General Tips

Contents

• Firefox
• • Open Advanced Preferences
  • Anti Tracking Settings
  • Deactivate JavaScript in PDF documents
• Thunderbird
• • Open Configuration Editor
  • Number of lines displayed for recipients when composing a message
  • Adjust date and time format
  • Show your own sender and recipient names
  • Change or remove User-Agent header
  • Folder area column view
• Other
• • Open CSV/TSV files in Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice Calc
  • Resolve Short URLs
  • Selecting entire lines, multiple text passages and HTML tables

Firefox

Open Advanced Preferences

The advanced preferences (configuration editor) can be open by entering the text about:config" in the address bar. The setting names can be entered in the search field and filtered out.

Anti Tracking Settings

To make tracking by websites more difficult, the following settings can be changed in the configuration editor.

Deactivate JavaScript in PDF documents

As of Firefox version 88, the execution of JavaScript in PDF documents can be prevented. The setting "pdfjs.enableScripting" must be changed to "false".

Thunderbird

Open Configuration Editor

The configuration editor is called up in the settings under "General" via the "Config Editor" button (at the bottom). The setting names can be entered in the search field and filtered out.

Number of lines displayed for recipients when composing a message

By default, Thunderbird displays three lines for the recipients of the message. However, one or two lines are usually sufficient. In the configuration editor, the number of lines for the recipients with the setting name "mail.compose.addresswidget.numRowsShownDefault" can be changed to "2" or "1". However, the height of the head area can still be adjusted with the mouse in order to display more or fewer receiver lines.

Adjust date and time format

To change the date format and the time format in the message list, e.g. to the ISO format, the entries "intl.date_time.pattern_override.date_short" and "intl.date_time.pattern_override.time_short" must be inserted into the settings.

Example for the ISO format, which can also be inserted directly into the file "prefs.js" or "user.js":

user_pref("intl.date_time.pattern_override.date_short", "yyyy-MM-dd");
user_pref("intl.date_time.pattern_override.time_short", "HH:mm");

Show your own sender and recipient names

Thunderbird does not write the actual name for senders or recipients that contain your own address. Instead, "From: Me" or "To: Me" is displayed. In the configuration editor, this can be changed with the setting name "mail.showCondensedAddresses" by setting the value to "false". The specified name is then displayed.

Change or remove User-Agent header

Thunderbird inserts the User-Agent header for new messages. In the configuration editor, this header can be changed by changing value of the setting name "general.useragent.override" to any text. If no text is entered, the User-Agent header is not inserted.

Folder area column view

By default, the folder pane displays only the account names and the names of the folders. Thunderbird can also display columns with more information in this list. These columns can be activated in the configuration editor with the setting name "mail.folderpane.showColumns" and set its value to "true". After a restart, the item "Total" can be selected from the list of column selection. Now the total number of messages in a folder is displayed. In further columns, the total size of the messages and the number of new messages can also be displayed.

Other

Open CSV/TSV files in Microsoft Excel or LibreOffice Calc

CSV and TSV files contain table data in text form, which can be opened with Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheet programs such as LibreOffce Calc. It may happen that the data is not correctly recognized as a table and all data is entered in the first column.

In this case, the column must be selected and the "Text in columns" item clicked in the "Data" menu. In the dialog box, you can then select the separator such as a comma, tab or semicolon, as well as the delimiter - usually a double or single quotation mark, or none at all.

Resolve Short URLs

Phishing e-mails often contain short URLs that are intended to disguise the actual address. Short URLs can be resolved using the "Website Information" online tool. To do this, the number of redirects must be set to "0". The destination address of the short URL can be found in the "Location" line in the output. If this is another short URL, the new address can be used for another request using the "Website information" link.

Example: The address "https :// t.co / 3Kv...GUE" points to "https :// tinyurl.com / 7d9...zjx" and this to "http :// www.domain.test / wp-admin/includes/" (the addresses/domains were changed).

Selecting entire lines, multiple text passages and HTML tables

An entire line can be selected by triple-clicking with the mouse on the relevant line. This works with many programs, including common web browsers and Microsoft Word.

Several text passages can usually be marked at the same time by holding down the control key (Ctrl).

To select HTML tables, the control key (Ctrl) must be held down. After copying, the columns of a row are separated by tabs, as in a TSV file. The data can then be inserted into a spreadsheet program, for example.

This only works for HTML tables created with the HTML tag "TABLE". For DIV tables, most web browsers require an additional add-on to copy the table data.