Mozilla has released Thunderbird 3.0, their email and news client, but after upgrading from Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 I found that my RSS feeds were no longer displaying the linked web page when viewing them, instead they were displaying the article summary.

There are two different settings controlling this functionality, the first can be found by entering ‘Manage Subscriptions’ and editing the individual feed. There is a tick box called ‘Show the article summary instead of loading the web page’, to load the web page, make sure this is unticked.

The second setting can be found by viewing the feed and then on the main menu navigate to ‘View > Feed Message Body As’ and selecting ‘Default Format’.

Or how I learned to stop worrying and make Firefox look like Chrome.

When Google Chrome was released it suddenly dawned on me that Firefox did not blend very well with Windows Vista. The main problem is the complete lack of transparency which when comparing Firefox with the standard Vista dialogs was an obvious difference. As with most things Firefox this problem has been solved by an add-on called Glasser (external link). This is currently an experimental add-on so you will need to create a Mozilla login before you can download it, but I have been using it successfully for weeks now with no stability problems. It does cause some issues with the menubar but these can be solved by installing another add-on called Personal Menu (external link), this hides the menubar and moves it elsewhere onto the browser window.

Mozilla Thunderbird is an open-source email client. Below is a list of my favourite add-ons I use:

MinimizeToTray

I use Outlook 2007 at work which allows it to be minimised to a tray iconv, this allows me to use the rest of the tasklbar for my open programs, this addon gives the same functionality to Thunderbird and is always one of the first addons I install after installing Thunderbird.

Download MinimizeToTray (external link)

Mozilla Firefox is an open-source web browser. Below is a list of my favourite add-ons I use:

Mouse Gestures Redox

A brilliant extension which means I can navigate around the internet just using my mouse, I mainly use it to navigate backwards and close tabs, but it is capable of so much more.

Download Mouse Gestures Redox (external link)

IE Tab

For those websites that will not work in Firefox (or Opera) you can use this extension, it allows one click toggling between the Gecko and Internet Explorer. It can also be configured to always load specific URL’s in the Internet Explorer rendering engine (useful for Windows Update).

Download IE Tab (external link)

FireFTP

Creates a FTP client built in to Firefox itself, launching it creates a new tab in which you can FTP to any number of accounts that you have setup, useful for quickly uploading a file whilst updating the website.

Download FireFTP (external link)

Web Developer

A very useful extension for any kind of web developing, I have used this extension on many occasions to help diagnose layout problems that I was having with CSS. I especially like the CTRL-SHIFT-F command which changes the mouse cursor to highlight any component on the page which can then be investigated further.

Download Web Developer (external link)

BugMeNot

BugMeNot.com is a website where people can post anonymous login details for any website, useful if you want to read that one news article but it is asking you to register first. With this extension you can automatically query the website and submit the login form.

Download BugMeNot (external link)