Blessed by the Potato

The look of Thunderbird has changed a bit in the latest version. One thing I didn’t like too much was the moving of the “reply” buttons to the top of the email reader pane instead of the toolbar at the top of the overall program window, where it lived forever. However, there are two neat new features that I really like: there’s now an “archive” button to quickly move your mail into an archive folder (email takes up so little space compared to today’s harddrives that there’s little sense in ever deleting anything that you might want to get back to), allowing you to get something out of your main inbox without deleting it or doing the ever-so-slightly longer “move to…” process. I find I’m more likely to hit “archive” than I ever was to hit “move to…”.

The other major advancement is a quick key-word checker that looks for words like “attached” in your email. If it sees that and you try to send your message without an attachment, it’ll give you a quick “did you forget to add an attachment?” reminder before final send-off. This is the biggest, epicest, most important advancement to the email client interface since the invention of searching. I can’t believe it’s taken nearly 17 years since the invention of email attachments for someone to come up with this simple, handy checker. Yet, I didn’t come up with it, either, so there we have it.

Whoever developed this deserves an award of some sort, perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize.

“The Peace prize, seriously?”

Yes, imagine all the suffering and wars that could have been averted if people just remembered to include attachments on their emails! Picture it: the North Koreans plan an artillery test, and to set the South Koreans’ minds at ease, they send out a quick email to note the event, with an attached schedule and an invitation pass for an observer… except the attachment isn’t included! The SKs think it’s a deliberate ploy to keep it a secret and launch an attack, so they increase patrols to keep an eye out for suspicious activity. The NKs in their paranoia meanwhile, think that the increased activity to the south is really a prelude to invasion while their artillery is loaded with practice shells, so instead load live ammo into the guns… and it all quickly goes to hell in a hand-basket.

This won’t happen now thanks to the attachment checker in Thunderbird.