Rated 3 out of 5 stars

by Yaron Yogev on Dec. 4, 2011 ·

Overview: this extension adds a toolbar button you can click to run a script based on the message contents. You need to add it manually to the mail client's toolbar.
<br>Pros:<br>- Allows some automation<br><br>Cons:<br>- Only one script can be specified, so you cannot specify different actions<br>- Poor documentation - I spent 45 minutes just trying to understand how to get this to work (see below)<br>- Only one UI option to call your script<br><br>After I downloaded the XPI for this extension and installed it, I restarted Thunderbird. The only evidence I could see of this extension is in the "Tools", "Add-ons" sub-menu. I clicked the "Preferences" button and got a dialog box with the option to enter the name of the script (only one script can be specified).<br><br>I tried looking at the contents of the XPI file. It contains a README, but it did not provide any real clues as to how this extension is to be used, other than hinting that one could create a file ~/.pts-hook.sh. Still, it does not explain the context in which it will be used.<br><br>Then I noticed there are some PNG files in the XPI, so I decided to look in the toolbar "Customize" dialog, and was finally able to find a toolbar button there that you can add to the toolbar, and I added this button to the toolbar. Now I had a button "Pass to script" in the toolbar.<br>After clicking it, the message "1 e-mail(s) has been passed to &lt;name of script file&gt;" is displayed. The script is activated with $1 containing the name of the file with the contents of the mail message.<br><br>What I would like to have:<br>- Ability to have multiple associations to script<br> - This can be done by making this a sub-menu in the "Message" menu"<br>- Easier activation from keyboard - again, putting it in the menu will allow this<br>- Add it in the message context menu (opened by right click on message body)<br>- Allow sending just the message headers, or specific subset of the headers<br>- Allow hiding the "1 e-mail(s) has been passed to &lt;script&gt;" message on click, or make it disappear after 2-3 seconds.<br><br>Yaron