NewsWrthy version 0.2 (subversion 0.4).

NewsWorthy is a Thunderbird 1.5 extension that aims to make Thunderbird a better (Usenet) news-reader, i.e. news-worthy…

• v0.1. Hidden options revealed.
  Adds an extra tab in the Options dialog, where you can configure such things as Thunderbird’s abbreviation of newsgroup names to single letters (you’ll want to turn that off).
  [image: the 0.2.0.2 Options page]
  [image: the 0.2.0.4 newsgroups options page] [image: the 0.2.0.4 reply header options page]
   
• v0.2. Mark everything as read.
  Adds a “Mark All Newsgroups Read…” item in the right-click menu for newsserver folders. Thunderbird is set temporarily offline (if it isn’t already), then all messages in all groups are marked as read.
  [image: the right-click menu]
   
• v0.3. Okay, the current version is only 0.2! But in 0.3, I plan to add ROT13 support. This is going forward one very little step at a time.

Install from Mozilla…

NewsWorthy is available at Mozilla’s pages.

Install from here.

Windows+Firefox: In Thunderbird, choose [Tools → Extensions], then drag THIS LINK and drop it on Thunderbird’s extension management dialog.

Other systems & browsers: probably the same as above, but if that doesn’t work, then right-click the link, save the file, and open the saved file from Thunderbird’s extension management dialog.

What’s new?

v0.2.0.4:
New Icon! Thanks to Rich Pedley. Also added ”Stock settings” menu button to all NewsWorthy options pages, and fixed a bug (garbage values on first use) and improved the GUI look, both reported by Rich Pedley.

v0.2.0.3:
extra hidden options revealed! Added configuration of the reply header (e.g. “SomeOne wrote:”). The configuration pane is now a tabbed dialog.

v0.2.0.2:
dramatically improved performance when just a few, or no, folders have unread messages.

Known problems…

1. Bug in Thunderbird: option value ignored.
   When an option value is “too close” to the default, it seems Thunderbird ignores it and does its own thing. E.g., this happens when you write “on %s”, where the default is “On %s”.
    
2. Bug in Thunderbird: folder state caching.
   NewsWorthy’s “Mark All Newsgroups Read…” has the same problem as Thunderbird’s “Mark Newsgroup Read…”, namely that for newsgroups you haven’t read any postings from in this session, or even looked at in this session, the postings that were set to read status may appear as unread the next time you start Thunderbird or open that newsgroup folder.
    
3. Bug in Noia 2.0 eXtreme theme.
   With the Noia 2.0 eXtreme theme, NewsWorthy’s icon in the Options dialog is not marked as selected when it is selected.

How you can help.

If there are any problems or obvious improvements, please report them.