• Community

Contributor Highlight: Toad Hall

We’re back with another contributor highlight! We asked our most active contributors to tell us about what they do, why they enjoy it, and themselves. Last time, we talked with Arthur, and for this installment, we’re chatting with Toad Hall.

If you’ve used Support Mozilla (SUMO) to get help with Thunderbird, Toad Hall may have helped you. They are one of our most dedicated contributors, and their answers on SUMO have helped countless people.

How and Why They Use Thunderbird

Thunderbird has been my choice of email client since version 3, so I have witnessed this product evolve and improve over the years. Sometimes, new design can initially derail you. Being of an older generation, I appreciate it is not necessarily so easy to adapt to change, but I’ve always tried to embrace new ideas and found that generally, the changes are an improvement.

Thunderbird offers everything you expect from handling several email accounts in one location, filtering, address books and calendar, plus many more functionalities too numerous to mention. The built in Calendar with its Events and Tasks options is ideal for both business and personal use. In addition, you can also connect to online calendars.  I find using the pop up reminders so helpful whether it’s notifying you of an appointment, birthday or that a TV program starts in 15 minutes!  Personally, I particularly impressed that Thunderbird offers the ability to modify the view and appearance to suit my needs and preferences.

I use a Windows OS, but Thunderbird offers release versions suitable for Windows, MAC and Linux variants of Operating Systems. So there is a download which should suit everyone.  In addition, I run a beta version so I can have more recent updates, meaning I can contribute by helping to test for bugs and reporting issues before it gets to a release version.

How They Contribute

The Thunderbird Support forum would be my choice as the first place to get help on any topic or query and there is a direct link to it via the ‘Help’ > ‘Get Help’ menu option in Thunderbird. As I have many years of experience using Thunderbird, I volunteer my free time to assist others in the Thunderbird Support Forum which I find a very rewarding experience. I have also helped out writing some Support Forum Help Articles. In more recent years I’ve assisted on the Bugzilla forum helping to triage and report potential bugs. So, people can get involved with Thunderbird in various ways.

Share Your Contributor Highlight (or Get Involved!)

Thanks to Toad Hall and all our contributors who have kept us alive and are helping us thrive!

If you’re a contributor who would like to share your story, get in touch with us at community@thunderbird.net. If you want to get involved with Thunderbird, read our guide to learn about all the ways to contribute.