The upcoming version of Ubuntu (“Natty Narwhal”) sports a shiny new interface called Unity, and Unity has some great new features that we’re working to integrate Thunderbird with.

One of those features is the Messaging Menu. The Messaging Menu is an envelope icon that sits in the top panel, and provides quick and easy access to your new and unread messages.

This extension integrates Thunderbird into the Messaging Menu. Along with notifying you about new messages, this extension lets you quickly write a new message, or open your address book from the Messaging Menu.

The Thunderbird Unity Menu was greatly influenced by the work of Ruben Verweij. This is a great example of someone “just hacking it to make it work” inspiring upstream projects to take the idea and run with it. Thanks Ruben!

Release Notes:

This is an experimental extension, and a work in progress. The extension currently only works with Thunderbird 3.3 and higher, running on Ubuntu Natty Narwhal. There are a number of shortcomings and known bugs with this version:

• The name of the account is displayed with the folder name, and ideally, we should only display the account name if there are two folders with the same name.
• The add-on preferences are a little unclear in their function.
• The “show indication” preference should remove Thunderbird from the Messaging Menu when unchecked.

This add-on is now bundled by default in Ubuntu Oneiric, and updates will be delivered via the Ubuntu update manager.

General feedback:  groups.google.com/d/topic/mozilla-labs/7_vq84ypS7I/discussion
Launchpad page: launchpad.net/messagingmenu-extension
Issue tracker: bugs.launchpad.net/messagingmenu-extension