How to create custom reply headers in Thunderbird.

Have you ever wanted to customize the way that your email replies introduce the quoted part of the message you’re replying to? Thunderbird calls this the ‘Reply Header’.

For instance, let’s say you wanted your reply message to a recent email from your friend Jimmy to look something like the following:

The entity known as jimmyjones@verizon.net wrote to John LeMasney, on the date and time 10/13/07 9:44 AM, the following message:
“Hi, John, how are you?”

With Thunderbird, it is easy to make this happen. Here is some information about the preferences that we’re going to change. Below that, I’ll give specific instructions on how to change the settings.

// Change the reply header
// 0 - No Reply-Text
// 1 - wrote: - Netscape 3.xx/4.xx style
// 2 - On wrote:
// 3 - user-defined string. Use the prefs below in conjuction with this.
user_pref(”mailnews.reply_header_type”, 3);
// If you set 3 for the pref above then you may set the following prefs.
// The end result will be
user_pref(”mailnews.reply_header_authorwrote”, “%s said the following”);
user_pref(”mailnews.reply_header_ondate”, “on %s”);
user_pref(”mailnews.reply_header_separator”, ” “);
user_pref(”mailnews.reply_header_colon”, “:”);

Source: Hidden Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird Prefs
Address : http://www.geocities.com/pratiksolanki/
Date Visited: Sat Oct 13 2007 14:39:45 GMT-0400 (EDT)

These changes are made in Thunderbird’s configuration preferences, known better to Mozilla hackers as about:config or prefs.js

Let’s make the changes:

Open Thunderbird, open your preferences (options/preferences menu in Windows or Thunderbird/Preferences menu on MacOS) and choose the advanced tab.

Click on “Config Editor” to open a convenient GUI to edit the about:config file.

In the search bar labeled ‘Filter:’, type in “reply_header” and wait a moment for the list to filter to just show reply_header related preferences.

We’re interested in editing 4 values. You edit a value by double clicking on it, which opens a dialog window with a text box containing the existing value. Enter the new value and click ‘OK’ to make a change, or ‘Cancel’ to cancel. In these exampes, %s indicates a variable that will be replaced with the sender, date and tme, etc. Make sure it’s present as %s in order for this to work.

open mailnews.reply_header_authorwrote and edit it to say The entity known as %s wrote to me

open mailnews.reply_header_colon and edit it to say , the following message:

open mainnews.reply_header_ondate and edit it to say on the date and time %s

open mailnews.reply_header_type and edit it to say 3

This last one is very important - it indicates that you want these edited values to be used instead of none, the default, or a preset alternative (0, 1 and 2 respectively) - look at the blockquote above for a better explanation of what each of these are.

Then, restart Thunderbird, start a reply, and enjoy your new custom reply header!

Close your eyes and smile. Then, reflect on the idea that it’s only because this application is open source that you can make this level of modification to the way your information is displayed.

John LeMasney

Audio: LeMasney on How to use Powerpoint at Rider University Media Server

Audio: LeMasney on How to use Powerpoint at Rider University Media Server
I gave a presentation on How To Use Powerpoint today to a semi-packed room in the new Faculty Staff Training center in FA 113. Powerpoint was discussed in some detail, but of course, we talked about alternatives to Powerpoint, ways to avoid death by Powerpoint, Google Docs newest addition, Presently, and related topics. Take a look at Rider technology training site (log in as a guest if you wish) at http://www.rider.edu/training and click on the How to Use Powerpoint course to follow along with the audio if you want the whole effect. - John.

Audio: LeMasney FOSS Presentation to Brookdale Computer Users Group

Here is the audio from my presentation on Friday night on Free and Open Source Software to the Brookdale Computer Users Group. We had a fantastic time, and I can’t wait to go back. We had a lot of laughs, we all learned a lot, and I feel like I have a lot of new friends out by the shore. Thanks to BCUG for being so welcoming!

http://media.rider.edu/authors/lemasney/2007_lemasney_bcug_foss.mp3

Upcoming CII Session: Group Learning and Blackboard Discussions

February 19th 11:30am,
1pm 2007 —
CII Session: Group Learning and Blackboard Discussions.— at
Rider University: Fine Arts 113

In this session, we’ll focus on the issues surrounding the instructional strategies and effective use of Blackboard discussion boards as assessment and communication tools. Presented by John LeMasney and Kathleen Pierce.

This
hCalendar event brought to you by the
hCalendar Creator.

Open of Course - free open content courses and tutorials - Home

Here is another great resource for freely available course content and howtos for any who wish to learn.

Open of Course - free open content courses and tutorials - Home
Here you will find a growing amount of free online courses and tutorials. By “free” we not only mean free as in “free beer” but also published as open content . Our focus is at the start mainly on open source software courses but as we grow more will be added.
Our goal is to create a multilingual platform for free quality educational information.

You can help realize this in several ways:

* Tip us on free available courses and tutorials on the internet
* Become a coordinator for your language section
* Add free online courses or tutorials to our platform
* Translate available courses into other languages
* Promote Open-Of-Course on your website, weblog or anywhere you like or just by voting on us at Squidoo or at Stumble Upon Toolbar

More info on helping..

If you don’t feel like helping, just enjoy our free online courses! At the moment content in these sections is available:

* Multilingual courses and tutorials:
* English courses and tutorials:
* Dutch courses and Tutorials:

IT Manager’s Journal | Developing effective slide shows

Here’s another set of suggestions for effective visual presentations. Everybody’s got some pretty good advice.

IT Manager’s Journal | Developing effective slide shows
For many, returning to classes means returning to slide shows. Once used mainly in business, today slide shows are equally important in education. Students use them in portfolios to share their mastery of a subject, and many consider them a basic requirement for class presentations. Yet, despite the ubiquitousness of slide shows, few people use them well. Here are some tips to help you improve your presentation skills.

Some doubt that slide shows can ever be used effectively. Among them are communications expert Edward Tufte, who satirically compares them to a May Day rally in the Soviet Union, and Peter Norvig, who highlights their shortcomings with the Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation. These criticisms are overly severe, but they emphasize the point that if you want to use slide shows effectively, you have to understand their limitations as carriers of information and the restrictions they place on design, and make them a supplement to your presentations rather than an end in themselves.

As their name suggests, slide shows were inspired by 35mm slides. They also owe something to overhead transparencies. However, like spreadsheets, slide shows are a product of the personal computer. The first slide show software was MORE, a Macintosh program for outlining released in the early 1980s. It was followed in 1987 by Microsoft PowerPoint, whose pre-installation on most new computers helped to spread the popularity of slide shows until, by the end of the 1990s, standing up to talk to a group without showing one became a guaranteed way of being noticed. With the rise of free software, tools like KPresenter and OpenOffice.org Impress became available. While these lag behind PowerPoint in support for sound and movie clips, they are adequate tools for the vast majority of slide shows.

Presentation Tips For The Technically Gifted

Here’s another great article [a part of a short series] that talks about best practices for technically oriented presentations. It gives sound advice, such as the suggestion: don’t rely on the internet when your presentation is about the internet. I tend to do just that, and it really makes sense to make a standalone presentation instead - something portable that doesn’t need to bother with that longstanding presentation variable, ‘will me connection be up or not?’ At any rate, lots of good advice here.

Presentation Tips For The Technically Gifted
So, I offer the notes below not to criticize the presenters – many of whom are deeply technical but have not had to present for a living, but to draw lessons from some of my experience and having made all of the mistakes below, at least a few times. Note also that these are mostly “tactical” tips (and not strategic ones). I think the world often undervalues tactics sometimes (because strategy is so much sexier).

Giving an Academic Talk

I’m always interested in seeing these kinds of items, where a speaker (who has given lots of talks) shares his experience and tips with other speakers. If your audience isn’t with you, there’s really no point in speaking. Here are some good pieces of advice about keeping your audience involved. Every talk I’ve been to in the last 3 years seems to break his rules, including my own talks. - j.

Giving an Academic Talk
Giving an Academic Talk

Jonathan Shewchuk

This is a sample of my opinions on how to give a talk (using slides or transparencies) in computer science, concisely distilled for my students and students attending Graphics Lunch. Most of these thoughts are based on my going to conferences and seeing the same mistakes repeated by a plurality of speakers. You are welcome to disagree with my opinions, as long as you think each issue through for yourself. The only sin to make a choice without knowing you are making one.

FDD 2006: OSS tools for Concept Mapping

http://ghost.rider.edu/podcasts/fdd_0605_oss_conceptual_frameworks.mp3 is a podcast of my portion of the Rider University Faculty Development Day presentation on Concept Frameworks that I presented along with Reed Schwimmer and Peter Hester. After Reed and Peter gave an overview of the pedagogic aspects of concept mapping, I gave a short slideshow of screenshots of two fantastic Open Source tools: FreeMind, a straightforward mind mapping tool, and OpenOffice.org’s Draw which does a very nice job of diagramming, flow charts, mind maps, and more.

I will link to the slideshow when I upload it.

FDD 2006: 10 Social Networking Sites

http://ghost.rider.edu/podcasts/fdd_0605_social_networking_sites.mp3 is the podcast in  mp3 format of the presentation I gave on Rider University’s May 2006 Faculty Development Day on Social Networking sites like Flickr and del.icio.us and their potential for academic use. I will post a link to the S5 based presentation as soon as I upload it.