When viewing an incoming e-mail in Thunderbird, this extension allows you to see a photo of the sender. This is very helpful for St. Norbert College personnel who don't know everyone on campus.

This is a hack that I added to the MessageFaces Thunderbird extension. The extension from the author does not allow you to customize your own URL. My hack allows you to have the images come from the SNC web site. This hack makes only SNC photos (students, staff & faculty) available for display, therefore, it will be of no interest to non-SNC people.

This hack requires that you manually change three settings of the MessageFaces extension. Making these changes is very easy if you already have the 'about:config' extension installed. I highly recommend that you install it first (if you don't already have it) before continuing.

Requirements:

• Thunderbird 2.0+
• The 'about:config' Thunderbird extension. This is highly recommended to allow you to change certain settings easily.
• MessageFaces extension, ONLY THE VERSION AVAILABLE HERE. If you already have the MessageFaces extension from the original author, it must be uninstalled.

The Steps:

1. Install the 'about:config' Thunderbird extension, if you don't already have it. (If you already have it, you'll see the "about:config" option on the Tools menu in Thunderbird.) Be sure to follow the instructions in the green box on their web page.
   
   
2. Install my version of the MessageFaces extension.
   1. Right-click the link below and choose "Save Link As..." to download and save the file to your hard disk.
   2. In Mozilla Thunderbird, open Add-ons from the Tools menu.
   3. Click the Install button, and locate/select the file you downloaded and click "OK".

   messagefaces-1.1.2-tb.xpi

3. Select "about:config" from the Tools menu. In the "Filter" window, type the following:
   
   extensions.messagefaces
   
   This allows you to only view the options we're concerned about. You need to set three values:
   
   
   1. Double click 'extensions.messagefaces.gravatar.enabled' to change the value to 'true'.
      
      
   2. Double click 'extensions.messagefaces.gravatar.url'. Replace any value that's already there with this:
      
      http://www.snc.edu/images/people/smal/%EMAIL%
      
      (Note that the word "smal" in the above URL has only one "l".)
      
      
   3. Double click 'extensions.messagefaces.gravatar.maxsize'. Enter the number '75'.
      
      
   Your window should now look something like this:
   
   
   
   Close the window by clicking the 'X' in the upper right corner.
   
   
4. Now open up any e-mail message that you've received from an SNC e-mail address. If we have their photo on our web site, the message window will something like this:
   
   
   
   Note: I also use the Display Mail User Agent add-on, which shows me an icon indicating what e-mail client the sender used. This is why the Thunderbird icon appears next to JJ's photo in the above screen shot.