the law of averages » quickfile

QuickFile lives

Nathan Y. — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 21:41:39 +0000

Despite rumors of it’s demise, QuickFile lives on. QuickFile is an extension for Mozilla Thunderbird which enables message filing using only the keyboard interface. QuickFile 0.0.3 (release archive here is a maintenance release that adds support for Thunderbird 0.8 and the new extension update system shared by Thunderbird and Firefox.

So what’s next? Folder hot keys and “predictive” folder selection. Stay tuned.

I spoke too soon

Nathan Y. — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 15:14:54 +0000

Not two hours after announcing QuickFile 0.0.2, Dennis of Heidelburg, Germany, emailed me with a bug report. Of course, when I say bug, I mean “the core functionality doesn’t work.” Oops. For some reason Thunderbird on Linux doesn’t seem to care if you call an int a char. Mac OS X and Win32 do. The bug’s been fixed, and the XPI updated. Thanks, Dennis!

QuickFile 0.0.2 Now Available

Nathan Y. — Mon, 01 Mar 2004 15:52:10 +0000

I’ve just updated the QuickFile XPI with a handful of bug fixes and improvements. QuickFile is an extension for Mozilla Thunderbird which enables keyboard-only message filing.

The most notable improvment in this release is the ability to assign the hot-key which begins the filing process. You can find more about QuickFile here and download and installation information is here.

Future releases will feature folder-specific hotkeys and filing target suggestions (based on previous filing behavior). Feedback, bug reports and suggestions are welcome.

Filing Mail in Thunderbird

Nathan Y. — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 04:38:15 +0000

I read about Mark Shuttleworth’s Open Source bounties on Mozillazine a couple weeks ago. What was the most interesting to me was the fact that he focuses on three areas I’m really interested in: Python, Mozilla and Education Technology (SchoolTool is what he’s sponsoring; Stoa is what I hack on).

So during some of the time I should have been studying for finals this weekend I put together a prototype inspired by one of his requests. Mark makes an excellent point: it’s ridiculously hard to file mail in Thunderbird (and probably Mozilla Mail; I just don’t have much experience with it). So I’ve put together QuickFile.

QuickFile is an extension for Mozilla Thunderbird which is aimed at making it easier to file messages. Right now the operation is pretty simple: select the message you want to file and press meta-Q (currently hard-coded; sorry). This opens the QuickFile dialog, which shows a list of your mail folders. You can start typing, and it will match as you type. Pressing Tab will expand the currently selected item (if possible), and pressing Enter will move the messages to the selected folder.

You can install it by first saving quickfile.xpi to your computer. Then in Thunderbird, go to Preferences/Options, select Extensions and click “Install New Extension.” Select the XPI file, and it will prompt you to confirm installation. Note that this has only been tested with Thunderbird 0.4 on Mac OS X and Linux, so if it eats your profile/mail/puppy, that’ll really suck.

While this is just a “first draft” I think I can build onto it in some interesting ways. I want to add a customizable hot key, the ability to assign hot keys to specific folders, and “predictive” (Bayesian) folder selection, as Mark describes.

Anyway, try it out, let me know what you think. I really enjoy getting feedback, whether it’s critical or positive. Enjoy.