Have you ever wounder how to change the default sorting of the Thunderbird mail client? For me the standard default sorting it’s very annoying since I prefer the newest mail first. But out of box the my mail client shows the oldest one first.
So I went out and searched for a solution. And expect what: I found one! 🙂

Open your Options dialog and choose „Config Editor“ of the Advanced/General Page. The „about:config“ of Thunderbird will open. Into the filter field type „mailnews.default“ and you’ll see the current default of mails and news. Fine, but what are all these silly values means?
sort_order:

• 1 ascending
• 2 descending

sort_type:

• 17 byNone
• 18 byDate
• 19 bySubject
• 20 byAuthor
• 21 byId
• 22 byThread
• 23 byPriority
• 24 byStatus
• 25 bySize
• 26 byFlagged
• 27 byUnread
• 28 byRecipient
• 29 byLocation
• 30 byTags
• 31 byJunkStatus
• 32 byAttachments
• 33 byAccount
• 34 byCustom

view_flags:

• 0 Unthreaded
• 1 Threaded

For me I’ve just changed the mailnews.default_sort_order to 2 and mailnews.default_view_flags to 0 and I was happy.

Is there any addon out there which does the job? Up to now I didn’t found any. May I go ahead a write one …. as soon as I’ll get some spare time. (A request of such an extension could speed this process…)

Do you want more information about this? Look here.