Quicktext v6 (Milestone 3): Reworked Settings Dialog

[jobisoft]

Quicktext v6 has reached its third milestone in being converted to the WebExtension technology. The ultimate goals of this effort are described in the migration overview. Everything mentioned there is still important, so if you have not read that, please do so soon.

The old XUL-based settings dialog has been fully replaced with a pure WebExtension settings manager. File system access (file picker, file read/write) is still provided by a FileSystemAccess Experiment API, which continues to rely on XPCOM — that last legacy dependency will be addressed in Milestone 4.

What changed

New HTML/CSS/JS manager

The manager is a standard WebExtension dialog using HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript with ES modules. It preserves the same four-tab layout (General, Templates, Scripts, Advanced) and should be fully on par with the old XUL dialog in terms of features.

Toolbar was moved into the Quicktext Legacy Companion Add-on

The Quicktext compose toolbar that was part of the old Quicktext XUL interface cannot be reproduced using WebExtension APIs. It has been moved into a separate Quicktext Legacy Companion Add-on, which uses a custom Experiment API to inject the toolbar. Users who rely on the toolbar need to install the companion add-on alongside Quicktext. The companion add-on will only ever be made available for Thunderbird ESR, while the future Quicktext version will run on Thunderbird Release without requiring regular updates.

Nested flyout variables menu

The original XUL dialog used native nested menus, which are not available to WebExtension pages. To stay as close to the original behavior as possible, an HTML/CSS flyout menu was implemented using @floating-ui/dom.

Direct file system access still depends on an Experiment API

Quicktext still supports reading files directly from the file system, but most parts have been marked as deprecated and will be removed by the work planned for Milestone 4.

Direct file system access to include static files will be replaced by a virtual file system. Users relying on includes of non-static local files are encouraged to explore migrating to a URL-based include now, either from a real remote system or from a local web server exposing parts of the local file system. Python's built-in HTTP server is a simple option:

python3 -m http.server 8080 --directory /path/to/files

ATTACHMENT and IMAGE: FILE and URL modes

The variables menu now exposes both FILE and URL modes for the ATTACHMENT and IMAGE tags, matching what the parser already supported but the old menu never surfaced. The deprecated FILE mode opens a file picker; the URL mode inserts a placeholder the user can edit directly in the template body.

Locale hygiene

As part of this milestone, all locales were normalized and cleaned.

[SamuelPlentz]

Tried the new Version and along with the Quicktext Legacy Companion Add-on.
Had no problems.

Everything works as intended.

Thanks.

[SamuelPlentz]

Some thoughts:

First of all, thank you for providing the Quicktext Legacy Companion Add-on. It’s great to see this toolbar-functionality still available, Quicktext has always been one of the most useful tools when composing emails because of it.

From my perspective, a visible toolbar is quite important for the usability and acceptance of Quicktext in the long term. Many users rely on quick access to snippets, and a dedicated toolbar makes that workflow much more intuitive than opening a popup or navigating menus.

This made me wonder whether it might be worth considering an extension of the WebExtension / MailExtension API in the future to support something like this more officially.

Instead of allowing extensions to inject arbitrary HTML into the compose window (which would likely cause UI and stability issues), an API could perhaps work in a more declarative way. For example, an extension could register a structured set of actions (buttons, menus, etc.), and Thunderbird would render them itself inside a defined compose toolbar area.

Very roughly sketched, something like:

• the extension registers a tree of actions (buttons, menus, sub-menus)
• Thunderbird renders these actions in a dedicated compose toolbar slot
• the extension simply receives the triggered events

This would keep the UI consistent and stable while still allowing powerful extensions like Quicktext to provide fast access to templates and snippets.

Thanks again for your work on Quicktext and for keeping such an important add-on alive!

[andre5tz]

Hello,
I recently installed Quicktext version 6.5.5 on Thunderbird. It seems to be working beautifully and the new interface looks great!

Regarding the permissions, I noticed that the add-on requests "full access to Thunderbird and your computer." I was under the impression that permissions for the new release might be more refined or restricted. Is this level of access still required?

Additionally, I tried to test two specific settings:

"Show Quicktext menu on right-click"
"Collapse if the group contains only one template"

I have tried toggling both options, but I haven't been able to notice a difference in behavior yet. I would love to understand how they are intended to work.

Or are these points planned for Milestone 4?

Thank you so much for your hard work on Quicktext and for keeping such an essential add-on alive. I am very grateful for your dedication!

Best regards,

P.S.: Bei der Übersetzung auf englisch hat mir eine KI geholfen, die kann das besser als ich :-)

[jobisoft]

Quicktext v7 will be the first version without the full-access-permission. Milestone 4 will introduce the new file management and still have code to migrate from the old system to the new one. After everybody migrated, we can ship v7.

"Show Quicktext menu on right-click"
"Collapse if the group contains only one template"

You need to save the options before the change takes affect. The first option controls the Quicktext menu entry in the context menu of the compose body area. The second one hides the group-name-level for groups which have only one template.

[andre5tz]

"Thank you for your feedback.
Now I understand 'Collapse if the group contains only one template' and it works for me.
In the case of 'Show Quicktext menu on right-click', I can't see any changes. I saved the changes and restarted Thunderbird."
The Quicktext menu is always the last item in the context menu. This is my favorite setting, so it's okay for me, thanks.