Re: Thunderbird and MIDs

Paul <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, 2/20/2026 6:54 AM, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
> > On 2026/2/19 15:2:47, Paul wrote:
> > []
> > 
> >> Did you test with a Nightly, as a check for forward-progress ?
> >> I'm not familiar at all with running these, but this is the
> >> quickest way to tell whether the MID mod got any traction.
> > 
> > No, I'm on the ESR line - quite the opposite of nightlies!
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The Nightly does not appear to honour <news:[email protected]>
> 
>    [Picture]
> 
>     https://i.postimg.cc/xCS716xC/No-Native-MID-In-TB-Nightly-149.gif
> 
> I tried from the command line too, and it seems uninterested.
> 
> Looks like Thunderbird will need an AddOn or similar.

  Well, truth be told in The Old Days (TM), an 'Open Link In Browser'
*would* work. I.e. the news:[email protected] part was entered into the
*web-browser*, which would recognize that it got a news:-URL and would
pass that to the *newsreader* (for example Thunderbird) to handle it
[1]. I.e. much like a mailto: URL is passed to ones's email-client.

  That was an ideal method to introduce people to Usenet/NetNews,
without them having to configure a News account.

  For example with this URL

<news://news.eternal-september.org/news.software.readers>

a newbie would automatically get from hir web-browser into the newsgroup
news.software.readers on the news.eternal-september.org and could start
reading the 'READ ME FIRST' posting on how to become a real Usenetter.

  This used to work in Outlook Express and Thunderbird, but over time
was broken in Thunderbird (Can't have something which actually works,
can we!? :-(). I don't know if it still works in Outlook Express (Rudy?).

[1] Of course the web-browser/OS must be configured to pass a news: URL
to the newsreader, but in The Old Days (TM) that was the case/default.