While I agree with the basic premise of your post that the Extension pref panel will likely become cluttered with extra configuration, at least it will be clutter that each individual cares about and, likely as not, understands.

To you, offline mode is "core stuff", I don't even know what offline mode does! You will install this extension, I won't. I won't be encumbered with a GUI/functionality I don't need and you will be able to do whatever offline mode allows you to do! That is where the beauty of extensions lies. The product ships with the absolute minimum core set of functionality (i.e. in this case it can send and receive mail) that *everyone* needs, everything else plugs in/out, on demand, later.

I think there are two points here that you have absolutely right.

First, too much stuff appears to be implemented as 'extensions', including things that could be core features. For example, I notice that (according to the page about extensions) the feature to view HTML as plain text or as simplified HTML is an extension. This should be a core feature - it's a 'privacy'/'user control' feature, like better control over cookies, ad blocking, and popup blocking in Mozilla/Firebird, that should help differentiate Mozilla Mail from Outlook Express.

If all the app's features are extensions that you have to download, then normal users (who aren't going to bother finding out about extensions) won't have those features. And there's less reason for them to switch to the app. Imagine if TB achieves a small footprint - great, it now only takes 10 minutes to download, but then you have to spend 45 going through a list of extensions choosing the ones you want.

Now, from a programmatic point of view, there's no reason not to have these features as extensions - but many of them should be extensions which ship by default. Fine. That way, people who *don't* want them can *uninstall* them, rather than vice versa.

That leaves the second correct point here which is that, given that extensions are used to implement basic core features, using the extensions pref panel for everything is a UI mess. Where do you go for a preference about viewing mail? Well, uh maybe to the Appearance pref panel, no, ok maybe the Mail pref panel (or whatever), uh no, ... oh okay then I just have to go through 17 extensions pref panels to see if I can figure out where the hell that feature comes from...

I think somebody needs to strike a careful balance betwen extensions which are clearly differentiated from the rest of the app because they introduce entirely new features (which, fine, can have their own prefs panels under extensions), and extensions which fill in missing core features within parts of the app. These latter should generally have any prefs in the normal prefs structure. A simple guideline would be, does it need just one checkbox or a couple of radio buttons? then it should probably be categorised under application preferences. Does it need a whole panel to itself? then it should go under extension prefs.

Whether this is technically possible is, of course, another matter.

IMO the second point is less important and the key thing is that when it's time for Mozilla Mail to be released, somebody sits back and takes a careful look at all the extensions - those which ought to be default features and don't add hugely to the download can then be included in the default install, and their preferences incorporated within the normal preferences panel where appropriate. Everything else can then fend for itself. I just hope somebody's going to make that decision and we don't end up with the default install being a bare-bones, does-nothing mail client that has few advantages over the alternatives like Outlook Express.

(And some disadvantages. *coughs* my pet bugs *coughs*. I won't plug them *again* though. :)

--sam

Same for composing letters, 1 in 10 of my e-mails is HTML... and the only way to write HTML letters is to permanently enable them :( and then each time go into the menes and set e-mail as "plain-text"

The "Write" (former Compose) button should just have a pull down menu like the "Print" button :-)

That's great -- I think I'll be using that extension!

One little request: could you allow the "News & Blogs" folder to be user-named? I know it sounds petty, but I just can't _stand_ the word "blog". I may have to read it in _some_ of the sites I go to, but I don't want it on my email client unless it _must_ be.

Okay, okay. End of petty little request :-).

A more interesting request: how about building the extension to imitate a real email, one that comes into your inbox, rather than into a "fake" box? That way we could take advantage of Thunderbird's own filtering and categorization rather than having to invent our own. There's some good-looking enhancements out there... See http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=181866 for one example (using Bayesian filtering to classify mail into any number of folders, not just detecting spam).

-Billy