Hottie-Doll

About me

Developer Information
Name Hottie-Doll
User since Feb. 9, 2015
Number of add-ons developed 0 add-ons
Average rating of developer's add-ons Not yet rated

In a little more detail...

Pic is not of me. :) From an Open Use website.

A girl geek. Been using T-bird since 1.5 or so. I remember using Pegasus Mail and T-bird both at the same time to test them and felt that I liked Pegasus better but since T-bird had had a lot of cool extensions and Mozilla backing it (I liked Firefox) that I would go with T-bird. Yea I "dated myself" just a bit there.

Ever since they have had the Addon "Collections" I have looked to see if there was any good ones. Always sad at the lack of good Collections that where made. Seems like there is 5,000 "my fav.addons" or something like that out here. Yet what is good for one person is not good for all. I wanted to see Collections there are more topic centered.

For Example:
I NEVER use tags. Yet I use filters to the extreme. So what good is a Collection to me that has tags and a bunch of other stuff in it that I will never use. I want to see Collections of "Filters", "Backups" or "Exporting". They would be worth following.

My Collections:

+++++++++ FOLDER & FILTERS +++++++++
I think of this collection as 3 in 1. It could be called FOLDER, FILTERS & FORWARDS. There is some crossover but I try to keep things simple. Here is a brake down of the Addons in this group:

--FOLDERS--
QuickFolder
Account Colors
ConfirmFolderMove
Folder Filters Button
Folder Pane View Switcher
Manually Sort Folders
Quickmovebutton*
ShowFolderSize*

--FILTERS--
Menu Filter
QuickFilters
SmartFilters

--FORWARDS-- **
RedirectFilter
Mail Redirect

*The "Quickmovebutton" and "ShowFolderSize" add-ons are by Paolo "Kaosmos". He has a profile on this website with some awesome addons but the ones I like that fit into this collection are on his personal website. He has a link to his personal website on his profile.

**Redirecting is also called redirect forward, bouncing forward, resending, or just redirect. It is not the same as a standard forwarding. It is when you send the message to someone (or yourself with a different email address) with the header the same as if it was sent strait to them.

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+++++++++ TAGS & MORE TAGS +++++++++

Like I said I do not use tags myself. That does not mean to say that I do not see how they can be useful to some people. I did do a lot of research about tags (to see if they where right for me yet) and found some good add-ons that I would use if I was to use tags.

On that point if I was to use tags what I would do is to make virtual folders (from saved searches) of tags. It would need to be a search of all the local folders. Then I would have folders of my tags as I need them.

If you like to use tags check out my collection of tags add-ons. As I run across other good tag add-ons I will ad them.

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More awesome collections are in the works stay tuned.

:P

Please feel free to email me if you have any suggestions to my collections or reviews.

My Reviews

NewScrollbars [Tb 10-56] (discontinued)

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

LONG time ago . . . With a sadly gone OS called XP. You could change the scroll bar size in your OS and when you did that; Firefox would be changed too. Them days are long gone. Yet at least I can get a big scroll bar on Firefox with this addon. When I have to load all my addons this is one of the first that I load up.

To me it makes life so much easier to have a thick scroll bar to click on. But what do I know. I thought Steve Jobs was nuts when he said you can use your finger for a stylus.

Thanks Aris

This review is for a previous version of the add-on (1.2.2.1-signed). 

Mail Merge

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

- INTRO -
Many people here are having trouble/difficulty with their initial configuration. As warbieguy put it "Once I nutted out what to do, it was very easy. But the instructions are too terse." So rather than doing a quick start for newbies (I may still do one later) like I did for Stationery add-on, which by the way works very nicely with this add-on. I felt it would be more helpful to review what problems people reporting (going by the reviews posted here) and cover them all in one review so people will not need to dig through 120+ reviews to find something. The developer has been reported to be very helpful, so if this does not help you can give him an email. OK I think I am done with the "plugs". :)

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- TEST BEFORE EMAIL -
The newest review (as of this writing) was by JBourne123 "Normal address book works great . . . BUT crashing Thunderbird for CSV files" I have not seen this and I use the .csv files all the time. If your having problems like this or any other problem you can not "nutout" email Alexander Bergmann the link is on the right side look under "Support E-mail". However before you do that I would suggest that you download a clean new Thunderbird (you can use the portable Thunderbird so as not to add/change a your profile) and try it out with no add-ons or themes.

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- PICTURES -
Some people have had problems embedding pictures and images in mail body/signature. Keep in mind that you much be using HTML in your emails to embed pictures/images. Another add-on called "Always HTML" may help https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/always-html/ One person stated "tried author's suggested workaround for embedding images, but it doesn't work 100%. sometimes my signature image shows up but left out another image, vice versa, or both would get left out. though if i keep my mailing group real small (<5) it seems to work fine". This may be, in part, do to the size of your images. Hard to say.

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- ADDRESS BOOK VS. .CSV -
Quokka Systems said "I used the link to a CSV file which allowed huge flexibility." What I think he is talking about is the fact that you can use Thunderbirds address book OR a .csv file to make your bulk mail. When you use the address book you have to use very exact terms for the values/properties/variables your using to make your mass mailing(s). Look above at the add-on description for more information on the term/properties you can use with the address book, he has a link with even more. ALSO note when using the Address book (unlike using a .csv file) the "Recipients To:" section works differently. When using the address book you just add all the people into the "Recipients To:" plane and then the Mail Merge add-on will "split them up" into separate emails. NOW when using a .CSV file Variables are supported differently. In the example just stated with the "Recipients To:" you can have Variables when using .vsc files. So even though I have not tried it, this means (I think) that one could have many people set-up in the "Recipients To:" section. It would be a pain in the butt to set up (you would need to have the .csv file set up just right) and I see no reason to do that since both the CC and BCC work with Variables and the fact you can send everyone their own personal email but the point is you could do it if you wanted to. You see when using a .csv file to do your mailing list you can use as many fields from a .csv file as you want, aka make up your own fields. To be clear, you could make a field that says TheirDogsName in the header of the .csv file and then when you put {{TheirDogsName}} in your email, this add-on will find the header that says TheirDogsName, then find the person that it matches (via the email address) and put their dogs name in the spot you said to. As long as you follow the rules this can do a lot, and do not even get me started with you can do with the if/then options. LOL

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- HOW BIG CAN .CSV BE -
Many people have asked what is "the limit of addresses per csv file, if any" and from what I have read it seems to be different for different people. One person reported "I tried a .csv list with 407 names and I had to break it into 4 separate files to get it to work. Other than that, it works great; the documentation could be a bit better, that's all." yet keep in mind "If using this add-on, it may be best to mail only 50 or so people at a time and have an hour's break between batches so that your ISP does not ban you for spamming." Yet some people say they have to keep it very small for it to work, where others report sending out "1000 email within a CSV file and it works great." I believe the amount you can send at one time changes, depending on what kind situations you have.

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- ENIGMAIL -
Enigmail creates trouble, from day one. It is not supported at this time. I have other add-ons that do not use Enigmail plus some of the POP severs I use do not support it so I do not use it. Others have reported: If Enigmail is installed, it will encrypt every outgoing email with YOUR key only. This makes the message unreadable for the intended recipients. Disable Enigmail with a restart of Thunderbird, run your mail merge, then your can re-enable Enigmail.

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- OUTBOX PROBLEM -
On person said "Mass Mail should send the separated e-mails for each recipient automatically from the outbox. Currently the user needs to send the mails manually." I use the "Mail Merge" add-on with another add-on called "Send Later" add-on so I have not seen this action and do not know if it still applies, just a heads up that you may run into it.

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- MUST BE GODLIKE WITH ENTERIES -
People have requested that "unsent mails due to erratic email address will be skipped and continue sending out the next unsent message, rather than pausing the whole queue of outgoing unsent messages", yes it is a pain in the butt. Yet if it was to do "skip" bad entries you would then need also change the add-on so you could be notified of what ones was skipped and why they where skipped. Otherwise you would have no idea who got what emails your list(s). I do not know a lot about programming but I do know enough about it to know that it would take a lot of work to add that. YES it would be VERY nice to have that function. Where it is good to make suggestions, as part of giving feedback, please to not "write a bad review" that the program is bad or broken because of this. On that note, Dave S said "I gave this a try and had trouble. If there is a bad email in the list it stops in the middle of your list and it is difficult to determine where. So unless you are sure your list is clean this is not the best product to use." Yes I ran into that situation as well. The "trick" I used to find the "bad egg" in the bunch was to make a copy of the .csv file and delete 1/2 of the items and see if it worked, thereby cutting the amount of entries I had to search in 1/2. Then again if needed. If your using the address book to make your mailing, the "trick" will not work as well. One more reason to use .csv files over using the address book if you have big lists.

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- CHARACTERS & SPACES -
CSV files are case/blank space sensitivity, this is very important when using Mail Merge with a .csv file. Kinda 2 or 4 points to make at one time here, they kinda go together. It has been said in reviews time and again that .csv file no not allow for certain characters like apostrophes, slashes, space characters and such. ALSO Keith Tyler said "This made so simple what I was trying to do with a complex awk-and-shell script! Just organize the data into a CSV, insert headers, and create your email. The only thing I wish I could figure out is how to embed line breaks in CSV or have TB or MM convert something else to line breaks. But I just split the values into separate fields and added them one by one and it did the job."

Now I am not sure what exactly what values Keith had to split, have not talked to Keith so I do not know what he was trying to do here but it does bring to mind some things I would like to share. Symbols outside of the character set that your using will mess things up. Now .CVS files can support text (items) in quotes. Remember that with .CVS files you can have a blank field if you just have a space surrounded by quotes like this " " ALSO you MAY be able to use special characters in the quote marks. Let me back up a bit here first thing you need to make sure is that your using the same Character Set with this add-on (it gives you the chance to check what one your using in the option window that opens after you start the merge) as the one your .cvs file is using. Here is the Character Set to use: Windows-1252 (Windows), UTF-8 (Linux) and UTF-8 (Mac) however I have use UTF-8 on my PC and seems to work fine with CSV files. So you MAY be able to use a "non-supported" Character Set for your set up to get the characters your looking for. Careful this will void the warranty you got from your "Mail Merge" add-on. :)

JeanneR said in part "This is really lovely . . . you might think that a space follows a comma. Not so. Kill any spaces around commas and all will sail smoothly . . . Well worth making a contribution so that Alexander is adequately rewarded and keeps up the good work."
Yes this is a .CSV thing nothing to do with this program. I know a little bit about .CVS files and I still made a boo boo with the way the entries are separated. My problem was that the .CVS file was set to use BOTH tabs and commas and I did not notice that the .cvs file was USING THE TABs to separate the values. I had the add-on set to use "just" commas. I knew this and it still slipped by me; took a 1/2 a day to "fix" it. Yea, I know, I am not the quickest duck in the water sometimes.

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- CLEAN MY TBIRD -
I found many people talking about removing dead/old emails and/or for sorting emails and people even talking about bounced emails. Seems beyond the scope of this add-on to me. People have made all encompassing add-ons to Thunderbird before, "mail tweaks" come to mind here. The problem with them is 2 fold. Most people do not want/need all the functions and it is to complex or bloated for them and 2nd is that since Thundebird is always upgrading big multi use add-ons become to much to keep up on. I did make an add-on collection called FOLDER & FILTERS plan to make one for "flushing/trash/delete" but have not had the time to review them all well enough to suggest any of them but ThunderPlunger comes to mind and there are some add-ons to auto compact and repair folders but like I said, I have not reviewed them all yet so I can not suggest the best ones. PEASE do not get me wrong here, I do not mean to suggest that people should not make suggestions. What I am saying is there may be other add-ons that do what you want and maybe even better than you hoped for.

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SOME QUICK NOTES:

At times good to remember the 'Edit message as new' action to start new (or another) Mail Merge section.

Don't leave any spaces between field separators in your csv file .

Does work with embedded images if you embed them with an internet link.

Sometimes you need to re-try mail merge like when editing a CVS folder when an "write" window/tab is open.

I use Lebra Office but some people may find this helpful: "The .csv file failed when created from an Excel (2003) spreadsheet (file/save as). I opened the .xls file in Open Office and saved it as a .csv file and it worked fine."

I use Linux and Windows but MAC people may find this helpful: "If you use Apple address book, looks like you will have to convert to a .CSV file before you use this addon. Thing is after you convert your Apple address book into a .CSV file you can then upload it into Thunderbird's address book."

Dan Kelly said "AMAZING PLUGIN! AMAZING SUPPORT! It's free, but certainly worth donating if you use it. I've seen $100 mail merge software programs that don't work this well." I agree.

THANKS Alexander for all your work on this add-on.

This review is for a previous version of the add-on (3.9.1). 

Stationery

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

A LOT of people are having a hard time getting this addon up and running. Most have never used stationary with Outlook and have no idea where to start. It is a bit tricky the first time so I made this Quick Start For Newbies to help people out. Made for windows users in mind but can help out others too.

1) Download and install this add-on (Tip: Sorry about the "no duh", I did say for newbies, there will be more "no duh"s)

2) Make a folder, any place for now, just as long as you know where it is. (Tip: I have Portable* Thunderbird so I made a folder in my profile. This add-on, I think**, made a folder called "stationery" in my profile folder, if this happened for you to I would suggest you make a NEW folder in there.) Call is whatever you want you can rename it later.

3) Go to http://thundercloud.net/stationery/

4) Look at all the links under "The Selections below are for Outlook Express, Outlook 2003, and Windows Mail (Windows 7, Windows 8 and Vista users). If you are new to using email stationery, please visit our Help page for instructions on how to download and use."
You will see a bunch of links for stationeries. Pick one that sounds nice and click it.

5) A new tab/window will open. You will see a bunch of words and crap. Look kinda to the bottom, your looking for a link called "Click Here To Download This Collection For Outlook Express, Outlook and Windows Mail (Vista)" or "Please click here to download Nature's Art collection" or some such thing, and click it (Tip: You may be thinking "but I have windows 8.1 and Thunderbird" I know, it may says something about vista and outlook and stuff just click it.) I would suggest you download a "set" of them and not just one.***

6) You now should have yet another NEW tab/window opened up. Look for the link that has "----Outlook and and other Users----" UNDER IT and click it to download your templates. (Tip: Should be the center of the 3 links as of this writing)***

7) You should now have an .exe (executable) file, it will be in the wherever folder your system puts your downloads in. With my system it is on the desktop yours may be in C:\Users\"User Name"\Downloads or C:\Users\"User Name"\Downloads\Funny_Cat_Pictures. Find it and click it to open it. (Tip: Always a good idea to scan for bugs on anything you download before you open it.)

8) Some Windows systems will have a big scary thing pop up in your face; saying something like "Warning something is trying to run on your computer, so it can melt your hard drive and kill off everyone you love". Just click whatever you have to to let the program run. I did run 3 different virus scans on the ones I downloaded and they seem safe. (Tip: The pop up warning, if any, you get may be different than the one I remember.)

9) The Program will have a dialog window window pop up. Click "Next"

10) This will open the "read me" thing. No one ever ever read them but you can (It says I will own your sports car and your house), click next.

11) Now in this next dialog box window that open you will see a button that says "Finish" on it, DO NOT CLICK IT. I know you want to click it but DON'T. Remember that folder I had you make way back in Step #2 ? Now is the time to use it. Click the little button that has the " . . . " on it and then drill down to where the new folder you made is. Select it. NOW you can click "Finish" (Tip: If you do not use a "clean new" folder to "unpack" your new stationary in [In other words, you put this in a folder that has other stuff in it already.], you will end up with a folder with a bunch of stuff in it that is all mixed up. You can do that later but not in my newbie class.)

12) Delete the ".exe" file it is no longer needed (Tip: Treat it like a live Christmas tree, after Christmas, just throw it to the curb.)

13) Go back to Thunderbird. Find the inbox of the email account you want to send the email from. Then stick with it. To be clear, don't be moving around to different accounts when "in use" (using) this add-on. Look around now, some place, some where, you will have little buttons saying something like "Write", "Reply" or some such thing. DO NOT CLICK ANY OF THEM. Look for a little "down arrow", should be just to the right of of them there buttons we where just talk'n about. Click it and a little drop down menu will show up. Systems are a little different on this point but look for "Other Stationery". This is what you want to click. (Tip: The "Other Stationery" may be hidden under the "Stationery" section of the little drop down menu)

14) Now you should have a "Drill down" window open. Find that folder you put (unpacked) your new Stationery in. (Tip: the ones you just downloaded silly), and click on it to open it. You will see a bunch of files in there. Pick one and click it.

15) BINGO you have your first email with stationery on it. May seem simple but took me 4 days to do it. Well 4 days to do it the way I just showed you. Would have been sooner but I do not trust .exe files and did not use the ones I shown you here. I never said I was the quickest fox in the hen house. LOL (Tip; I am in the works of writing up a MUCH longer review to help explain some more points about this add-on so stay tuned)

16) If you have a problem with this add-on the Developer asks that you email him. Look at the right side of this you will see "Support E-mail", click that to get a hold of him. He is very good at fixing bugs and keeping up with the non-stop changed in T-Bird. DO NOT right a bad review until you at least see if it is something to do with your end like another add-on is badly made and does not work with this one or he may be working on fixing the very problem you have. (Tip: Compact Header is one of the add-ons that will mess up this add-on (and some others) so you will want to remove the Compact Header add-on if you use this one.)


* If you have Thunderbird portable you will also have to make sure your stationery folder is in your profile folder and the stationery's add-on settings are set to "Folder inside profile folder". Otherwise when you move your Thunderbird you will loose your stationery too.
** I have no idea how long the stationery folder has been there. I may have even put it there myself but I don;t think so.
*** They have a few different layouts there. There are even some pages that say for Thunderbird click here. But others only have outlook on them. When not sure most people just start clicking things until they get something pretty. I think the makers of the website plan on that. I would think "Outlook" would be your best best if there is no other choice.

This review is for a previous version of the add-on (0.8.4). 

Single Domain

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Nice idea. Very simple setup just one box to type it in.
I tried to use this add-on and got no warning dialog at all. I tried filling out with full emails and the @domain yet could not get this add-on to work.

Then the by Graeme Developer "Graeme" gave me a heads up. What I needed to do was put the domain only with no "@"
- gmail.com for example.

Thanks for putting your add-on "out there".

This review is for a previous version of the add-on (1.1.1). 

Auto Address Cleaner

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Still works with 31.4.0

I put notes on people's name in my address book. Like "FL-social-Annie-L.A." and stuff. I had no idea this junk was being sent to them.

Kinda hard to do test run this add-on by sending yourself emails because Tbird put the names in your email that you give them. Plus it likes to but the words "me" on it. Like I don't know my own accounts?

I used an old "Yahoo service" email (online) that I never use and was able to test it. SURE enough all that crap was getting sent to them.

Now the extra information seems like it only goes out to them when you use the address book to look them up. Looked like that if just typed/pasted the email in that it would not send the Non-needed information. If you do use the address book's "auto finish" to look up an emails you can still you clean it up by hand before you send it but this is not needed if you have this add-on.

A good thing to expand on this add-on would be to be able to auto-CHOOSE what is sent out to people. Like use the "Nickname" slot go out to them rather than the "Display Name" So your address book may say "whiny girl annie from L.A." but you send out "BFF Annie" . . . well yea a work around may/could be to just call them that in my address book but then I would not know who all my whiny friends from L.A. are :)

This review is for a previous version of the add-on (1.0.3).