This is a very small extension for Thunderbird that resorts the threaded view by date when new mail arrives (similar to what gmail does). It should fix Bug 262319 and the 11(!) duplicate bugs. Comments, patches, and bug reports, are happily accepted at: clouserw at gmail dot com. Stay up to date on this extension with my blog. This extension is now available on AMO also.

Download ThreadBubble 0.8 (changelog)

Frequently Asked Questions

I installed the extension but nothing happens!

The extension checks to make sure you are sorting by date before it does anything (to keep from messing up your view if you temporarily sorted by another column). If nothing happens after you install, that's the first thing to check.

Can you change the extension so it sorts by order received instead of date?

When Thunderbird gets a new message on a thread it sorts by the date of the first message in the thread - not the last. Since it sorts this way, sorting by order received wouldn't do any good. Other people who think this behavior is strange have congregated in bug 254159.

Bugs and Feature Requests

Bug: In Windows XP the new message envelope appears with a new message and disappears when the message is read. With Threadbubble activated the new message envelope does not disappear after the message is read.

There have been two reports of this. I don't have XP so I can't reproduce it, but it's certainly odd. :(

Feature: Support bubbling newsgroup threads

This is by far the most popular request. From what I can see, the news handler doesn't have a notifier in it. I've looked at the code (there's no documentation) and asked online. No one else thinks there is a notifier either. I'm not sure of a great solution here...

Feature: Add a preference to automatically expand a thread when a new message arrives.

 

Feature: Resort a folder when a new message is added, regardless of whether it's new or not.