue to see if the script will repeat.
The process of fetching the mails from my pop-servers and moving them to the right folders using the thunderbird filter-rules slows down dramatically.
I observed the described behaviour on a high-end dual-core PC running the german version of Windows XP and Thunderbird 1.5.0.5. For testing I disabled all other Thunderbird extensions I use. The dom.max_script_run_time was set to its default value 5.
You send out newsletters? You manage online-accounts which are connected to an e-mail-address? So you have to keep track of the e-mail-addresses which become temporary or permanently unavailable. A good starting point is to provide a return-path in the header of every message you send.
Return-Path:
So you will get a delivery status notification (DSN) on failure.
[code]
Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 22:58:27 +0200 (CEST)
From: MAILER-DAEMON@your0815provider.com (Mail Delivery System)
Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
To: sample-return-path@in-a-nutshell.net
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/report; report-type=delivery-status;
boundary="346A8BD40B6.1153601907/your0815provider.com"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Message-Id: <20060722205827.7A544BD40AD@your0815provider.com>
This is a MIME-encapsulated message.
--346A8BD40B6.1153601907/your0815provider.com
Content-Description: Notification
Content-Type: text/plain
This is the Postfix program at host your0815provider.com.
I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned
below could not be delivered to one or more destinations.
For further assistance, please send mail to
If you do so, please include this problem report. You can The Postfix program --346A8BD40B6.1153601907/your0815provider.com Reporting-MTA: dns; your0815provider.com Final-Recipient: rfc822; user_xy@web.de --346A8BD40B6.1153601907/your0815provider.com The DSN info has a special content-type: I implemented a small, greedy command-line-driven program in java, that parses an Mbox file and collects e-mail-addresses that caused an dsn with For each e-mail-address there is one output, which can be configured using a template string. I am using this to generate a sql-script where each line contains an update-statement to a refresh the availability status for a special e-mail-address. The call looks like: I am using this program to parse Thunderbird message-box files. Thunderbird uses a variation of the mboxrd format and I have not encountered any compatibility problems. The program uses the Libraries from the GNU Classpath project to parse the mbox files. At the moment these libraries are a little bit buggy. I reported some bugs and did some workarounds. The program uses the dsn.jar from suns javamail library, to parse the DSN message-part. The status of the DSN was not very useful. So the program includes an uncomplete list of regular expression patterns to cluster the DSNs by searching for these patterns within the There is also a feature to compare the sent-time of the last message sent to user A and the DSN received for the e-mail-address of user A. This is useful to recognize that a temporary problem has gone away. Last but not least there is a feature, to parse DSNs which are delivered as plain text. If there is some interest, I will try to publish the program and its source-code. Which tool do you use to keep track of delivery status notifications?
delete your own text from the message returned below.
many messages on the server. (in reply to RCPT TO command)
Content-Description: Delivery error report
Content-Type: message/delivery-status
Arrival-Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 22:58:27 +0200 (CEST)
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; host mx-ha01.web.de[217.72.192.149] said: 550
many messages on the server. (in reply to RCPT TO command)
Content-Description: Undelivered Message
Content-Type: message/rfc822
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
[/code]
Content-Type: message/delivery-statusAction: failed.
java -jar dnsextractor -t "update email_availability set dsn_email={sql:email:}, dsn_sent_time={:unixtime:}, dsn_classification={:dfnclass:}, dsn_obsolete={:obsolete:} where email = {sql:email:}; # ({dfn:Status}) {:date:}: {dfn:Diagnostic-Code:}" returnedmsgs -s sentmsgs
The problems: 1. The library writes some stack-traces to System.err. 2. There are some example with e-mail-addresses of the kind "localpart."@gmx.de.Diagnostic-Code string.
What I am really missing is a extension for creating small jpeg attachments by dropping some big jpeg files at a new message.
I think of a simple options dialog to turn that feature on or off and to set the prefered size (resize to fit into bounding-box: width x height pixel) and the prefered jpeg quality. There also could be an option to keep or remove metadata (e.g. exif information).
I am sure there are many people out there looking for a feature like that.
A simple way to add an image that is stored in the clipboard as image-attachment (!) would be really useful, too.
Yesterday I tried Tab Mix Plus v 0.2.4.
I was glowing experiencing the enhanced tab-management.
I like the option [x] load homepage on every new tab.
Using this option, after opening a new tab the location field has the focus and the cursor is placed at the end of the url.
I don’t find this optimal. I would suggest:
1. the location field is focused and the whole url is marked (so it is easy to paste a new url) OR
2. focus is set like in a new window (so that hitting the Tab-key once gets you into the main-panel)
After realized this tiny flaw, I decided to give TabMix (the original branch) a try.
Tab Mix (v 0.2.2.3) fulfills all my requirements and opening a new tab works well. The focus behaves like described above as alternative (2) which is the alternative I prefer.
Any comments about Tab Mix vs Tab Mix Plus?
I have often used the mouse to put the focus on the first field of a web-form.
If you use firefox and the webpage takes care of the right control-tab-order, you only have to hit tab once to get into the first text-field. This is because the webpage itself does not have the focus by default. Using other browsers (e.g. IE) you may have to hit the tab key several times to get there.
So if you want to take this burden from the user of your web-site, use a java-script like the following:
[js]
[/js]
I am using this script on one of my own sites. It seems to work. But of course I can not give any warranty.
BTW: Can anyone tell me what’s the reason, why firefox does not set the focus on the main-panel itself by default?
Extensions for all day use
Extension related to web development
Any comments?