[Discuss] Thunderbird Extension: Open Link and then Delete Message

[Jason Roberts]

Hello, all-

I posted this to Mozillazine and haven't gotten any responses. I thought 
maybe I'd have better luck here...

I'm not a programmer. I've been lucky in that pretty much everything 
I've wanted to do with Firefox or Thunderbird, someone else has already 
thought of so I've been able to find an extension. I haven't been able 
to find this one, though.

I get a ton of notification emails with links in them. For example, 
letting me know there's a new message in a board thread I'm watching, 
notifying me of a comment on my blog, reminding me I have an online 
payment due, letting me know when I have a new voicemail message -- 
confirming that I actually wanted to join the mozdev discussion list. In 
every case, I want to open the link, but after that I have no further 
use for the message so I want to delete it.

What actually happens, though, is that I click the link, Firefox takes 
focus, and I inevitably forget to go back to Thunderbird to get rid of 
the message, leaving me clean-up for later on. Even if I do remember, 
it's extra steps that seem unnecessary.

My current workaround is to have as many of those messages as I can 
filtered into a folder which automatically deletes them after a short 
wait, but it's a hassle to add every potential source to the filter, 
particularly when many of them (such as the add request confirmation for 
this list) are temporary.

What I'd like is a Thunderbird option to open the link AND delete the 
message all at once. I'm thinking a right-click option or, even better, 
a modification so the CTRL-click, ALT-click, or SHIFT-click combination 
does it. (Do any of those combinations currently have a function within 
a message in Thunderbird? I'm not sure.)

So, anyone want to take on the challenge? I think that even if they've 
never thought of it, there are other people who would find this useful. 
It seems to me that this would be a relatively easy extension, wouldn't it?

Oh, and if this already exists somewhere, feel free to point it out to me.