I recently accidentally installed Mozilla’s Thunderbird e-mail client (I meant to install Firebird but I wasn’t paying attention) so I starting using it. One of the quirks I noticed was by default it positions the cursor at the bottom of the e-mail when replying to an e-mail instead of at the top. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out if there was a way to change this but didn’t find anything right away so I left it the way it was – figuring it wouldn’t matter too much.
Apparently replying at the bottom of an e-mail is not an acceptable practice because I seemed to have either confused, annoyed, irritated, or all three, several people by doing so. After a few e-mails and instant messages from people I figured I would check to find out if there was a way to change this. After a brief Google search I found the solution to setting the reply position on e-mails to the top instead of the bottom.
In Thunderbird:
Go to “Account Settings”
Select “Composition & Addressing” for the account in question
Check the checkbox in the Composition group that says “Automatically quote the original message when replying”.
Once the combo box below is enabled select the option “Start my reply above the quote”
I guess what surprised me most of all about this whole affair was the commotion replying at the bottom of an e-mail thread caused. It’s amazing how we so quickly become creatures of habit and identify things as being wrong when they do not seem to match the normal standards set by Microsoft.
posted @ Thursday, November 04, 2004 5:57 PM