Links are not active in the compose window. This is not changeable. They will be active when you send them or if you save the message as a draft.

Yes, I know that they are not active in the compose window.

But sometimes I type a URL without copying it from the address bar and I want to test it.

What I'm trying to find out is is there any way through an ad-on or configuration change to make them active in the compose window.

This should at least be an option.

The option is save it to a draft.

Sorry. That is not a good option. What you are saying is I would have to save it as a draft, then go to my drafts folder, open up the message, and do what I want to. That's way too convoluted, especially when other email programs do what I am asking.

I understand what Mozilla's reasoning is, but I don't agree with it. But if they insist on doing it, why don't they make it an option for those of us who want a live link?

Wether you like the answer or not is irrelevant. That is how it works.

Thanks, but that kind of response is not necessary, airmail.

Obviously, if I'm going to use Thunderbird, then I have to go along with the reasoning of the developers. However, they've shown in the past that they are responsive to user input and so that's all I'm doing: requesting an option.

Perhaps you should save your scolding for someone who respects you.

It is what it is. It's easy to say that software should do what the user wants, but there are always some limitations or compromises. In this case, the designer of the editing module chose not to support live links.

It is recognised that the edit module is poor in several areas and needs work. Maybe that will happen some day and you'll get your live links. But don't hold your breath. Some of the suggestions for improvement were for a pluggable editor so you could use an editor of your own choosing. But interestingly, most of the suggestions for what editor you could plug in were geeky tools such as vim and others that would facilitate editing of source code. I'm not sure where to look to find a pluggable html-based wysiwyg editor, which is what you would need. People who are particular about their editors are usually writing code and use a modular approach. I know of folk who edit in vim or emacs and mail using a command line tool. These peoples' preferences don't align well with the way most of us use our computers.

Myself, I'm a pragmatist. All software has irritations and shortcomings. I learn to work within and around these. Since I have to do this every day in Word and Excel, it's no hardship to work around Thunderbird's quirks. If I'm sending an URL I'd usually visit the site then copy and paste its URL from the browser's address bar. Frequently-used URLs are bookmarked because it's inefficient and inaccurate to type them longhand.

So we're both, to some extent, typing and checking, but I manually open or select the browser first. You want it to open automatically. But I'm using bookmarks and so perhaps doing less typing.

Yours is not an uncommon request and I have never seen an add-on to address it. That suggests to me that there would be significant technical issues in implementing it.

It is deliberately done this way as links are not so easy to modify if they are actual links. As this is the composing window, where modification would occur usability has been given preference over someone wanting to double check what the link would be like or whether it is correct/works if sent.

Often people copy paste a link from a browser address bar, but equally many people will manually type shorter links.

Hence the option to Save to Draft, which would show you a representation of how it would appear when sent with eg: links or images with clickable links.

I have used this option and find it not that difficult if you have the window with thunderbird showing Drafts beside the 'Write' window.

To make the best out of the current situaion, I also have set the auto save to 1 minute, so I do not have to actually manually save as draft, this cuts out that additional clicking and helps to speed up the process. Auto save is located here: 'Tools' > ' Options' > 'Composition' > 'General' tab or 'Menu icon' > 'Options' > ' Options' > 'Composition' > 'General' tab