Category: Thunderbird (Page 1 of 2)

Like with Firefox, Thunderbird is also changing add-ons to WebExtensions (called MailExtension there). Thunderbird 68 introduced this requirement. Users on older versions still are not offered the latest version through the automatic updater so it stayed below my radar.

Recently, some users of small Toggle Headers extension reached out to me asking whether I intend to update it for Thunderbird 68 and later. I finally got a chance to migrate it and it was fairly easy in my case.

The easiest way is to convert it to a MailExtension with legacy support that allows to keep the old XUL stuff. The main changes I had to do were:

1. Replace install.rdf with manifest.json: This is really straightforward given the documentation
2. Add a legacy key to the manifest. Some examples showed "legacy": true but that did not work. Instead, you need to specify:

   "legacy": {
        "type": "xul" 
   }

3. In the chrome.manifest I overlaid mailWindowOverlay.xul. This had to be changed to messenger.xul. See the note on overlaying.

With this, the extension can be packaged up (now with a nice little ant build script that automates this) and uploaded to Thunderbird’s add-ons site. Luckily, there it passed the review with no complaints and version 2.0 is now available.

I think it should be possible to accomplish this without any old XUL stuff. There is a MailExtension API documentation that outlines commands. Since users mainly use the add-on for the convenient key shortcut (H) this seems feasible. But that’s for another day.

My Thunderbird extension Toggle Headers was running smoothly for a long time. It only needed to be kept aligned with the Thunderbird version updates (for the maximum supported version of the extension). Everything was fine until the third-party extension CompactHeader, which is supported by Toggle Headers, released a new version with internal changes. These changes involved some refactoring, which meant the function to toggle between the compact and expanded header pane had a different name (or namespace).

The way I noticed this, since I don’t use CompactHeader myself, was by receiving a 1-star review. Of course, no proud developer likes this. Generally, I prefer to be contacted directly with bug reports and be able to respond before receiving a review. If a developer doesn’t respond, a bad review is then necessary. However, in this case bad reviews could be turned into very good ones, so no complaints in the end :).

Long story short, a new version of Toggle Headers was released. Basically, Toggle Headers v1.0 restores support for CompactHeader 2.1.0 and higher, but at the same time, it still works with older versions. Unfortunately, the new version of CompactHeader contains a bug that prevents toggling between the header modes (Normal/All) to work properly. I reported the bug in the referenced support forums, but haven’t received a response to date.

This required a workaround to be integrated into the new version. When switching from collapsed header pane and Normal to All headers and then back to Normal, the header pane would stay expanded. The Compact option however is checked in the menu. The workaround simply disables and enables the compact header again to make it work until a fixed version gets released.

The same kind of story happened with another one, where an extension I never heard of named Phoenity Buttons made my extension not work anymore. This was due to the usage of the same key shortcut (H). Somehow Thunderbird gave precedence for the key binding to that extension. Fortunately, the developer of this extension was very helpful and even willing to change his key binding to another one.

All in all, a great experience with the Thunderbird extension and user community.

After updating my Thunderbird to the current version there was one extension not working anymore: Headers Toggle. Even manually adjusting maxVersion in the install.RDF to pretend it’s compatible didn’t work. This extension allowed to switch the headers view between seeing all headers (All) and the most important header information (Normal) with a single key shortcut (H). Unfortunately this extension hasn’t been updated in a long time.

I created a new Thunderbird extension called Toggle Headers that allows to do this and works with the current (and upcoming) Thunderbird version.

Update: The newest version (0.3) of Toggle Headers  is compatible with CompactHeaders. When both are used at the same time the current state of the headers view is taken into account:

• when collapsed and H is pressed, the headers view will be expanded and all headers shown
• pressing H again will switch back to the normal headers view but also collapse the view again (the previous state is remembered)