Zindus is a new Thunderbird extension which can synchronize your Google Contacts with Thunderbird's Address Book.

Since Thunderbird and Google Contacts uses different fields, Zindus doesn't support importing entire Google Contacts into Thunderbird. Instead, these are the fields that you can safely sync across:

1. Full Name
2. Primary and Second Email address
3. Phone Numbers: Home, Work, Work Fax, Pager, Mobile
4. Instant Messaging (AIM)
5. Company and Title
6. Notes

Currently, mailing lists are not supported.

 

Zindus | Download | Direct Download Link

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Acid2 and Acid3 are two test suites, that check how well modern browsers follow the web standards.

And, you probably have heard that Firefox 3 passes Acid2 test, thanks to the new Gecko 1.9 rendering engine used in it. Now, what about Thunderbird 3?

Thunderbird 3 alpha (code named as shredder), released a few days back,  also uses the same Gecko 1.9 rendering engine. So naturally, one would expect to see the same result as Firefox 3, right? Well, you are in for a surprise.

How to perform Acid2 and Acid3 test in Thunderbird 3 Alpha?

1. Launch Thunderbird 3. Select Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Config Editor.
2. Click "I''ll be carefull, I promise!" button.
3. Enter javascript.allow.mailnews into the filter text box and change its value to true.
4. Close the options window.
5. Now select Tools -> Error Console.
6. Enter the following text into the code text box (as a single line, no line breaks) and hit enter. The corresponding page will get loaded into the message display area of Thunderbird.

For Acid2 Test:

var threePane = Components.classes['@mozilla.org/appshell/window-mediator;1'].getService(Components.interfaces.nsIWindowMediator).getMostRecentWindow("mail:3pane");gBrowser = threePane.document.getElementById("messagepane");gBrowser.loadURI("http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html#top", null, null);

For Acid3 Test:

var threePane = Components.classes['@mozilla.org/appshell/window-mediator;1'].getService(Components.interfaces.nsIWindowMediator).getMostRecentWindow("mail:3pane");gBrowser = threePane.document.getElementById("messagepane");gBrowser.loadURI("http://acid3.acidtests.org", null, null);

Result

Acid2: Thunderbird 3 Alpha failed the Acid2 test. Yes Firefox, we know you are laughing. Your cousin just failed. Instead of giving us a laughing smiley we got the below result. Failed!

Acid3: Thunderbird 3 Alpha got a score of 67/100. This however was better than Firefox (61/100) and IE (in which Acid3 was a complete disaster).

 

 

So, Thunderbird3 failed in Acid2 test. Remember that Firefox 3, IE8, Safari had all passed Acid2. In Acid3 test, it got a score that is slightly above other players, but is still not a score to boast about.What does these results prove?

Nothing! Thunderbird 3 has a long way to go and it's still in the embryonic form. There is a lot of work still to be done to make shredder into Thunderbird 3. Cheers to the Mozilla Messaging team for giving us Thunderbird 3 Alpha. (But guys, we really do expect Acid2 and Acid3 compatibility in the Final TB 3.0. Please don't disappoint us :) )

Download Thunderbird 3 Alpha (shredder) here.

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Thunderbird fans using Remember The Milk, gets another reason to cheer. The popular task manager and GTD application - Remember The Milk now has a provider plugin to sync with Thunderbird.

A good guy named Micheal Wu made an extension, which works along with Lightning extension to bring RTM to your Thunderbird. Using this extension, you get bi-directional access to your RTM tasks. You can add tasks, delete them, modify them and set their priorities, right from Thunderbird.

1. Install the Lightning extension for Thunderbird, if you haven't installed that already.
   
2. Download Remember the Milk Provider extension and install it.
   
3. Restart Thunderbird.
   
4. Go to Calendar view (Ctrl + 3) and select File -> New -> Calendar.
   
5. Select "On the Network" and hit Next.
   
   
6. Select Remember the Milk Provider. You don't have to care about the Location text field. Click Next.
   
   
7. Give a suitable Name for the Calendar. Your RTM to-do list will appear as events in this calendar.
   
8. Now, you will see that a new task has been added to your task list in Thunderbird's main screen, which reads "Please Authenticate RTM. Open me to see how". Double click on this event. There will be an address in the description of this event. Go to this address using your web browser and you will see this screen.
   
   
9. Click on "OK, I'll Allow it". Now come back to Thunderbird's task list and mark the "Please Authenticate RTM..." event as completed.
   
10. That's it. If everything went as expected, you'll see a message box saying you are authenticated and your RTM tasks will appear immediately in Thunderbirds task pane.

You can add, delete, modify these tasks from Thunderbird itself. To find out what more you can do with this little extension, watch this video that the extension author himself have made.

Do tell us what you think about this addon in the comments. Once again, thanks to Micheal Wu.

Remember the Milk Provider extension.

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