Thunderbird 1.5 Beta
I downloaded and installed Thunderbird 1.5 Beta today. The new version adds spell check as you type which is a much needed improvement. In the previous version you could download an extension for spell check as you type however, it was a little buggy and doesn't seem to work as well as the one that comes with Thunderbird 1.5 Beta.
There are two features that are still missing from the new version that would be nice added features. It is my hope that Thunderbird adds the ability to add categories to your contacts. Being able to add categories to your contacts is a must for me because that is how I like to organize my contacts.
Also, a nice added feature would be to have better e-mail signature support. The way it is now you have to create an html file for your signature, which is ok for people that know HTML but not as user-friendly for those that don't know HTML. The other thing that Thunderbird does with the signature that is annoying is that it adds two dashes or minus signs above your signature and there doesn't seem to be a way to turn it off.
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Comments
Second, those two little dashes are a notation dating back to time immemorial that I think should be requirement for all signature lines from all mailers. It allows for a fairly simple, common, and traditional way to note the end of the email content and flag the rest as the signature. Don’t ask Thunderbird to make that optional. It should be required everywhere. :) It’s how Thunderbird and other mailers are able to make the signature less prominent and gray it out.
Cheers, Sterling.
P.S. Your comment thingy says that is allowed, but it stripped the tags from my comment.
P.P.S. You comment thingy doesn’t say that is allowed, but it allowed my link.
Spoken like a guy that doesn’t care about aesthetics at all!
I on the other hand care about the way my email signature looks and I want to have complete control over my signature. When you sign a letter that you send through regular mail do you put double dashes above the signature? Of course not because that would look ridiculous just like it looks in an email! :)
I knew that it was used as a notation for striping out signatures or making them less prominent. For the life of me I’m not sure why you would want to do this… If you cut out who signed the email, it becomes harder to follow on emails that have longer threads.
Thanks for the notes about my comment thingy. I should probably fix that sometime. :)
As for the double dashes comment, that’s a straw man. Of course I wouldn’t put dashes above my signature in paper mail.
Speaking of aesthetics, if I want to reply, my mailer can simply drop your signature from the quoted text of your email. Or, in the case of Thunderbird in particular, the signature is greyed out because the message text is definitely more important.
Here’s one for you. Some people are blind and graphical user interfaces are a hindrance to them. As such, some of them actually use text only user interfaces with screen readers, like those provided by the Linux console applications. If those console apps don’t support ripping out HTML, they’re screen reader has to figure out when to skip your HTML text.
Email is for text. Web is for markup. Stop trying to assume that everybody likes it your way. Text email works for everybody.
I don’t assume that everyone likes it my way. That’s why I send my html encoded email as multi-part encoded email with both a HTML and a text version. Being able to bold text, use italics, underline, and use ordered and unordered lists improves the read ability of the text and makes things that are more important more prominent. It’s not just about aesthetics it’s about making what you are trying to communicate more clear.
Most modern screen readers have no problem with HTML. And I would be perfectly happy sending email to a blind person as plain text. Explain why being able to bold, italicize, and underline text is evil? Is it just because spammers and marketing companies abuse it? Spammers and marketing companies abuse the web too; does that mean we should require all legitimate websites to use plain text? Why should 99% of the people in the world stop using HTML email for 1% that refuse to upgrade or use a email client that reads HTML email? Because being able to bold, italicize, underline and change your font size is evil? Give me a break!