Filed under: Internet, Internet Tools, Mods
Make Thunderbird resemble Leopard Mail
I use Thunderbird for email on my laptop running Ubuntu. It works great, but the default skin isn't to my liking. I've tried skinning it with mixed results, but today I've found The Skin I've Been Looking For (but not in a creepy, Buffalo Bill kind of way). Deviant Art user ~Rio-2007 has posted a very convincing Mail for Leopard skin. After download, simply apply the skin via Thunderbird's Add-Ons option (Thunderbird 2.0 is required).
Try it out. Because even our non-Macs must resemble Macs, not that we're obsessed.
[Via Lifehacker]
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Blair said 12:56PM on 1-24-2008
I'm confused... I applied the skin, and it looks nothing like the screenshot. The shade of the window is near white, not the dark grey your screenshot shows. Apparently my font was set to a different default than what the screenshot shows as well. However, even if I change it to something like Lucida Grande, it still looks ridiculous. Can you detail how you got the dark gray window and the fonts to look like that?
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Blair said 12:59PM on 1-24-2008
Oh yeah... and it isn't unified like the screenshot either. The title bar is the dark grey shown above, but its the thin old-school typer of title bar. The rest of the toolbar below is the shade of white I referred to earlier.
Xtopher Robin said 2:16PM on 1-24-2008
Make sure you are installing and applying all the extensions and settings as outlined in the deviantART post.
NNTPgrip said 1:00PM on 1-24-2008
Wow, that skin really puts the lotion in the basket. It WILL NOT be getting the hose again. The poodle is definitely not hurt real bad...
Pass those fava beans
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pacheco said 1:01PM on 1-24-2008
I, for one, hate the way Mail looks. I think it's a sore thumb in Apple's otherwise great array of designs. The "capsules"? What is with that? Why can't it have a normal toolbar? It makes icons difficult to see, and it's not consistent with the rest of the UI, at least not to the extent that normal icons or Safari/Finder-style icons would be. I just don't get it. The rest of Mail's looks is not bad, but that top -- man alive.
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Dale said 2:54PM on 1-24-2008
So long as this doesn't make Thunderbird replicate the constant crashing of Mail.app.
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Hank said 4:42PM on 1-24-2008
I guess this doesn't work on Macs. I tried downloading it but just get a .rar file both Thunderbird and Leopard don't know what to do with.
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Jack said 5:51PM on 1-24-2008
Hank - you'll need to use something like UnRarX to extract the files.
This post is pretty misleading, really - "After download, simply apply the skin via Thunderbird's Add-Ons option" should read "After download, simply extract the files, apply the skin, install a variety of extensions, make a few modifications to your userChrome.css and tweak a locale file, restarting Thunderbird after every step, etc. etc.".
That said, it's probably worth the effort!
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MikeCP said 10:40AM on 1-25-2008
Ok. Most confusing directions ever. I give up. This is by no means "simple"
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Alister Cameron said 2:28AM on 1-26-2008
This is the most misleading UTAW post to what is actually a HORRENDOUSLY complicated setup of a theme, which I have given up on.
I mean... you need to install a theme and 3 extensions, go fiddling with files that Leopard can't open ("invalid" JAR files?!)...
My suggestion to Mac people is just forget it.
It doesn't work.
-Alister
PS I bed Dave Caolo (the author of this article) saw the screenshot but never actually tried to install this thing. LAZY!
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viplav said 11:27AM on 2-24-2008
but where is download button deviantart page has all the information but where the hell they have hided download button
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viplav said 11:35AM on 2-24-2008
ok just my mistake
now got it
and its too cool man