Mr Chuckles dot net

I started using Gmail about 9 months ago when I picked up my first Blackberry, and quickly found that IMAP and POP3 via BIS are on a 15 minute delay, but Yahoo and Gmail accounts are real time push, just like a BES. I started forwarding all of my email accounts to Gmail and, after a few days of acclimating myself to labels, archiving, and other oddities, I was off and going. Nine months later, I was continually frustrated with my inability to organize myself using Gmail’s web interface. Near instance search was great, but the whole “label” concept just didn’t work for me. I desperately wanted nested folders and more keyboard driven filing abilities, and a task-list built right into the interface would be nice too.

Not willing to give up Gmail’s obvious benefits (access-anywhere ability, instant Blackberry, search search search) I decided to give Gmail’s recently added IMAP feature a whirl with Mozilla’s Thunderbird , which I consider to be the least-bad IMAP mail client out there. Using this article from Lifehacker as my guide, I began to tweak, test, and finally settle on a good configuration and a gaggle of extensions that make my life in Thunderbird SO MUCH NICER than it ever was in GMail’s (also least-bad) web interface. Here’s what I discovered.

Gina’s guide at Lifehacker is pretty spot on in terms of getting your initial configuration right, so start there.

• Ignore her advice about copying your sent messages to Gmail’s Sent Mail folder; if you send your outbound mail through Gmail’s servers (which you should) it will do this for you.
• Also ignore her advice about mapping Thunderbird’s Trash folder to Gmail’s. I take care of this with Nostalgy (see below).
• I never bothered with the GmailUI extension, as I never bothered to learn Gmail’s keyboard navigation.

Once that was done, I still had a number of nagging issues that left me wanted for Gmail’s interface again. Here’s I resolved each one.

Correct threading
Threaded conversations in Thunderbird didn’t sort to the top based on the most recent message. The ThreadBubble extension solves this instantly. Sweet.

No in-line sent messages
In Gmail, your sent messages and replys are shown inline with messages from other senders in the same conversation. I’ve come to love this feature of Gmail and can’t imagine giving it up. Fortunately, this was solved by another extension, Copy Sent to Current. This extension gave me fits at first, until I realized I had to enable it in the Copies & Folders section of each email identity, not just for the base mail account. Duh.

Keyboard navigation and filing
I still didn’t have decent keyboard-based filing of messages, until I stumble across Nostalgy , and wonderful extension that, out of the box, mimics Mutt’s old keyboard actions. Now, I can highlight a group of messages, press S, then begin typing the name of a folder. Nostagly completes the folder name (even if it’s buried under another folder), and I can hit Enter to send the message on it’s way. In Gmail’s world, this action of “moving” the message applies the Gmail label associated with that IMAP folder and archives it all in one swoop. SWEET.

Trash vs. archiving
Deleting a message in an IMAP client causes the message to be archived in Gmail, but I frequently don’t want to archive messages, I just want to delete them. However, I also want to retain the ability to archive a message, so mapping Thunderbird’s trash folder to Gmail’s wasn’t an option. Nostalgy to the rescue again. Using Nostalgy, I mapped the X key to a Save to Folder action, with the folder being Gmail’s trash. Done.

Task pane
My final desire, which isn’t exactly a replica of a Gmail feature, was a task pad or pane to keep a to do list of sorts. The Lightning extension provided this.

Wrap Up
I’ve been using this setup for about 2 weeks now, and I can say it’s been a much better at keeping emails and myself organized. I’m sure for many, Gmail’s labeling and archiving features are the bee’s knees, but for me, I like my traditional folder hierarchy.