Make Thunderbird 3 paste inline images as GIF or JPG instead of PNG

Question

I send email to people whose mailers don't show PNG images correctly, so it seems to them that I sent no images inline at all. In thunderbird, I can't see any options to paste inline images as GIF or JPG instead of PNG. Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

Look at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_3.0_-_New_Features_and_Changes#Pasting_of_Images_from_the_Clipboard

there is described parameter clipboard.paste_image_type for switching between PNG / JPG.

Answer 2

Well, how exactly do you "paste inline images"? If you paste an image file (e.g. drag&drop from a file manager), TB will include it as-is, i.e. JPEG as JPEG, PNG as PNG etc.

Do you want TB to convert PNG images to JPEG/GIF on the fly? Or are you pasting screen shots? On what operating system?

Edit:

I just tested this: Thunderbird will include images in the system clipboard in whatever file format they are, just like images from image files. So the file format depends in TB on which file format the screenshot software used.

If you use Windows's built-in screenshot function (PrtScr/Alt-PrtScr), it will use BMP (up to XP) or JPEG (Vista/Win7). If you use another software like Snagit, you need to configure the file format there ("output file format" or similar).

Answer 3

AGREED.

this is very annoying. when i copy an image from say, photoshop, and paste it into my msg that i'm composing, it converts the image to a PNG. this is very annoying because some cellphones do not display PNGs, and thre isn't any indication that there was an image supposed to be there. additionally, the image is not attached to the email, so the receiver is baffled as to what you're talking about.

THUNDERBIRD has, since it's inception, never dealt with pasting inline images correctly.

THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT: WINDOWS XP running TB 3

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\defaults\pref

right click "composer.js" choose edit. or open in notepad.

go to the bottom of the file. find clipboard.paste_image_type

---

// Pasting images from the clipboard, order of encoding preference:

// JPEG-PNG-GIF=0, PNG-JPEG-GIF=1,GIF-JPEG-PNG=2

pref("clipboard.paste_image_type", 1);

---

change its value. replace the 1 with a 0.

save the file, restart TB. thats it. now when you paste your copied image into the email it works! , you will get something like mozscreenshot_1.jpg at quality 95 embedded in your email. NOT A PNG.

SOLVED.