Mozilla Thunderbird

Introduction

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform email, news and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation.

The project strategy was modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a web browser. On December 7, 2004, version 1.0 was released, and received over 500,000 downloads in its first three days of release, and 1,000,000 in 10 days.

Incoming/Outgoing E-Mail Configuration

To send and receive email using UB's email system, configure Mozilla Thunderbird with UB's email servers' incoming email (IMAP or POP) and outgoing email (SMTP) server names and ports.

UB Online Directory (LDAP)

You can use the UB Online Directory to automatically find people's e-mail addresses. If you're wondering why this service's acronym is 'LDAP', it stands for "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol".

Configuration

  1. Open Thunderbird.
  2. Select Edit -> Account Settings -> Composition & Addressing
  3. Select Edit Directories... -> Add
  4. Select the General tab, configure it with: 
    
Name:        UB Online Directory
Hostname:    ldap.buffalo.edu
Base DN:     o=University at Buffalo,c=us
Port number: 389
  5. Select OK -> OK -> Close

Test

  1. Open Thunderbird.
  2. Select Tools -> Address Book -> Address Books = "UB Online Directory"
  3. In the Search box, type the partial name of someone affiliated with UB.
  4. If the LDAP server returns a record containing the email address of that person, then your UB Online Phone Directory is configured correctly.

Usenet Newsreader (NNTP)

You can configure Mozilla Thunderbird to interact with Usenet newsgroups.

Configuration

  1. Open Thunderbird.
  2. Select Edit -> Account Settings -> Account Actions -> Add Another Account...
  3. Select Newsgroup account -> Next
  4. Enter your name and your UBIT email address (UBITName@buffalo.edu).
  5. Newsgroup Server: nntp.buffalo.edu -> Next
  6. Account Name: UB News Server (or really whatever you want to call it) -> Next
  7. Finish
  8. You're not quite finished yet. On the left-hand-side of the Account Settings window, find the account you just created (it's called 'UB News Server' if you used the suggested name in this example). Select Server Settings, checkmark Always request authentication when connecting to this server -> OK
  9. Now you're finished.

Test

  1. Test by subscribing to and reading a newsgroup. When prompted for your credentials, use your UBIT username and password.

Notes

  1. Problem: "I can't delete mail folders."
    Solution: Uncheck setting: Thunderbird -> Edit -> Account Settings... -> Server Settings -> Advanced -> Server Supports folders that contain sub-folders and messages

References

  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird
  2. http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/
  3. http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/
  4. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/
  5. How to Setup your Thunderbird client to work with Gmail
  6. http://perfprotector.blogspot.com/2010/08/thunderbird-3-is-it-really-all...