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Book Excerpt: Firefox & Thunderbird Garage

May 05, 2005  By Chris Hofmann, Marcia Knous and John Hedtke
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How to get your e-mail and RSS subscriptions when moving to Thunderbird.
Getting New Mail

Thunderbird offers you two ways to retrieve your mail: automatically or manually. If you wish to check automatically, you can configure how often Thunderbird checks for new mail by tweaking a preference.

Automatically

When you launch Thunderbird, it automatically checks for new messages every 10 minutes. To change this setting, go to Tools | Account Settings | Server Settings to adjust how frequently Thunderbird checks for new mail.

Manually

To get new mail, you can either click the Get Mail icon or go to File | Get New Messages For and either specify the particular account you want to get mail from or get all your new messages. When you download messages, the mail progress meter on the lower-right portion of the screen should show signs of life as mail is downloaded into your account.

Setting Up an RSS Account

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a content-delivery mechanism that allows news and web content to be shared in the online space. The RSS format allows this content to be aggregated and then delivered to the user when changes are made. For a more in-depth explanation of RSS, see the FAQ in this chapter.

You can manage your news content in Thunderbird by creating an RSS account.

Creating an RSS Account

To create an RSS account, follow these steps:

  1. Click the RSS News and Blogs radio button.

  2. Name your account.

  3. The account is created and added to the folder pane.

Managing Your RSS Account

After your account has been created, there are a few ways to manage your feed subscriptions.

You can either do this:

  1. Drag and drop the XML link from the browser directly onto the account.

  2. Thunderbird should begin downloading messages to your account.

Or you can do this:

  1. Right-click the account to launch the RSS Subscriptions Manager.

  2. Click Add.

  3. Enter the Feed URL as well as where to store the Feed articles.

  4. Click OK.

  5. Thunderbird should begin downloading messages to your account.

If this doesn't happen, click Get all new messages or right-click and select Get all new messages for the account and the messages should download.

If you need to change any of your RSS settings (and you might, because sometimes feed URLs do change), consult the "RSS Account Settings" section of this chapter to learn how to make the changes.

Setting Up a Newsgroup Account

Thunderbird also lets you set up newsgroup accounts to manage your life in the Usenet world. To create a new newsgroup account, follow these steps:

  1. Select the Newsgroup Account radio button.

  2. Enter your identity information.

  3. Enter the name of your newsgroup server.

  4. Enter the name of the account.

  5. The account is created and added to the folder pane.

Adding Newsgroups

Right-clicking Subscribe leads you to a dialog box (shown in Figure 10-7) that allows you to subscribe to, unsubscribe from, and refresh your newsgroups. If you need to change any of your newsgroup settings, consult the "Mail Account Settings" section of this chapter to learn how to make the changes.

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Thunderbird migration in Linux

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 05/10/2005 - 16:28.

When you gonna tell us how to save and retrieve email, addresses and rss to setup a second Linux install or just setting up another machine.
Thanx

Jack

re:Thunderbird migration in Linux

John T.'s picture
Submitted by John T. (not verified) on Wed, 05/18/2005 - 11:44.

Hey Jack. To me it looks like you have to buy the book to get this information 8-)

Re: A good book ...

billy ranson's picture
Submitted by billy ranson (not verified) on Sun, 06/05/2005 - 12:44.

A good book is always worth the price. Invest 20-30 bucks and you can learn by yourself anytime you want.

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