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What is this?

This extension implements a long-missed Reply-To-List feature for Mozilla Thunderbird. This extension provides a UI button, keyboard shortcut (Ctrl-I), and menu options for replying directly to a mailing list, instead of using "Reply All", which will send a duplicate message to the original message sender if the sender is on the mailing list themselves. It only works for mailing lists which provide a "List-Post:" header.

Great, where is it?

Here you go: Attach: replytolist-0.3.0.xpi

Note: Some people have reported that Thunderbird crashes when you try to read an IMAP message with version 0.3.0 installed. If you use IMAP, you may prefer version 0.2.1: Attach: replytolist-0.2.1.xpi

How do I use it?

  1. Download the extension to your hard drive.
  2. In Thunderbird, open the Add-ons window in Tools->Add-ons
  3. Click "Install..."
  4. Choose the location where you downloaded the extension in step 1.
  5. Restart Thunderbird.
  6. To get the toolbar button, right click on the toolbar, click Customize, and drag the icon where you want it.

What versions of Thunderbird are supported?

Ah. Well. That's the thing. It turns out that to make this possible, I needed to also make some changes to Thunderbird's core C++ code, and these changes missed the cutoff for Thunderbird 2.0. The upshot is that if you're using a stock Thunderbird installation, my extension will only work with Thunderbird 3.0 and up.

Alternately, the maintainers of Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, and Gentoo have taken pity on their users and incorporated my patch into their versions of Thunderbird (or Icedove in Debian). The extension will work as of Debian 4.0 (aka "etch"), Ubuntu 7.04, openSuse 10.2, or recent versions of Gentoo. If you know of any other distributions that have added this patch, please let me know.

As of version 0.3.0, no additional extensions are needed. Versions prior to 0.3.0 required either Enigmail or Mnenhy installed, though newer versions of Enigmail didn't work.

Thunderbird 3.0? When's that due to be released?

According to the 2006-11-06 Thunderbird roadmap, maybe sometime in Q1 2008.

I can't wait that long!

Well, if you don't care if your inbox gets mangled or Thunderbird crashes, you could use a nightly build. That's probably not worth it for just my little extension.

A better plan if you can build your own version of Thunderbird is to apply my patch. It should apply to Thunderbird 1.5 or the impending 2.0. Attach: replytolist.patch

The easiest solution as of 2007-10-29 is to use the version of Thunderbird distributed with Debian, Ubuntu, openSuse, or Gentoo.

Can I see some screenshots?

Sure!

Attach: replytolist-screenshot1.png

replytolist-screenshot1.png Attach: replytolist-screenshot2.png

replytolist-screenshot2.png

What's changed?

  • Version 0.3.0 (2007-10-29)
    • No longer requires any additional extensions.
    • Thunderbird's automatic updates will now upgrade Reply To List when a new version is released.
    • The Reply To List icon dims along with the text, patch courtesy Bodo Meissner.
    • Added Portugese, French, and Spanish translations, courtesy Susana Machado.
  • Version 0.2.0 (2006-10-14)
    • Disables the toolbar button and menu entry when it can't find a List-Post header in the email.
  • Version 0.1.3 (2006-06-29)
    • Added a German translation, courtesy of Mathias Brodala. Thanks, Mathias!
  • Version 0.1.2 (2006-04-25) was the initial public release.

Are there any limitations?

The main limitation is that it only works if you have the preview pane enabled in your main Thunderbird window. I almost have this working, but I wanted to get all the other features in 0.3.0 released first.

If you actually get this thing working and find any other problems, please let me know, either by commenting here or writing to petermccurdy at alumni.uwaterloo.ca.

This is the best thing ever! How can I make my own changes?

You can get a version of the extension that's more suitable for developing from our SubversionRepository, in the svn/trunk/replytolist directory. You should also probably visit http://developer.mozilla.org/ to get started in developing extensions.

User comments

An anonymous user asks: "Great extension! That's something which is really missing. I just begged the Debian maintainer of Thunderbird to apply the patch. See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=381273 for more information. He asked if it is really need to have Mnenhy or Enigmail installed for this are quite bloated extension for such a little feature like list reply."

  • pmccurdy (2006/08/04): Unfortunately, at the moment it is absolutely required that Mnenhy or Enigmail are installed. Part of the reason they are so bloated is that they had to do a lot of work to get access to certain header information. I also need that header information, and I didn't want to duplicate their effort.

    I may attempt to fix Mozilla's C++ code properly, so extensions can get message header information easily. This is a lot of work though, and it may be difficult to get accepted by the Mozilla maintainers. I also don't have the time to work on it right now, though hopefully I'll be able to get started by the end of the year.

  • pmccurdy (2006-10-29): I don't know if it was added in Thunderbird 2.0, or if I just couldn't find it before, but in version 0.3.0 I found a way to implement Reply To List without needing any other extensions.

asac@jwsdot.com (2006/08/13): Your extension is now usable for the latest debian thunderbird. I posted an instruction on how to set this up: http://www.asoftsite.org/s9y/archives/114-thunderbird-+-reply-to-list-...-here-it-comes.html

  • pmccurdy (2006/08/14): Excellent! Thanks!

asac@jwsdot.com (2006/08/14): The Reply To List Button stays always enabled ... maybe you can somehow recognize if the selected message changes and iif the message contains a mailing list header enable the button/command ... otherwise disable it?

  • pmccurdy (2006/08/15): Yes, if I get a chance I've been meaning to fix that. I already disable the menu entry if there is no list header, but I couldn't figure out how to get the UI button to get disabled.

  • pmccurdy (2006/10/14): I managed to fix this in version 0.2.0, released above.

asac@jwsdot.com: It might be obvious, but I'll ask anyway ... do you use a command to implement the reply-to-list action? if so, it might be important to use a command updater ... see http://www.xulplanet.com/tutorials/xultu/commands.html and http://www.xulplanet.com/tutorials/xultu/commandupdate.html

  • pmccurdy (2006/09/05): Thanks for the tips. I do use a command, and as far as I can tell it looks just like the regular "Reply" command, but I might have screwed something up.

  • pmccurdy (2006/10/14): Good call, I had a little problem with my command updater. Fixed in 0.2.0.

Anonymous@65.85.179.146 (2006/10/31): I am not technical by any means and we want to use Thunderbird for our company but we need to be able to see the headers of the original email when we reply, similar to Outlook Express. In other words, when I hit reply, I will see all the email addresses of the original email, date, time, and subject and I can input my reply above it. Does this patch exist? bobdalenj@aol.com

  • pmccurdy (2006/10/31): I have no idea; I just wrote one addon, which doesn't do that. You should look at http://addons.mozilla.org for a bigger list of available extensions.

OJ ojkastl@gmx.de (2006/11/13):

Is it possible to add an installation script for Seamonkey? Id like to have that feature, but the XPI does not install, as there is "no install script found".

  • pmccurdy (2006/11/13): I don't know anything about it, but it doesn't sound too hard to do. I'll try to find the time to do it, though no promises about when; volunteers welcome in the meantime.

Mike Cowperthwaite (2007/01/26):

Let me try that again.

What's the status of this extension? I just tried installing the current .0.2.0 XPI in TB 3a1?-0125, and it failed, with an error in the Console:

Error: installLocation has no properties Source File: file:///C:/Moz/TB/components/nsExtensionManager.js Line: 4008

TB now supports displaying any individual header you like without needing to load an extension (bug 353193); I wanted to test if this works when List-Post is displayed.

By the way: the little capcha you have to enter a validation routine is not very readable to humans, which makes it very diffiult to use.

  • pmccurdy (2007/01/26): Thanks for the news. I haven't tried the extension against Thunderbird trunk in a while; I guess they've gone and changed some extension-related stuff. Hopefully the Mozilla people have documented the required changes. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time on my hands at the moment so I can't promise I'll get it done any time soon - for now, my priority is on the released versions of Thunderbird that have applied my original patch, in Suse and Debian.

    As for the overall status of the extension, that bug should remove the need for installing Mnenhy or Enigmail, if you don't mind editing the preference yourself and having the header show up in the message display. Sadly, it doesn't look like it removes the need for having the preview pane active, which is what I'd most like to get rid of.

    As for the captcha, I don't have much to do with it, but I'll tell mich and see what he can do.

sam morris (2007/03/17): You say Debian 4.0 ("sarge") but Debian 4.0's codename is "etch".

Hey, thanks for this, really helps! I also want to say that apparently your patch is also included in the mozilla-thunderbird-2.0.0.0 (testing) package, so it's real good, nothing to do for us gentoo users!