Comments on: Thunderbird 3 on a netbook?

By: RFortier

RFortier — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:26:16 +0000

This is an old post, but it still shows up near the top of some searches, so I’ll post what I did here in case anyone is still experiencing this problem.

* I installed both the Compact Header and the Compact Menu extensions.
* In the Config Editor I set mail.tabs.autoHide to true
* In Customize Toolbar I dragged the Delete, Reply, Reply All buttons to the main toolbar. When you shrink the message headers, the reply and delete buttons disappear, so this takes care of that.

By: Jerry Peek

Jerry Peek — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 22:46:23 +0000

I’ve just installed TB 3.1.2 after running TB2 forever. (This is on a netbook running Windows XP… but, for those of us on multiple OSes, FYI…)

The Migration Assistant said “We noticed that you were using the compact message reader header. This function has moved into its own extension…” and it offered to install v1.2.4 of the CompactHeader extension. After I clicked “Install,” it told me I had to restart TB (aborting the Migration Assistant, I guess) to complete the installation. I ignored that, finished the Assistant, then restarted TB.

Though the first view of a message had all of the space-eating buttons and a multi-line header, clicking the “-” at the left edge of the huge header gave me a single-line header. After an hour, it’s still working well. @dave, thanks for your report on February 27. Any other reports from open OS users?

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 20:10:49 +0000

Although this thread is old, it’s still – unfortunately – very relevant. I’ve got a 22 inch screen and am also frustrated by the thoughtless use of screen real-estate in Thunderbird 3 – It’s like UI bloatware! I hope the designers will refine the UI in the next few versions.

By: Tarky

Tarky — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 20:07:27 +0000

I won’t lie, Thunderbird 3 is an ugly mess. Who needs those buttons right in the header? They’re meaningless and should be left at the top. Ugly and a tremendous waste of space. Whoever thought of that one should never do UI design again. I had to switch back to TB2 because of the mess they made of 3. Tabs in a mail program? I don’t think so.

By: dave

dave — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:56:26 +0000

The compact header extension works really well. Also TinyMenu and the moving all the buttons up to the menu bar and getting ride of the Mail tool bar helps!

By: snowflake

snowflake — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:44:50 +0000

I came here looking for an answer… An system update on my eeepc 701 (with archlinux) installed Thunderbird 3. Although I find it great on my main computer, it’s a real pain on my 800×480 screen! I didn’t have this issue with the previous version of TB…

By: tb3b3/4 tester

tb3b3/4 tester — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:17:35 +0000

I’m with the Open Sourcerer on this one; why did they remove the existing functionality?! I’ve fed this back to Mozilla and hope it will re-appear in the next beta/RC.

The other bit of wastage around the headers is the alignment to a “right tab” of the “from”, “subject”, “to”, and “date” labels. If they moved them around a bit they could shrink the vertical space usage by around half. Those buttons should go too.

On the subject of functionality, it would be really nice to have buttons for “previous” and “next” messages, not previous and next UNREAD messages…

By: JIFF

JIFF — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 07:20:20 +0000

The answer lies in developing a different client for netbooks
It is outrageous that the same jerks that want Xp on their netbooks because they don’t get the difference are trying to do the same things on that small screens

By: 12"

12" — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:00:45 +0000

There’s a config option to disable tabs when there’s only one, mail.tabs.autoHide. You can also edit toolbars so that quicksearch is on the main menu and disable the toolbar with buttons.

By: Ste

Ste — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:32:10 +0000

Or you could just use Claws Mail instead.