Thunderbird - outgoing message preview

[Tea]

My customer has upgraded from Outlook Express on Windows XP to Thunderbird on a current Windows system. She is uncomfortable with the Thunderbird composition window as it does not show the message as it will look to the addressee including (for example) coloured or underlined links. She is bright and understands that HTML formatted email is a technological minefield and not all email programs will give identical results, but she would like to be able to get at least a rough idea of the actual look of her outgoing message.

The only way I know to do this is to save the draft and then open it in the main part of Thunderbird (not the compose window). This is a horrible kludge. Surely there is a better way?

 

[ddrueding]

Outlook?

(runs)

 

[Mercutio]

I'm not sure I understand the problem. The messages are sent as HTML unless you have recipients marked for text only or change your default settings. Most people use only the most basic of formatting, which the software on the other side will render as appropriate for the client. Which is what HTML does. Unless she's manually adding tables or CSS code or something, what is the concern that makes this an issue?

 

[Tea]

Cheers Merc. Thunderbird dos not show the formatting in the compose window. It does do font styles like bold and underline, but it does not show the message as it will look. Here is an edit window screenshot:

Now, send that message and look at the result:

It all works correctly now.

However, if you send the message or save it as a draft and then right-click it and select "edit as new" it does show correctly in the edit window! She just wants to see what the thing will look like before she sends it, especially she likes to see links and email addresses highlighted so that she can see they are not malformed and the message is as intended. Surely there is a way to make Thundervird do this? Hell, Outlook Express does it right out of the box.

 

[Mercutio]

Thunderbird on Windows underlines and changes color immediately after you add the link, if you use the "Add link" button instead of just pasting in the address. I suspect that it's not being marked up as a link because the editor is relatively simple and doesn't look for content to mark up, but the client reading the draft does prior to dumping you back in the editor window.

tl;dr: Ms. Lady should use the Add Link button if she's feeling fussy.

 

[Tea]

Cheers mate. Primitive, as you say, but I'll pass that on and she will be grateful for the tip. Mind you, it's not about "feeling fussy" - she likes to see the links highlighted because it's a good way to spot errors. She looks after the correspondence for several organisations and there is nothing worse than sending something with an unclickable link out to 20 committee members. They really ought to fix that. Hell, I've been using TB for ever (since it had a different name and was version 0.1 or some such) and never heard of an "add link" button before. It's not an obvious thing to look for. Sort of like half the rest of TB, actually: poorly thought-out. Consider the brain dead way to select addresses to send to: you have to open the address book before you start writing, where the obvious and natural thing to do is open a new message window and then select the address. Thunderbird is, in fact, a bit like democracy - the worst form of goverment ... except for all the other forms of government. But she's getting used to it, and I like it 'coz it's the easiest email program of all to rescue the data from after a crash. Outlook gives me fits.


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