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buddy icons in mail (and addressbook)
Seth Spitzer

Mozilla is now able to show icons in the message header area and the addressbook card pane.

For the message pane, the icon we will show is on disk at:

<profile home>/NIM/<value of pref aim.session.screenname>/picture/<screenname for sender email address>.gif

When trying to determine the screenname for the sender, we search the addressbook that we are using for collection.  (See this document for info about that.)

For the addressbook card pane, the icon will show is on disk at:

<profile home>/NIM/<value of pref aim.session.screenname>/picture/<screenname for card>.gif

If aim.session.screenname is not set, the icon will not appear. 
If there is no card matching the email, the icon will not appear. 
If there is a card, but no screenname, the icon will not appear. 
And finally, if there is no icon, the icon will not appear.

The reason this file name scheme was chosen was is this is how Netscape 7.0 IM stores buddy icons on disk. 
So if you use NIM, and you use buddy icons, this will just work for free.

Notes:
  1. You do not have to be online to use this feature.
  2. We do not show any buddy icon if you are in "collapsed" header mode.

screenshot