Read hotmail (or other webmail service) from Thunderbird

Because the hotmail account its so important for me and I use thunderbird to read all my other personal e-mail accounts (yahoo, gmail), I want to have all my accounts in my computer and read and compose e-mails even when Im offline. Well because hotmail doesnt provides a POP service, there is an extension for Thunderbird for read web page based e-mails. Its name is Web mail extension (http://webmail.mozdev.org) and currently suport the folowing web mail based web sites:

• Yahoo
• Hotmail
• Lycos
• mail.com
• Gmail
• Libero
• AOL

Well, first I went to the WebMail extension download page and download the web-mail-x-x.xpi file and the hotmail-x.x.xpi from the same page.

Then I open thunderbirs, went to Tools menu and select Extensions.Then hit the Install button and select the webmail-x-x.xpi file. From the warning window thar says that the software in unsigned, well I need it so I dont care if its not signed, so I hit Install Now!.

I repeate the previous procedure for the hotmail-x-x.xpi file. Well, lest see if it works

After, I setup the hotmail account like a new POP account. The difference is that in POP server I type localhost, and in SMTP sever again type localhost.

Then I restarted Thunderbird. But after a little time fo searchig the window to configure the extension, I open the Tools menu and select Extensions, the select the webmail extension and click the Preferences button. Hoooo my surprice when I find a red alert!!!

The SMTP button is red. OK, no problem.. I open a terminal window and type

# sockstat -4

I found that thunderbird is working like a POP server. And because sendmail its using port 25, thunderbird cant start in that port.

USER COMMAND PID FD PROTO LOCAL ADDRESS FOREIGN ADDRESS
user thunderbir 12637 27 tcp4 127.0.0.1:110 *:*
user sendmail 588 3 tcp4 127.0.0.1:25 *:*
.
.

I have two options:

1) Disable sendmail or change the port it works.

2) Change the thunderbird port to other than 25.

Because I use send mail for testing and other stuff, Ill use the option two. In the WebMail options, I type 2525 in the SMTP field and restart Thunderbird.

I go back to the WebMail options and viola!!! its green.

OK, now we need to tell the new account that we create that the SMTP server on localhost use por 2525. I went to the account settings, and in the localhost server hit Edit and type 2525 in the port.

Now I see this in the terminal.

# sockstat -4
USER COMMAND PID FD PROTO LOCAL ADDRESS FOREIGN ADDRESS
user thunderbir 68241 10 tcp4 127.0.0.1:2525 *:*
user thunderbir 68241 12 tcp4 127.0.0.1:110 *:*

I close and open again Thunderbird, I hit the GET MAIL button and AMAZING!!! Thunderbird starts downloading all my hotmail messages..

After I minutes, I can read the e-mails..


REGARDS