[CLOSED THREAD] Portable Thunderbird 1.0 (USB Friendly)

[CritterNYC]

This thread has been replaced now that Portable Thunderbird 1.0.2 Beta has been released:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=1485009

I've repackaged Thunderbird along the same lines as my <a href="http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/">Portable Firefox</a> package which was born out of <a href="http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=81759">this mozillaZine thread</a>. It includes a standard ZIP version of thunderbird with the following modifications:
<ul><li><b>Extension-Friendly Launcher</b> - PortableThunderbird Launcher v0.0.2 is included by default making extensions portable.</li><li><b>EXEs and DLLs Compressed</b> - All EXEs and DLLs were recompressed using UPX.</li><li><b>JARs re-compressed</b> - The JAR files in the chrome have been recompressed at the maximum level.</li><li><b>Default Profile</b> - A default profile exists within the thunderbird directory.</li><li><b>No Email Address Saving</b> - Thunderbird won't automatically save addresses to the address book.</li><li><b>No Default Mail Client Check</b></li><li><b>XUL caching disabled</b></li></ul>Both Portable Firefox and Portable Thunderbird have gotten quite stable and will *finally* be moving to mozdev soon as well to keep things a bit more official (with the creative project names of... PortableFirefox and PortableThunderbird.)

<b><a href="http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_thunderbird/">Portable Thunderbird 1.0</a></b>

Comments, questions, etc within this thread are welcomed.

Regards,
John

[Yuridb]

Hi John - very good thing, that - thanks a lot - I used the firefox build before and liked it - I have now downloaded the thunderbrid and will give it a testing.

Do you happen to know whether you can pass some of the settings from the prefs.js through a command line / batch file to the executable?

I have one POP mailbox that I catch onto the USB drive. At work I need to go by socks proxy, at home I don't. If I use two profiles, it downloads the mail twice, bloating my profiles and leading to non-synchronous mailboxes.

I would like to pass the proxy variables from batch files, so I can use one mailbox from different locations. Is that possible??

Cheers!
Yuri

[Yuridb]

erm... of course I did not download it, as I can't locate mozdev, but the link on your page is duff...

Can you point it out to me?

Thanks!
Yuri

[CritterNYC]

erm... of course I did not download it, as I can't locate mozdev, but the link on your page is duff...

Can you point it out to me?

Thanks!
Yuri

Oops. I did a last update to the page last night at 3am and... erm... had a momentary confusion between firefox and thunderbird. The link has been repaired.

http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_thunderbird/

Regards,
John

[CritterNYC]

Hi John - very good thing, that - thanks a lot - I used the firefox build before and liked it - I have now downloaded the thunderbrid and will give it a testing.

Do you happen to know whether you can pass some of the settings from the prefs.js through a command line / batch file to the executable?

I have one POP mailbox that I catch onto the USB drive. At work I need to go by socks proxy, at home I don't. If I use two profiles, it downloads the mail twice, bloating my profiles and leading to non-synchronous mailboxes.

I would like to pass the proxy variables from batch files, so I can use one mailbox from different locations. Is that possible??

Cheers!
Yuri

Not sure if it can be passed as a variable. Have you poked around at all to check if it can? I don't think there is one:
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/command-line-args.html

If not, you may wish to file a feature request.

Regards,
John

[Yuridb]

Hi John - thanks for the quick answer!

I have resolved to copying various prefs.js files into the profile with a batch command. Not beautiful, but works :0)

Might still request it as a feature - have not found out how to do that yet.

Cheers,
Ulrich

[CritterNYC]

Hi John - thanks for the quick answer!

I have resolved to copying various prefs.js files into the profile with a batch command. Not beautiful, but works :0)

Might still request it as a feature - have not found out how to do that yet.

Cheers,
Ulrich

Ulrich,

I figured that would work. And no, it's not pretty, but it works

To request a feature, you simply file a bug in <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/">bugzilla</a> marked as a feature request for Firefox. If some others are interested, they will vote for it. If there's enough interest, someone will create a patch to add this in.

Regards,
John

[Zarc.oh]

I've changed all paths in PortableThunderbird.ini and profile\prefs.js to be relative to the root of the program folder so I can I can put Thunderbird including e-mails on a CD-ROM, BUT... PortableThunderbird.exe won't fire-up Thunderbird when the whole folder is read-only, but thunderbird.exe does

Is this something that can be fixed??
Thanks

[CritterNYC]

I've changed all paths in PortableThunderbird.ini and profile\prefs.js to be relative to the root of the program folder so I can I can put Thunderbird including e-mails on a CD-ROM, BUT... PortableThunderbird.exe won't fire-up Thunderbird when the whole folder is read-only, but thunderbird.exe does

Is this something that can be fixed??
Thanks

PortableThunderbird attempts to open the chrome.rdf for writing upon launch, so it can adjust extension paths. It isn't meant to be included on a CDROM. Even though thunderbird.exe launches, I don't think it will actually work in a read-only setup. I know Mozilla and Firefox have major issues, at least. Try working with the thunderbird.bat file launcher I've included on the project page and with everything else as is in your project. If it works as intended, and you'd still like to be able to launch without a batch file, I can release a seperate PortableThunderbird.exe that will serve your needs.

Regards,
John

[CypherXero]

Don't forget, there's always an alternative, in this case, it's the Portable Thunderbird Project
Find out more details here:

http://69.93.194.58/~dshadow/pmdw/index.html

[CritterNYC]

Don't forget, there's always an alternative, in this case, it's the Portable Thunderbird Project
Find out more details here:

http://69.93.194.58/~dshadow/pmdw/index.html

Which, unfortunately, is batch file-launched only. And won't work with extensions.

And did you REALLY need to ripoff my signature, too?

[CypherXero]

Don't forget, there's always an alternative, in this case, it's the Portable Thunderbird Project
Find out more details here:

http://69.93.194.58/~dshadow/pmdw/index.html

Which, unfortunately, is batch file-launched only. And won't work with extensions.

And did you REALLY need to ripoff my signature, too?

lol, don't start crying

I just started LAST WEEK, give me some time to work on the other features.

[wyckedone]

lol, don't start crying

That was rude and uncalled for.

Back on subject, is there any way to keep the mail files strictly on the mail server? This would keep the inbox files in the local profile from growing.

[CypherXero]

lol, don't start crying

That was rude and uncalled for.

No it wasn't. He's getting all bent-out-of-shape because I'm trying to make similar project. HE started following ME around to all the forums and websites I go to, posting his project. I'm just simply returning the favor.

[CritterNYC]

Back on subject, is there any way to keep the mail files strictly on the mail server? This would keep the inbox files in the local profile from growing.

The Thunderbird prefs.js isn't particularly well documented. I did find 3 lines that look promising, though:

user_pref("mail.server.server1.daysToKeepBodies", 30);
user_pref("mail.server.server1.daysToKeepHdrs", 30);
user_pref("mail.server.server1.numHdrsToKeep", 30);

Unfortunately, I just tested it, and the messages stayed downloaded even when all were set to 0. I'm open to some other suggestions. Getting a pure IMAP setup with no cache would be really good for keeping disk writes low.