So a few months ago I started checking email again over POP3. (Go ahead, I’ll give you a minute to recover from your shock and dismay)

I’ve been using Apple Mail.app and found that I’m totally drowning under a flood of email that is barely a trickle of what I cope with through GMail. And I’m paid to deal with this stuff. Ugh. A better solution is clearly needed.

Digression

Is is too much to ask in 2006 that I might hope for a desktop application with the speed, flexibility, and responsiveness of a webapp? What I’d give for a GMail like client, with hackability, security, and offlineableness. (That was a hint!)

Working Notes on Thunderbird

I’ve only been using Thunderbird for a few hours now, but I’ve made some tweaks which make me think this might work.

Following these instructions, I’ve got the Buttons extension, which includes an “Archive” button. From there I assign a default Archive folder, and use keyconfig to bind archiving to ‘A’. While I’m in there bind delete to ‘D’. Nirvana!

Non-working Notes on Thunderbird

I describe my email coping strategy as “tag and release”. (it doesn’t work terrible well as my correspondents can tell you, but it keeps me sane). Respond (or not), tag a message, and get it the hell out of my inbox.

So now I’ve got release working, what about tag? Well I had high hopes for Tag the Bird. Unfortunately its mangling my emails beyond recognizability, and the UI needs a bit of work. I’ve got an email out to the developer so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Expect updates, and watch the del.icio.us stream for XUL tutorials.

On Migrating

Mark’s right, emlx sucks, emlxconvert doesn’t work. JWZ’s exml.pl fared better for me. Haven’t spotted obvious problems yet, but I only ran it against a 2 month old account as well. Still this sucks.