Thunderbird: Useful little thread colouring mod?

[Adrian C]

Sometime ago on another group someone mentioned a feature of 'outlook express' that highlighted unread threads in a different colour as well as being embolded. Thunderbird just has them in bold.

I had a look at this back then and found / edited this mod. Lately on reinstalling things I've realised how visually useful it was for me so I'll share.

First find your profile folder.

Create (if you don't already have one) a 'chrome' subfolder.

Copy the following lines as a new file in this folder, named 'userChrome.css'.

---------- copy lines below here ---------- @namespace url("

");

#threadTree > treechildren::-moz-tree-cell-text(unread) { color: DarkBlue !important; } #threadTree > treechildren::-moz-tree-cell-text(container, closed, hasUnread, read) { color: DarkBlue !important; }

---------- copy lines before here ----------

Restart Thunderbird, and you should find unreads are now coloured.

e&oe!

[John Rumm]

Ta.

I lobbed that in the Wiki here:

[Rick Hughes]

This says about a 'chrome' folder, I don't use Chrome use Firefox .... is there a workaround for that ?

[Huge]

"chrome" is an industry term for shiny bits in user interfaces (see also "bells and whistles"). I run FF, but have "chrome" directories;

huge@amun:~$ find .mozilla -name chrome .mozilla/firefox/3vugvlvw.default/chrome .mozilla/firefox/3vugvlvw.default/extensions/ [e-mail]/chrome .mozilla/firefox/3vugvlvw.default/extensions/{3d7eb24f-2740-49df-8937-200b1cc08f8a}/chrome .mozilla/firefox/3vugvlvw.default/extensions/{03B08592-E5B4-45ff-A0BE-C1D975458688}/chrome .mozilla/firefox/3vugvlvw.default/extensions/{e968fc70-8f95-4ab9-9e79-304de2a71ee1}/chrome .mozilla/firefox/3vugvlvw.default/extensions/{06997db0-c027-4d5f-bd37-b0d9230226ea}/chrome .mozilla/firefox/3vugvlvw.default/extensions/{b9db16a4-6edc-47ec-a1f4-b86292ed211d}/chrome

Google appropriated the word for their browser...

[Adrian C]

Should have been called the 'GUI bling' folder ;-)

Don't worry about the folder name, just create it. It's nought to do with google.

BTW, this mod is compatible with John's 'message filter' tip in the previous section of the wiki, that sets 'Watch Thread' and colour tags own messages as 'Personal'. I recommend setting up that as well ;-)

[John Rumm]

If anyone spots a quick way to add a button to the tool bar to toggle "all" and "watched with unread" from the Threads sub menu, that would be handy to know...

[Adrian C]

Just had a play, rough but here goes.

1. Install Custom Buttons Add-On.

Custom Buttons 0.0.5.7

1. Create a button, named "View ALL" to fire this line of code

goDoCommand('cmd_viewAllMsgs')

1. Create another button, named "Watched" to fire this line of code

goDoCommand('cmd_viewWatchedThreadsWithUnread')

1. Buttons once created can be dragged to the toolbar from the customise toolbar toolbox.

[Tim Watts]

Smashing! Thanks for that.

Where's the documentation for the "code" language - is it core to Thunderbird or part of the custombuttons extension?

[Tim Watts]

ok - partly answering my own question:

That seems to be limited to a few specific cases - is there a more general approach?

[Adrian C]

The language thunderbird is written in is XUL

However, I figured out the specific thunderbird commands by installing another add on, a 'DOM inspector' and inspecting the main application window elementnode tree. This revealed the goDoCommand command.

And google gives me a list of those.

[Tim Watts]

That's brilliant - thanks!

So it looks like the options are:

viewAllMsgs viewIgnoredThreads viewThreadsWithUnread viewUnreadMsgs viewWatchedThreadsWithUnread

That's the feature I miss from knode - arbitrary filtering of the message list window :(

[John Rumm]

Yup basically all the things on the View | Threads submenu...

Quick filters will also filter the messages....

[John Rumm]

Nice, I will give it a try ;-)

(we have developed complete extensions for it in the past - just seemed a bit excessive for a single button though)

[John Rumm]

Yes that seems to work. Thanks, I had not spotted that add on before.