Annoying "next message" behavior in Thunderbird, and how to stop it!

I love the Thunderbird email client. I use the portable version on my thumb drive, but one thing has always bugged the hell out of me when I use it: whenever I delete an email that I have opened in a popup window, Thunderbird automatically opens the next message. Most of the quasi-official entries on the forums state that this is the default behavior, and how 90% of email users use the app anyway, so there is no simple check box for disabling the "feature".

I must be an odd duck then, because it is most certainly not how I use my email client. I distinctly remember disabling the annoying feature in older versions of Outlook Express. Well, I am the type who will not be denied. I go through great pains to get around such roadblocks - out of principle alone!

So I went digging and found many dead ends, and tips & tricks pages that proved to be unrelated. A lot of forums suggest things like adding the delete button to the toolbar, but that only works if you delete it from the main window. I want to read the email first, then delete it. Reading, closing (clicking the "X") then deleting seems more tedious than necessary.

Then I found this handy add-on. Only one problem: it was for pre 2.0 versions of Thunderbird. The solution: How to hack the add-on to make it work in 2.0+.


Open the install.rdf file, and locate the MaxVersion key:

Then change the 1.6 to 2.1, like so:

and voila!

Sweet!

It's worked great ever since, and I no longer curse Thunderbird. For automatically advancing to the next message, anyway. ;-)