{"id":580,"date":"2014-12-19T11:54:12","date_gmt":"2014-12-19T16:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/main.jmah.net\/?p=580"},"modified":"2014-12-19T12:00:22","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T17:00:22","slug":"thunderbird-change-line-height-in-folder-tree-and-mail-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/main.jmah.net\/?p=580","title":{"rendered":"Thunderbird: Change Line Height in Folder Tree and Mail List"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"thunderbird_logo-only_RGB-300dpi_w200\"<\/a>I thought I\u2019ll briefly write down a tip that helped me yesterday when I upgraded from Thunderbird 3.1 to the new version 5 (which also applies to Thunderbird 6 and also 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and probably more, given this ridiculous version system) \u2013 on WIndows 7, by the way. (This problem might not exist on other systems in the same way.)<\/p>\n

TB5 uses a slightly different display for the folder tree and the mail list with a slightly bigger line spacing (which might simply be a side effect of the Calibri font). This may result in slightly better readability, but it also means that there are less mails and folders displayed in the same screen real estate, and since I like to use quite a lot folders to organize my mail collection, this resulted in the fact that not all folders could fit on the screen anymore, and having to scroll is inconvenient \u2013 especially since it\u2019s virtually guaranteed that the next incoming mail will be put in a folder that\u2019s currently not visible\u2026<\/p>\n

So I quickly searched for a way to change the line height \u2013 which is of course possible with the userChrome.css file that\u2019s located in the profile folder1, typically located in C:\\Users\\user name\\AppData\\Roaming\\Thunderbird\\Profiles\\profile name\\chrome. By default, it probably doesn\u2019t exist, so just create it. And restart Thunderbird to apply any changes.<\/p>\n

This CSS code reduces the height such that the display is pretty much like in TB3:<\/p>\n

treechildren::-moz-tree-row {
\nmargin-bottom: -2px !important;
\n}<\/p>\n

Update 23 Jul 14: Surprise! A change in Thunderbird 312 \u2013 there were some pixels added somewhere, now it\u2019s -4px instead of -2px for the same effect.<\/p>\n

Since this causes ugly lines to remain between the items when moving the cursor across the tree or list, we also add the following which only applies to highlighted lines:<\/p>\n

treechildren::-moz-tree-row(hover),
\ntreechildren::-moz-tree-row(selected) {
\nmargin-bottom: 0px !important;
\n}<\/p>\n

That\u2019s it. If you like, you can of course use just -1px to reduce the height by only one instead of two pixel rows. (Alternatively you could also split the 2 pixels between top and bottom (margin-top and margin-bottom with each -1px), but then the highlighted line \u201cwobbles\u201d a bit when passing over it.)<\/p>\n

And a little bonus tip, an entry that I already have for a long time to hide the folder pane header that switches between \u201call folders\u201d and some other folder views which is useless for me:<\/p>\n

#folderPaneHeader {
\ndisplay: none !important;
\n}<\/p>\n

(And before you add this entry, make sure you switched to \u201call folders\u201d because you won\u2019t be able to once the header\u2019s gone\u2026)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought I\u2019ll briefly write down a tip that helped me yesterday when I upgraded from Thunderbird 3.1 to the new version 5 (which also applies to Thunderbird 6 and also 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and probably … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-information-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/main.jmah.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/main.jmah.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/main.jmah.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/main.jmah.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/main.jmah.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/main.jmah.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":586,"href":"https:\/\/main.jmah.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions\/586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/main.jmah.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/main.jmah.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/main.jmah.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}