The Bottom Line
It's a pity Clippings does not support all language encodings and does not include images or formatting either. Automatic expansion of keystrokes to snippets would be nice (Clippings has keyboard shortcuts, though).
Pros
- Clippings lets you insert frequently used snippets of text in Mozilla Thunderbird emails fast
- New clippings can be created by dragging and dropping existing text onto Clippings
- You can group snippets in folders and insert them using keyboard shortcuts
Cons
- Clippings does not support rich text or images
- You cannot make Clippings expand arbitrary key combinations to snippets
- Clippings chokes on character sets using double-byte encoding
Description
- Snippets lets you insert oft-used text from a context menu in Mozilla Thunderbird.
- You can organize text clippings in folders and assign shortcut keys for inserting them fast.
- New snippets can be created from existing text by dragging and dropping.
- You can past clippings as quoted or unquoted text.
- Placeholders (in the form $[placeholder]) let you vary the text upon inserting.
- A few preset placeholders are replaced automatically — with the current date, for example.
- Clippings can use the same text snippets for Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Firefox.
- Clippings supports Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5/2.
Guide Review - Clippings 3.0 - Mozilla Thunderbird Extension
Now, having extended Mozilla Thunderbird with Clippings, I right click, point, click and use these phrases; or in even merrier a mood just press a few keys. (It would still be nice if I could just type a short key combination and have Clippings expand that to the full snippet.)
Clippings holds as many text modules as you like, and they can be organized in folders (which become sub-menus when inserting clippings). Creating new snippets is easy, too, and can mean as little as dragging a piece of text just typed to the Clippings icon in the status bar.
For flexible clippings, you can use placeholders. Upon inserting, Clippings asks you to fill in the variable part. A few preset placeholders will be replaced with, say, the current date, too. You cannot have Clippings read from original messages or external processes, though.
As useful as Clippings is for inserting text, it's a pity that formatting is not supported. Neither are, of course, images and, unfortunately, some languages that require double-byte encoding.
Clippings can share data between Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Firefox, so you can use the same text snippets in your email program, forums and web-based email. A way to store clippings remotely and having multiple installations synchronized automatically would also be nice.
