Comment by ulrikrasmussen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ulrikrasmussen | Hacker News Reader

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I find that it hasn't really been designed for keyboard-only use. Some features, such as switching folders for instance, seem to require a mouse, or at least I haven't been able to find a shortcut for doing it. It's also kind of hard to avoid accidentally composing html emails - it cannot be disabled completely. I still use thunderbird myself though, as I haven't been able to find a better alternative for Linux. claws-mail comes close, but it does too much work in the ui thread, which grinds everything to a halt whenever it fetches email. Why do mail clients all seem to suck so much, given how much people use email?

To switch folders with the keyboard :

- install Nostalgy addon

- press "g"

- type/select folder name

- profit$

Perfect! That seems to fix the main issues I have with Thunderbird :). Thanks!

For switching folders in Thunderbird: Alt-g-o and select new folder with arrow keys

Composing HTML emails need to be disabled for every account. Never had a problem with it.

That sounds like a lot of work if you have a non-trivial number of folders or labels.

In the end, mutt vs. Thunderbird is pretty much like vim vs. gedit. gedit is far easier to use out of the box, but vim allows you to define your own (complex) commands, allowing you to basically make your own editor.

E.g. I like GMail shortcuts, so I added macros like the following to my muttrc[1]:

    macro index,pager gl "<change-vfolder>?/"
    macro index,pager gi "<change-vfolder>inbox<enter>" "go to the inbox"
    macro index,pager ga "<change-vfolder>archive<enter>" "go to the archive"

For instance, gl immediately gives me a list of vfolders and does the keystrokes to start a search. So, like GMail, I can immediately start typing a name of a folder.

[1] Note: I use mutt-kz

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