(Although I usually kill the default tags that Thunderbird still includes as a hangover from the original Thunderbird release because that way I get useful tag names in the Maildir should I ever need to hack on them directly.)
I didn't realize Thunderbird supported Dovecot's tagging abilities. Is that something I need to enable? How do I use it? I've been using TB for years because it's the only IMAP client that does things the way I want (other than Mutt), but I didn't realize I could have arbitrary tagging with it.
Just right-click on an email and go to "Tag...". You might want to delete the default tags (which originate with TB 1.0) and create your own new ones from scratch.
Oh, I've been using those default labels/tags for a long time already to mark emails for follow up and so forth. If I'm looking to use those tags to organize my email instead of folders, is there a way for Thunderbird to display a tag hierarchy instead of or along side all my existing folders?
The only real interface is to create search folders that search by Tag on the server. Dovecot indexes everything behind the scenes, so it's reasonably fast.
Sadly, a full on "here's a hierarchy of tags, just display mail by tag" mail reader doesn't exist to my knowledge outside of GMail itself :(
Thunderbird hits every one of wccrawford's items, except it's not itself web based.
I use Thunderbird with a cheap fastmail.fm account. You can access your fastmail account from anywhere with their web interface. You can access it from any imap client.
It all works good enough for me. Not fantastic, but good enough.
