As the thread above mentions, Lightening team has to bump up the minVersion to 3.0b2pre. That means you need to get nightly build (at least as of this writing. Once Beta 2 is released, it is recommended you use Official Beta 2, rather than nightly builds.) You can get the nightly build from here.

Since I downloaded the .zip file, there are no installation involved for me, just unzip the contents into desired folder. Personally I would suggest this method to you all, since this provides portability.

Setting up Gmail IMAP Account

Setting up regular IMAP account was very easy with TB 3.0b2pre. But what amazed me was how simple it is to setup Gmail account.  Gmail IMAP is already a preset option when you try to add a new account. In second (and only real) step you need to enter your Name (as it will be displayed to your recipients) and your email address. That is all there is to it.  The last step is confirmation, where is shows your choices, and you need to click Finish so that account is created. So all practical purposes it is essentially one step process.

Compare it to the instructions you need to follow for Thunderbird 2.0 (Latest TB released version as of this writing)

Before you set any calendar, you need to install and configure the plugin. The instructions are same as listed in my previous post. I had bit of a problem the first time, as in the New calendar option was not enabled. Restarting Thunderbird resolved the problem.

URL to your Google Calendar

1. Go to your Google Calendar
2. Go to Settings.
3. Go to Calendars Tab, and Select the appropriate calendar.
4. Scroll towards end of the page where you will see entry titled Private Address, and three icons next to it. (XML, ICAL and HTML)
5. Copy the URL for XML (Right Click->Copy Link Location in Firefox, Right Click->Copy Shortcut in IE)
6. You need to use this URL in Step 4 below.

Private Address URL for your Google Calendar

Setting up Google Calendar

1. File -> New ->Calendar (You need to be in Inbox view. If you are already in Calendar view, you will not see menu option)
2. On Network
3. Format -> Google Calendar
4. Location  :  As discussed in previous section. Use your Private URL here.
5. You need to Provide name and select color for your Google Calendar.

That’s it. Now you can see as well as update your Google Calendar from Thunderbird.

Note : Since the Lightning plugin was broken, I installed the nightly build of Thunderbird in different folder, just in case I need to go back to my working email environment.  If you are installing it afresh, ignore this comment.

Then I found out a way to get this working with the Tunderbird 3 Beta

Install the Extenstion

1. Get the extension from here.
2. Download the .xpi file on your computer.
3. Go to Tools->Add-ons. Click on Install button. Point to the newly downloaded .xpi file.
4. Restart Thunderbird 3 Beta for the Add-on to be active.
5. Now you should see Lightning Nightly Updater in Add-ons list.

Configure

1. Click on Options button for this extension
2. If you actively use Google Calendar, then select second mode Also install Provided for Google Calendar
3. Leave both options under Backup as checked
4. It is good idea to click Backup Now button. If you are installing Lightning for the first time, skip this step.

This in itself doesn’t install the Lightning extension. As the name suggests, this is the extension to help you keep up to date with another extension

• Go to Help->Check for Latest Lightning update. You will now download the real Lightning extension (Two, if you have selected to download Provider for Google Calendar) 
• Download and install as usual. Restart Thunderbird for the extension to be effective.
• Now you will see two icons towards the far right of the “Tab bar”. Tooltips reveal these to be Calendar and Tasks respectively. (This puzzled me for a while, as to how do I access these functions now that I have installed the extensions)
• When you click on these icons, two new tabs will open. It is very intuitive after that.

Here are my changes

Note : I’m part of pythondev group on twitter.  Visit the website for details.

I’ve put together these instructions so that others may be able to leverage from my experience and get going quickly.

Setup

I have following versions. If you are using different version, there may be slight changes to the menus you may see, but it should not differ a whole lot.

• Windows XP SP2
• Java SDK 1.6.0.10
• Eclipse Ganymede SR1 aka Version: 3.4.1 (Build id: M20080911-1700 to be specific)
• GWT  1.5.3

Creating the Sample Application

GWT’s Getting started page doesn’t talk about from which location to invoke the projectCreator and applicationCreator commands. That is probably the biggest problem. Run the projectCreator from your Eclipse Workspace area. It is important that you change the directory to newly created MyApp folder to execute applicationCreator.

Importing into Eclipse

If you have your -shell, -compile, .launch as well as .project command in same folder, then you are probably going to be OK.

From Eclipse select File->Import. Choose Existing Projects into Workspace, and point to your Eclipse Workspace folder. Eclipse will automatically select MyApp folder (since it sees .project file there)

Instead of Run->Run, check to see if you see two options when you click the drop down arrow next to the green Run icon. You should see ApplicationCreator and MyApp. Click on MyApp. The default is Application creator, which gave me class-not-found error.

Following is the output from my Command Prompt Window, for your reference

E:\EclipseWS\GWT>D:\gwt-windows-1.5.3\projectCreator.cmd -eclipse MyApp -out MyApp
Created directory MyApp\src
Created directory MyApp\test
Created file MyApp\.project
Created file MyApp\.classpath

E:\EclipseWS\GWT>cd MyApp

E:\EclipseWS\GWT\MyApp>d:\gwt-windows-1.5.3\applicationCreator.cmd -eclipse MyApp com.mycompany.client.MyApp
Created directory E:\EclipseWS\GWT\MyApp\src\com\mycompany
Created directory E:\EclipseWS\GWT\MyApp\src\com\mycompany\client
Created directory E:\EclipseWS\GWT\MyApp\src\com\mycompany\public
Created file E:\EclipseWS\GWT\MyApp\src\com\mycompany\MyApp.gwt.xml
Created file E:\EclipseWS\GWT\MyApp\src\com\mycompany\public\MyApp.html
Created file E:\EclipseWS\GWT\MyApp\src\com\mycompany\public\MyApp.css
Created file E:\EclipseWS\GWT\MyApp\src\com\mycompany\client\MyApp.java
Created file E:\EclipseWS\GWT\MyApp\MyApp.launch
Created file E:\EclipseWS\GWT\MyApp\MyApp-shell.cmd
Created file E:\EclipseWS\GWT\MyApp\MyApp-compile.cmd

What works

The developers of Magicwords must be true Slickrun fans/devotees. They have tried to make this perfect clone. Right upto the “Import QRS” file option. The import worked fine. Adding a new magic word was better than from SlickRun. I’m not aware of hotkey to add a magicword in SlickRun. I always used the setup magicword, and then New Magicword button, followed by the dropper to pickup the application. Here, I was pleasantly surprised that there is a dedicated hotkey for adding a magicword (Default CtrlF11) But more surprisingly, when invoked, it picked up the application under focus as the filename. This can be very handy during initial setup.

What doesn’t work:

The UI can use a lot of improvement. I understand that this is supposed to be command line toolbar, but then considering that this is after all Windows based software, one expects certain polish. This is what sets apart “hobby coders” from Professional grade software (paid or free)

The setup option brings up a dialog box with 5 tabs. The first one is probably most used, and comes with two default magic words. Slickrun’s default list is far better.

Magicwords Library

The next tab is named Tools. It wasn’t clear as to what is its purpose. It came up with no entires listed. There is no apparent way to add any entries either.

Magicword Tools

Other two tabs you can see here namely Parameters Plugin and Help, are also read-only tabs . Parameter Plugin tab lists how to use the parameters like $I$, $W$ etc with the magic words. Slickrunners would be at ease here. But this is probably helpful for some one who has never used Slickrun, or at least never used parameters with their SlickRun magic words. Good addition, but doesn’t justify a separate tab, in my opinion. This could have been covered in Help tab itself.

The Help tab renders Wiki page from the Project’s website. This means no help available in offline mode. It would have been better to have a local copy of the HTML help file.

This brings me to the ugliest and buggy tab ever, the Options tab.

MagicWords Options

I did not like the over all look. The fonts chosen are too inconsistent. When modified, the “Size”, changes were not reflected. Same goes for the Hotkey. I changed the default CtrlF12 to AltF12. Didn’t work. But the background color change was saved and reflected immediately.

Conclusion

In terms of features, I think it supports most of the features (and more) of Slickrun, but in terms of stability it is far behind. (After all, SlickRun is at 3.9 as of this writing) MagicWords crashed within 5 minutes of use. The error was related to .Net Framework. This says it all about stability.

Overall, a promising SR clone, that is not just there, yet.