Nope. This is a common request, for some form of preview, typically as Outlook does it. Almost equally common are requests to have absolutely no preview whatsoever in case something nasty happens.

Many of us think the Message Pane below the thread list is perfectly adequate for a quick scan of message content.

Thanks for a definitive answer. That's frustrating. I like being able to glance without seeing very much -- so if it's a topic I don't want my brain (or emotions) to switch to, I can see quickly the beginning gist and no more.

I'd looked around but couldn't find how to set a message pane. Where is it :)?

F8 should toggle it off and on. IIRC, it's in the menu under View|Layout.

F10 or alt if you don't have a menu.

I don't use it myself, but the Conversations add-on might provide something like this.

Thanks. Now that I've tried it, the message pane is a poor setup. Takes up tons of room with header info. Then the blue box doesn't retreat when I turn it off (a bug probably).

If this is available in so many mail programs, is there an add-on being worked on?

It'd make a big difference in whether this email client works out well for me.

There's an add-on to allow you to reduce the header pane down to one line.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/compactheader/

Well with that add-on, the "pre-viewablity" isn't bad...! A couple things:

- Is there a way to set it to already allow "remote content" so it shows the email? It asks me with every new email address that's emailing to me.

(Note: I've solved this next situation. I posted how in a later post.) - While writing it doesn't change color of text or set the background to a color. I can search for or post that as a new question, but thought I'd post it here just in case. I've added this add-on, and Theme Font and Size Changer (I was going to include a link to it from the add-on list, but the link doesn't seem to copy&paste.) I've turned off both add-ons and restarted without it working. I was working the other day.

Solved the color problem. Under "options...display...colors...allow content to choose it's own colors" when selected colors in composing, works again. No idea how it got unchecked in the last few days.

Haven't found yet how to generically let "remote content" be allowed, rather than having to check it off on every address that's sent to me, which requires everyone but in my address book. Edit: found it: http://www.groovypost.com/howto/geek-stuff/allow-thunderbird-3-to-download-and-display-images-automatically/ It's in options...advanced...general... config....search for remote_content and or remote.content and double click till it's set to false.

These questions remain!

1) Also once I disabled all the add-ons, I didn't see a way to enable the set I originally had on. Under help it had "disable add-ons" rather than "enable" even after I'd disabled them all.

2) So much to learn... is there anyplace that's a good way to read through for answers to things like that? For instance, it was possible to solve the remote content problem with google, but I have no idea how to find that answer on the mozilla website.