Thunderbird+ add-on for NVDA : more efficiency and comfort when using Thunderbird 102

Version : 4.5 - 02-16-23
Authors : Pierre-Louis R., Daniel Poiraud


Read the changelog (may contain information not included in this documentation)

URL : RPTools.org

GitHub repos: ThunderbirdPlus repos ;

Download

Compatibility :

Table of contents



Warning

The messages in the Thunderbird+ addon and This documentation have been translated from French to English with Google Translate. If English is your native language and you understand French well, you can submit an improved version of the translations to me;

Do not start your work from this webpage, please write an email to Pierre-Louis , in french or english;

I will give you the translation source files and instructions.

1. Introduction

This add-on greatly improves the comfort and efficiency of using the Mozilla Thunderbird mail client with NVDA.

2. Download and install

If the "Mozilla Apps Enhancements by Javie Dominguez" add-on is installed on your computer, you must first disable it before installing Thunderbird+:

Download Thunderbird+ v4.5 for Thunderbird 102 only;

3. Support and mailing list

To ask a question or submit an issue, go to the main Thunderbird window then press the grave key then Enter on "Write to support". This will tell us exactly which versions of Thunderbird and Thunderbird+ you are using.

Please write to us in French or English;





4. Thunderbird startup improvement

Natively, after the last closure of Thunderbird, it starts on the last active tab and without activating anything, which is rather unpleasant.
To get a comfortable start, there are two add-ons that install directly on Thunderbird:
Chichi developed by Yannick: this module is recommended because it offers many other accessibility features and Thunderbird+ is designed to interact with it;
Start with inbox: if you don't use Chichi, this module does a good job;

4.1. With Chichi

To use Chichi,read the Download and Installation section and the Set Startup Folder section of [Chichi's page àodvthunderbird-chichi-en.html];

4.2. With Start with inbox

As of October 2022, the latest version of this add-on for Thunderbird 102 is 2.5.2.

Features :

Set options for Start with Inbox"

In English :Start with Inbox - Settings

Please select the account, for which its inbox shall be displayed after start of Thunderbird.

drop-down list: <your first email account>

Select and put the focus on:

unchecked clickable radio button: the latest* message.

radio button unchecked clickable the inbox folder in the folder tree. empty radio button checked: the first unread message.

* Definition of "latest": The last message that was put into the inbox (independent from the date of the message).

If the inbox contains no messages, the inbox folder in the folder tree will be selected and focused.

If the Incoming Mail folder contains no messages, this folder will receive focus in the folder tree;

After making your settings, restart Thunderbird.

Integrated Thunderbird launcher with Control+Alt+grave or AltGr+grave

For convenience and speed, you can launch Thunderbird by pressing Control+Alt+grave or AltGr+grave.

This hotkey is configurable via NVDA's Command Gesture Manager which offers greater freedom of choice of modifier keys than Windows hotkeys, which are limited to Control+Alt or AltGr;

Follow these steps to add another control gesture:

Remarks:

5. Navigating Between Main Window Panels

Remark :

When tabbing from the message list to text, the headers area is skipped. To reach this header area, press Alt+a number on the alphanumeric keyboard three times quickly then Escape to exit the header context menu. These Alt+number shortcuts reduce the need to go to the headers area. For more details, see the "Viewing headers" section below.

6. Quick and uncluttered reading of messages

6.1. Quickly read messages' from the list without leaving it

You must first display the message reading pane with the F8 key. By pressing this key, you will hear whether this pane is present or absent;

Then go to the list of messages and use the following keys:

6.2. Quickly read a message in a separate tab or window

When opening a message in a new window, the body of the message is read automatically by default. However, the following shortcuts allow you to listen to the message again at any time.

As a reminder, a double press on these shortcuts launches the reading of the original message.

Autoplay may block NVDA on some PCs, especially if the account is set to IMAP. In an attempt to solve this problem, the shortcut Alt+d opens an input box that allows you to lengthen the delay between the opening of the window and the start of autoplay;
If setting this delay does not solve the problem, you can disable this autoplay via the shift+grave / Options menu for the main window / separate playback window: do not automatically play the same message if it causes NVDA hangs;

Note:

To make the most of uncluttered reading and at the same time protect you from remote content that does not respect your privacy, display the body of messages in simple HTML. To do this, open the View menu, go down to Message body and in the sub-menu, validate the simple HTML option.

7. Quick navigation between folders containing unread messages

When you are in the folder tree, you can press:

Remarks :

The distinction between single or double press on these shortcuts works on GoogleGroups, Framalistes and FreeLists.
With a single press, on one of these three lists, you will hear "to the list" before the editing window opens.

it will also be advisable not to use the "Reply to all" command to reply to a list so that the sender does not receive your reply in private;

And finally, if you want to find the usual behavior of Control+r,open NVDA's control gestures dialog;
Select the Thunderbird+4 category;
Select the line "Smart reply to reply to a reduced recipient or mailing list 8 of 8 level 1" and expand it with the right arrow;
remove shortcut Control+r;
You can of course add another shortcut;

8. Alerts made accessible

Alerts that require your intervention: the buttons are accessible and can be navigated between them with the arrow keys:

Alerts interfering with browsing the message list:

9. options and commands

To display the add-on's command menu, press the grave key and for the options menu, press shift+grave.

9.1. Change some hotkeys

Keyboard shortcuts whose location depends on the keyboard language, such as grave, can be changed as follows:

++Options Menu, shift+grave++Options for Main window:
Group multiple 'RE' mentions into one: for example, Re: Re: Re: will be transformed into 3Re: ;
Delete the 'RE' mentions in the subject column s:
Delete the 2 dots in the mentions 'RE':
Clean up the names of correspondents in the message list: remove numbers and some special characters in order to make listening to names of correspondents less tiring;
Add punctuation between columns:a comma is added between certain columns in order to mark a small pause between them when announcing a line of the message list;
Hide mailing list names: suppresses announcement of list names in brackets or braces for more pleasant listening when using a different folder for each mailing list. Otherwise, the name of a mailing list is spoken only once if it appears more than once in the subject of a message;
Announce 'junk' if displayed in the 'junk mail status' column: if the "junk mail status" column is present in the message table, this option allows or not to announce "junk";
Space on a folder with unread searches for the first unread message from the beginning of the message list: By default, the script relative to this option sends the command "n" to select the next unread message in the message list . Thunderbird does not necessarily select the first unread message in the list. By checking this option, the add-on will select the first unread message in the folder by making a detour which can be heard on some PCs;
Do not use initial navigation in the folder tree: this option is useful if you use the "Quick folder key navigation" add-on;
Indirect initials navigation: displays a folder name input box as soon as you press a letter or number in the folder tree. If this option is disabled, you can display this search box by pressing the letter z;
Ignore acknowledgment requests: if this option is enabled, the acknowledgment request pane will be silenced when a message is selected in the message list;
Do not emulate Shift+F6 with escape: disable use of the escape key when navigating between panels in the main window;
Show only folders with unread in the 'Folders in tree' dialog a: allows to display only folders with unread messages each time you display this dialog via the F12 key;

9.2. Commands context menu: grave

Choose and arrange message list columns: Displays the Thunderbird checkbox menu named "Choose columns to display". From a column name, press the right arrow to open the column layout dialog;

Write to support: this command opens a writing window pre-addressed to the support of the add-on. This only works if Thunderbird is correctly set as your default email client;

10. Keyboard shortcuts for tabs and main window

11. Filtered Lists of accounts and folders dialog: F12

This dialog displays accounts and their associated folders in two separate lists. You can filter them based on a keyword or restrict the list of folders to those with unread messages.

Configuring the default display mode:

If you plan to display folders with unread messages only most of the time, first go to the folder tree or the message list, then press the shortcut shift+grave and in the options submenu for the main window, validate the element entitled: Show only folders with unread messages.

Basic dialog usage:

Switch display modes:

Using keyword filtering:

11.1. Exclusion of some folders from the list of folders with unread

As mentioned above, you can exclude rarely or never accessed folders from the list of folders with unread messages.

All you have to do is rename a folder to be excluded by adding a dash to the end of its name.

It is necessary to point out here that if this renamed folder was part of a message filter, Thunderbird will automatically modify this filter to take this change into account.

12. List of folders in the main tree structure, according to 4 types: F7,NVDA+F7 or Shift+F12

When you are in the folder tree or the message list, this command displays a dialog with a list of folders which can adopt the following four layouts:

For folders with unread messages, Drafts, Trash, and folders with names ending in a hyphen are excluded from the list;

To activate one of these types, you can press the associated hotkey or Shift+Tab then the arrow keys to change mode.

The chosen type will be memorized and activated the next time this dialog is displayed;

You can also filter the list by keyword. Press Tab or empty Alt+e to reach the input area.

Navigation in a flat list or a tree structure is done with the up and down arrows as well as by the initial of a folder name;

To activate the selected folder in the main tree, simply press Enter on it.

Tip: if you pressed Enter on a folder with unread messages, then press Space to select the first unread message in the message table;

Note:
The hotkeys that bring up this dialog can be removed and another can be added through the Gesture Setup dialog. Do the following from NVDA:

13. Message List Keyboard Shortcuts

They are only active when the focus is on the message list. In addition to the message quick preview (space) shortcuts, the following shortcuts are available:

In addition to the keyboard shortcuts for quickly reading messages seen above, the following shortcuts are available:

Consultation of columns and headers:

A distinction should be made here between columns and headers: the word "column" is used below to designate the value of a cell of a line in the message table. The word "header" refers to the message itself. Headers can be viewed both in the message preview pane and in the tab or separate window of an open message;

13.1. Column consultation: a number from the alphanumeric keyboard

These keys affect the columns of the message list only. Press a number on the alphanumeric keypad without pressing the Shift key:

13.2. Consult headers: Alt+a number from the alphanumeric keyboard

These shortcuts can be used from the main window if the preview panel is displayed (via F8) and from the tab or separate window of an open message. One press speaks the header and two presses displays a contextual menu as the case may be;

13.3. Adding and removing labels: Shift+a number from the alphanumeric keyboard

This feature allows you to mark a message as important or to do, for example. Then the quick filter bar will show only messages with one or more tags. For example, display only important messages in the message list;

To check the tags already placed on the message, press Alt+0 on the alphanumeric keyboard.

To add or remove a label, press Shift+ a number from 1 to 9;

13.4. Quick filter bar, letter f or Control+Shift+K


- when a quick filter is active, a WAV audio file is played when the list or tab it belongs to receives focus. The sound resembles a breath;
The filter.wav file is located in the folder:
"%appdata%\NVDA\TB+sounds"
You can place a sound there to your liking as long as your file is called: filter.wav. After this change, restart NVDA;

13.4.1. Filtering By Label

when the focus is on the edit area of ​​the quick filters bar:

  1. Press the down arrow until you hear "labels" then press Enter to check this option;
  2. Then press the Tab key to reach the drop-down list of label filtering modes. For example, if you choose "to do", only messages tagged as "to do" will be listed in the message table;

13.5. Column layout:Alt+c

This feature allows you to choose the order of the columns in the message list and to add or remove columns. Unlike the old Arrange Columns function, these operations are based on real dialogs.

To use it, first go to the message list or the folder tree then press Alt+c (the NVDA+u grave accent shortcut still exists);

The column layout dialog appears. It consists of the list of columns as well as the "Help", "columns" and "Close" buttons. The "columns..." button displays the native Thunderbird "Choose columns to display" menu

When you are in the column list, the following keyboard shortcuts are available:

You also have these direct movement shortcuts:

To perform these moves, the columns are actually moved by dragging and dropping with the mouse. A one-millisecond beep occurs for every 10 pointer moves;

When the "Choose columns to display" menu is present, you have the following new keyboard shortcuts:

With the left and right arrows, it is therefore very easy to switch between the menu for choosing the columns and the dialog for their layout ;

14. Write window

When the editing window opens, nothing special is noticeable although the following keyboard shortcuts are available:

14.1. Spell check dialog: F7

Added hotkeys that restrict hand movement. When the focus is in the replacement word edit field, you can press the following hotkeys:

To remember these combinations of the Enter key, Control refers to the "Ignore" action and the presence of Shift indicates "all occurrences".

In addition, the shortcut Alt+up arrow spells the words:

14.2. Improved mode of spell checking while typing

Despite the spellings added to the spell check dialog, it is sometimes necessary to close the dialog to hear the context of the error in the text. This done, this dialog restarts the verification from the beginning and stops again on the words that we had voluntarily ignored previously.

Spellchecking while typing avoids these inconveniences but can distract the writer with "Misspelling" announcements. In order not to be distracted by spelling mistakes while writing, this checking mode has been improved by adding three keyboard shortcuts:
Before activating them, it is necessary to switch to navigation mode by pressing ;: NVDA+space ;

This mode of operation allows you to disable NVDA announcing spelling errors;

Before using this improved mode of verification while typing, it is necessary to carry out a small configuration.

14.2.1. Preliminary configuration

1. In Thunderbird, Enable spell check while typing in preferences:- In the main window, open the Options menu, scroll down to Preferences and confirm;

2. Disable spelling error reporting in NVDA This setting is of course optional. If you prefer to hear an announcement about a spelling error, you can also shorten this announcement by replacing in your pronunciation dictionary "Spelling error" by "graf", for example;

To disable this ad:

14.2.2. Using the shortcuts w, Shift+w and NVDA+F7