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Thunderbird 3.0 pre keeps surprising me. New to Thunderbird 3.0 was the Forward Button in the message header. Now in Thunderbird 3.0 beta 4 the toolbar Forward button is removed, so users are left with only the header Forward button. Unfortunately I hadn't updated my extension yet to also show the dropdown menu there. Even more unfortunate was, that it wasn't simply a matter of copying the code. The toolbar button could be easily adjusted from XUL, but for the header button I had to switch to javascript. This also means that now my extension got some real strings that need to be localized...

AMO has a new option to ask for a contribution to an extension. Although I have second feelings about asking money for an extension to a free product, I still decided to give it a try. So I setup my PayPal account and setup contributions for my extensions, waited a bit and lo and behold, my first dollar arrived. It's only too bad that PayPal applies a fee of -$ 0,34 USD, which leaves only $ 0,66 or € 0,44 for me. Ah well, it's a start of a million... 

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Thunderbird 3.0 keeps giving me problems. Thunderbird 3.0 alpha 1 caused a problem in which the button menu was positioned in the wrong place, which I fixed in version 0.4. Now I noticed that in beta 2 the thread and message context menus were changed, which caused my Forward As submenu to drop out of those lists. Fortunately it wasn't that hard to fix again, so here is version 0.5. I wonder what beta 3, which is scheduled for july 21, has in store for my extension...

Today I made an interim release of version 0.4. This was mainly done because of a small error with the Forward button menu, which was positioned in the wrong place in Thunderbird 3.0. Because of this error, it was very easy to choose the wrong forward action... Last night the first build for release candidate TB3.0b1 was released, so I figured now would be a good time to finally fix this problem. I had been planning on fixing this along with some added functionality, but with TB3.0b1 coming soon, I didn't want to wait for people really running into problems because of my extension. I don't think it's any fun getting bug reports or people disabling my extension. So, there it is, a brand new version of the Forward extension. I had to go through a lot of problems to get the information about the extension available in Thunderbird's Add-ons update information. Now I keep getting an invalid hash for the xpi, although it verifies alright with McCoy. I hope this is just a temporary glitch coming from a proxy/mirror.

Postscript

The second build of TB3.0b1rc was released on december 4. This version includes some bug fixes. On december 9 the official Thunderbird 3.0b1 was released. It can be downloaded here from the ftp server or from Mozilla Messaging website under early releases.

The past few days I went through the deepest crisis of my life. I never felt so sure of my self, but there was a lot of turmoil in me and around me. I couldn't stop thinking, it was like my mind was going in overdrive. It ain't over yet, but now I feel like I have met myself. For the first time in my life I know who I am... Onno Ekker My mind being in overdrive brings me back to the statistics. Statistics are very important to me. I had to quit university because of one course: Statistics. I have blogged here before, that the stats were driving me nuts: I couldn't figure out where the old 0.1 versions came from. Lately the stats have been driving me nuts again, and again. All of a sudden they drop and then they climb up again. I think I have logical explanations for that now. In the summer holiday, less people use their computer, so daily user stats are lower. Now, there's a global credit crisis. People get fired, spend less time behind the computer, so daily user stats are lower. I can't know for sure if this is the cause, but it eases my mind to have found a logical explanation. Those stats look more like a graph from the stock exchange to me...
To finish this blog, I have selected some music. The title of this blog post is also the title of an album of Supertramp: Crisis? What Crisis?. Sticking with Supertramp, I know I have always fooled my self. For me, this is my Crime of the Century. And the third album that comes to mind is The Times They Are a-Changin' by Bob Dylan, although I must admit that I don't know that album very well. I don't know what the future has in stock for me either. Some songs that also relate to this to me now, and that I do know very well are:
- Hello, I Love You by The Doors
- Why me God by Durwood Douché
- Walking on the moon by The Police
- Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who
- Knowing Me, Knowing You by ABBA
ABBA an anagram, just as both by first and middle name: Onno Ebbe. That makes this blog and circle round, a full circle. Wasn't fullcircle the name of the company that helped with Netscape crashes and QA? Thank you all very much!

Not quite what I was hoping for, but bug 319770 has now official status wontfix: The message context menu won't get a "Forward As Attachment" menu item in Thunderbird core. Though that means a longer life for my extension, I would have rather seen the right click context menu made available for all users. Ah, well... Maybe they will get that someday when work is started on bug 236833. Fortunately there's still hope for the dual menu button making its way to the core, because there seems to be some activity on bug 17796. Maybe it will see the light in Thunderbird 3, which will be released somewhere next year.

Yes! After one and a half month and a little bugging on #addons the Forward extension got reviewed, passed it and has now been made public. Hurray! Happy 4th of july!
You can view my public add-on now at: http://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/7026
Review Information:
Reviewer: Archaeopteryx
Comments: Thank you for developing and submitting this useful extension. I got a memory alert, but this happened probably because the mail compose window in Tb2 leaks in general. Please check this with 3.0a2pre-Nightlies, there this shouldn't happen.
I'll check out the memory alert, when I find out how... Thank you Archaeopteryx for reviewing my extension

The next step is taken. I've nominated my add-on on AMO to become public. I think it has been sandboxed/experimental long enough. Now let's see how long it will take to get to the top of the queue and what the editors think... I won't hold my breath though.

By adding my blog to my project's "What's new", I suddenly have a nice way to keep the list small and also have a history of changes. Only problem is that I didn't start out with the blog, so the oldest changes don't show up. Hence this blog entry. I'll dive into the project pages to recreate the history... The History of the Forward Extension, part I:

• April 15 - added forward to AMO
• March 28 - released forward 0.3 to mozdev, re-released old versions with corrected updateURL
• March 4 - released forward 0.2 to mozdev, based on feedback on 0.1
• March 2 - released forward 0.1 to mozdev and called for testers/reviewers on project_owners@mozdev.org

I'm still trying to find out how to best run this project website. Until now I didn't blog and didn't subscribe to blogs, just read one when I stumbled upon one. Not sure about other people. Maybe nobody reads this, maybe some people do. It doesn't really matter. This extension is very small, website is very small, user base is very small, but I do it for the fun. Let's hope I keep thinking blogging is fun and remember to add a blog entry whenever I change something. It offers an easy way to track changes that way...

Some days ago I unleashed the Forward extension to AMO. Those first few days are quite exciting. Will other people find my extension? Download it? Like it? Give feedback about it?
I spent much time behind the computer looking at the Statistics Dashboard. One thing that kept bugging me, was that I noticed on the graph Add-on Version it listed version 0.1 next to version 0.3. What the heck? I didn't release version 0.1 to AMO. Did someone hack the version info? Are the stats wrong? What happened?
Than it struck me: the very first version I released to mozdev originally didn't have an updateURL in its install.rdf. I later on re-released that version, because I didn't want people to be left out on updates. But when an extension doesn't have an updateURL it goed checking with AMO.
Ah, well. Mystery solved. Let's hope the users who still have 0.1 upgrade to the latest and greatest version, otherwise they are left out of all the nice new features and bug fixes...