Some usage notes for Mozilla Thunderbird

How to launch Firefox when clicking on a link within a message? [Linux]

Add the following two lines to "user.js", which can be found in the directory "~/.thunderbird/XXXX.default/". Here "XXXX" is some string that is different for every user (this directory will contain all your profile settings):

user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.http", "/usr/local/bin/firefox");
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.app.https", "/usr/local/bin/firefox");
Restart Thunderbird and things should be working.

Printing via KDE's "kprinter" dialog

In the Thunderbird Print dialog (File -> Print), select "Properties" (next to "Postscript/ps"). Remove the content of the "Print Command" box, and enter "kprinter". Now select "Print" and the kprinter dialog will pop up. Thunderbird will automatically remember this setting (at least in version 1.0.2).

Customozing the reply header

There are four possible choices for the header that Thunderbird places above quoted text in a reply:

  1. No reply header
  2. "[Author] wrote:"
  3. "On [date] [author] wrote:"
  4. User-defined reply header
You choose header type n (n=0,1,2,3) via
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_type", n);
For the user-defined header, you may set the following parameters:
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_authorwrote", "%s wrote");
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_separator", " ");
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_ondate", "on %s");
user_pref("mailnews.reply_header_colon", ":");
which will be concatened to "[authorwrote][separator][ondate][colon]"

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This page was last updated on June 15, 2005.