...nwood...

2006-08-17: I just followed these directions using Thunderbird 1.5.0.5 for Windows, External Editor v.072 and emacs 21.3. Everything works.

On the subject of using external editors with Mozilla products, I discovered that there is a very nice extension for Thunderbird: External Editor. Thanks to Philip Nilsson maintainer of the (now defunct?) extension Editus Externus for referencing this extension.

Note: External Editor (Globs.org) works with Thunderbird. To get the same functionality with Firefox textareas, the best thing that I've found is Mozex 1.07.1 mentioned in How to have a qwiki at work: Mozdev, Emacs and PHPWiki.

Here's a little more detail on the installation process described on the Globs.org site:

1. Download the xpi file. I'm using Thunderbird 1.0.7, so I grabbed version 0.7.0. (0.7.1 doesn't work with Thunderbird 1.0.7 - I tried so you don't have to.)
2. In Thunderbird choose Tools -> Extensions, click the Install button and browse to the xpi file.
3. A popup window will appear. When the install button is enabled, click to install.
4. Close and then re-launch Thunderbird.
5. Choose Tools -> Extensions, right-click External Editor and choose Options. At work I run GNU Emacs under Windows. There are two emacs executables for Windows. Runemacs.exe spawns emacs as background process. Emacs.exe launches the editor in the foreground - this is what you want. In the Text Editor dialog browse to the location of emacs.exe and click OK.

   Here's the command line I use. The "-q" tells emacs not to process your .emacs file which in my case makes emacs load more quickly.

   "C:\Program Files\emacs-21.3\bin\emacs.exe" -q
   

6. Use Ctrl-N to open a new Compose window. Right-click the toolbar of this window (to the right of the Security and Save buttons) and click Customize. (I needed to do this step to get Ctrl+E working...not sure why...) In the window that appears you should see External Editor. Drag that icon onto the toolbar in the compose window.

7. Test it out: Either click the External Editor button (which may now be replaced with the Emacs icon), or click Ctrl-E. Your compose window should become greyed-out (disabled) and your editor should launch. When you save and exit the editor your text appears in the Thunderbird compose window.

Nicely written extension. I especially like the ability to edit the mail headers. I have a signature setup and this text appears in the Emacs buffer when it launches.