NetSherpa Journal

This document will provide instructions detailing how to install a portable application platform ‘PortableApps’ © to a USB storage drive, followed by how to install the email client ‘Thunderbird.’ After installing Thunderbird, users of Google Mail and Google Calendar can read further for instructions to synchronize data between the USB drive and data stored on Google’s services.

PortableApps is a platform for software that allows data to be stored solely on the installed drive, allowing certain applications to travel from computer to computer, without loss of settings or private data. It will host the open source email client developed by Mozilla (“Thunderbird”) and take advantage of that software’s ability to install third party extensions. The extensions used — Lightning for calendar integration, and Provider for calendar synchronization — will work together to give the user a single piece of software that will serve as a hub for contacts, email services, and appointment scheduling. This software, as well as all modified data and settings stored on it shall be easily transported securely from computer to computer with the USB drive, and the software can synchronize anywhere the user has Internet access.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Preceding Requirements

II. Downloading and Installing the PortableApps portable application launchpad

III. Downloading and Installing Thunderbird Portable Edition using PortableApps as an application launcher

IV. Setting up IMAP Email synchronization between Gmail, Thunderbird

V. Downloading and Installing the Lightning add-on for Mozilla Thunderbird

VI. Synchronizing Google Calendar with Thunderbird’s calendar using the ‘Provider’ extension

1. Preceding Requirements,

   1. Connection to the Internet

   2. ‘Administrator privileges’ on the computer (Or equivalent permission allowing the installation of applications)

   3. USB storage device; both “Flash Drives” (sometimes called “Thumb Drives”) and external hard drives are acceptable. This document assumes the drive does not already have an application launcher installed. A common pre-installed launcher is the ‘U3 Launcher’ and documentation for installing Thunderbird on this platform can be found at http://software.u3.com/Product_Details.aspx?productId=196 (as of 10/28/2008)

      1. After installing Thunderbird on U3, instructions for Google Mail and Google Calendar remain the same, as well as Add-on instructions for installing extensions ‘Lightning’ and ‘Provider’.

2. Downloading and Installing the PortableApps portable application launchpad

   1. Visit http://portableapps.com/download to find the most updated version. This document will assume the ‘Platform Only‘ installation, as it contains no included applications.

   2. Download the newest installation package and once the download is complete, open the executable.

   3. After clicking ‘Next‘ the user must specify the location of the installation. Check ‘My Computer’ for the correct drive letter – often denoted by a specific icon for external storage device. The location should be in the format “I:\”, where “I” is the drive letter of the storage device. This drive letter will most likely be the next letter in the sequence of installed storage devices (“C” Is commonly the primary hard drive letter in Windows based computers, followed by “D” for primary compact disc drive, and so forth.)

   4. Click Install.

   5. After the installation is completed, upon insertion of the drive, (by default) the operating system should recognize the ‘Auto-run’ application (by default, named StartPortableApps.exe on Windows) located in the root folder of the drive and initialize the software.

   6. Once installed, the user can access this launcher file manually or simply re-insert the USB drive to run the launchpad for the first time. Succesful install and running is acknowledged by noticing the ‘PortableApps’ logo in the running processes bar on the right side of the task bar (on Windows) that, when clicked, produces an application launch pad on the screen.

3. Downloading and Installing Thunderbird Portable Edition using PortableApps as an application launcher

   1. At this point, you should have a portable storage device with PortableApps installed. The installation is verified by a viewing a launchpad that appears when the ‘PortableApps‘ icon in the task bar is clicked.

   2. Visit http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/thunderbird_portable for the most updated (portable) version of Mozilla’s email client. Download the indicated file.

   3. Once the file in step 2 is downloaded, run the file. A new window should appear.

   4. Click ‘Next’, and a license agreement will appear, after reading, check the box if you agree to the terms, and click ‘Next‘ to move on to the next screen.

   5. Because the drive is already inserted, the installer will attempt to locate the correct directory of installation. It will be in “I:\PortableApps\ThunderbirdPortable” (Where “I” is your drive letter) by default.

   6. Click install and wait for it to finish, follow the prompts and exit the installer.

   7. Verify that Thunderbird is indeed on the drive by noting it’s new location in the list of applications in the PortableApps launchpad. The launchpad will appear by left-clicking the “PortableApps” icon in the running process list on the right of the task bar, at the bottom of the screen.

   8. Upon running Thunderbird for the first time, the user will be presented with a series of windows requesting email account information so that it may access your email server and retrieve the data.

4. Setting up IMAP Email synchronization between Gmail, Thunderbird

   1. For IMAP to be accessible outside of Google for the first time, the user must go into his/her Google Mail account and enable IMAP once. This can be done in the following three steps from within Google Mail:

      1. IMAP can be enabled by clicking the ‘Settings‘ tab at the top of any page within Google Mail.

      2. Click ‘Forwarding and POP/IMAP‘

      3. Select ‘Enable IMAP‘

   2. If it is your first time running Thunderbird, you are displayed with the account creation prompt by default; users with previously entered accounts can click ‘Tools‘ followed by ‘Account Settings‘. Click ‘Add Account‘ on the left of the resulting window.

   3. New account types should be listed in this window. At the top of the list is ‘Email Account’, select this and click ‘Next’.

   4. Enter the account title at the top of this screen, under ‘Name’ followed by the email address to be associated with the account. This text box should contain the @gmail.com account to be used.

   5. This next screen is the protocol selection. POP was and is still popular but IMAP allows for much richer storage of data, including categorization and hierarchical structures. Select the IMAP radio button.

   6. Below the protocol selection, are text boxes for incoming and outgoing email servers. At the time of writing this, the servers are as follows. Set the incoming server to “imap.gmail.com” and the outgoing server to “smtp.gmail.com”

   7. After selecting ‘Next‘ to confirm, the user must again enter his @gmail.com email address in both the ‘Incoming User‘ and ‘Outgoing User‘ text boxes. Click next to complete the creation of the account.

   8. To allow Thunderbird to communicate with Gmail’s servers, the user must specify the correct security and port information. Begin this by clicking ‘Tools‘ from the top and selecting ‘Account Settings‘ from the menu that appears.

   9. Locate the email account that was just created and select ‘Server Settings’ from the tree below it.

      1. Select ‘SSL’ in the ‘Security Settings’ box and enter ‘993‘ as the port, next to the text box labeled ‘Server Name‘ that should contain “imap.gmail.com”.

   10. From the tree on the left where you selected ‘Server Settings’, select ‘Outgoing Server (SMTP)‘ from the same tree.

   11. From the new options on the right, click the button labeled ‘Edit‘.

       1. A new window should appear, titled ‘SMTP Server‘

       2. In the text box labeled ‘Port:‘ enter “587”

       3. At the bottom of this window, under ‘Use secure connection:”, select “TLS” from the list of options.

       4. Click OK at the bottom after verifying each of the two changes to return to the ‘Account Settings’ window.

   12. Click OK at the bottom of the ‘Account Settings‘ window to submit the new changes, and Thunderbird should be able to communicate with Gmail.

   13. After IMAP’s configured the user can click ‘Get Mail‘ and Thunderbird will attempt to access the user’s email account and retrieve new email. Upon entry of a correct password, email should begin appearing within the software. N.B. ‘Labels’ defined in Gmail will be displayed as folders along the left side of the Thunderbird Inbox.

5. Downloading and Installing the Lightning add-on for Mozilla Thunderbird

   1. At this point, the user should have an external storage device with the PortableApps open-source launcher installed. On top of this installation, the user should also have Mozilla’s email client Thunderbird as a working application, verified by left clicking it’s name in the launcher menu. Mozilla Thunderbird should be now running. Lightning is a Thunderbird Add-on developed by Mozilla to bring it’s calendar software, Sunbird, into the Thunderbird workspace.

   2. Visit https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/2313 for the most recent distribution of the add-on. Navigate to the appropriate type, depending on operating system, and download the Add-on file. In Windows this will be a file with the extension ‘.xpi’.

   3. From within Thunderbird, select ‘Tools‘ and then ‘Add-ons‘ from the top menu bar.

   4. Users have two choices for installing extensions through the Add-ons management screen. Users can either:

      1. Drag the downloaded file into the Add-ons management window and allow Thunderbird to install the selected extension, OR

      2. Select ‘Install’ from the bottom of the window and navigate to the downloaded file. Choose open and follow the prompts to install the add on.

   5. Thunderbird may need to be restarted, but it will restart with new features such as task management and a new calendar interface. Users of Google Calendar can download and install the ‘Provider’ extension to synchronize appointments between Thunderbird and Google Calendar. This process is explained in section VI.

6. Synchronizing Google Calendar with Thunderbird’s calendar using the ‘Provider’ extension

   1. After the Lightning extension is installed, open Thunderbird and notice the buttons on the bottom right corner: “Mail”, “Calendar”, and “Tasks”. Select ‘Calendar’.

   2. This is your calendar, as stored on the USB drive. We want this calendar to display any and all updates made to Google Calendar – as well as for all updates made on this portable calendar to be sent back to Google Calendar for remote backup and synchronization. Time to download the ‘Provider’ add-on for Thunderbird.

   3. Visit https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4631 for the newest version of the ‘Provider’ extension. Click ‘Download Now‘ to attain the newest *.xpi file containing the add-on.

   4. Just as with the ‘Lightning’ calendar extension in section V, the provider extension must be installed within Thunderbird. From the menu bar up top, select ‘Tools‘ and then ‘Add-ons‘.

   5. Users have two choices for installing extensions through the Add-ons management screen. Users can either:

      1. Drag the downloaded file into the Add-ons management window and allow Thunderbird to install the selected extension, OR

      2. Select ‘Install’ from the bottom of the window and navigate to the downloaded file. Choose open and follow the prompts to install the add on.

   6. Once installed, restart the Thunderbird application once again, from the portable application launcher menu.

   7. After Thunderbird restarts, click the ‘Calendar’ button from the bottom right and return to your calendar.

   8. On the left side of the window should be a column with a month calendar up top and an empty list of calendars below (if you haven’t already created one). Right click the white space below “Calendar” and select “New Calendar”.

   9. The first prompt asks if the Calendar is stored on the local computer or over a network, accessing Google’s Servers requires us to choose ‘On The Network’ for synchronization. Select ‘On the Network’ and click ‘Next’.

   10. The following screen will display a set of radio buttons and a text box at the bottom labeled ‘Location:’.

   11. Select ‘Google Calendar’ from this list.

       1. If ‘Google Calendar’ not a choice, Provider may not be properly installed, go back to step VI.3 and verify a correct installation by checking for it’s presence in the add-ons manager (’Tools’ then ‘Add-ons’ from the top).

   12. The value for ‘Location’ must be found by copying a personal URL from Google Calendar’s ‘Settings‘ page. Open your favorite web browser; navigate to http://www.google.com/calendar/

       1. Log in with your Google account (same as Gmail credentials) to access the calendar.

       2. Click ‘Settings‘ from the top of any page within Google Calendar.

       3. From this new page, select the ‘Calendars‘ tab from the top.

       4. By default only one calendar should be displayed, titled with the user’s first and last name. Click the title of the calendar to be synchronized, in most cases this is the calendar titled the user’s name.

       5. The new page should be titled ‘John Doe Details’ where “John Doe” is the name of the calendar chosen for synchronization.

       6. The final row in of this page is titled ‘Private Address’ clicking ‘XML’ will produce a URL for the user to access his/her calendar from third party software securely. Click XML next to ‘Private Address’ and copy the displayed URL to the clipboard (highlight the link and press CTRL+C)

   13. Minimize this browser window and paste the URL you just copied into the ‘Location’ box of the Calendar creation dialogue.

   14. Click ‘Next‘.

       1. If Provider has trouble with the link, it will display an error message box up top. If this is the case, go back and retry steps VI.11.1-VI.11.6 to attain the correct URL.

   15. Finally, enter the title of the Calendar to be displayed, optionally select a color, and click OK.

   16. Provider may prompt the user for a password when accessing Google Calendar to retrieve data.

   17. Click ‘Reload’ from the top buttons to retrieve data from Google’s server, updates made to either calendar will affect the other.

   18. If no errors appear, the full installation and setup should be complete, and you have successfully finished all tasks discussed in this document. Congratulations!

After completing all the tasks proposed in this document, users should feel very comfortable with using both PortableApps and Thunderbird. Many applications exist for use by the PortableApps launcher and the installation for most is nearly identical to that of Thunderbird Portable Edition described in section II. Thunderbird, as with all Mozilla applications, is highly versatile because of a large developer community invested in designing add-ons and extensions that push the limits of the software’s features. Installation of the other add-ons is identical to the installations described in sections V.4 and VI.5 for both the Lightning and Provider extensions.

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