"Outdated"? In what way??

Since Lightning is an add-on to Thunderbird, it can't run in isolation.

Outdated in every way, most specially its inability to show gmail categories.

Run in isolation? it runs in a tab for itself, why would anything change if the email tab would be allowed to get closed instead of forcing it open.

If there is no fix for this then the developers should consider one. Not everyone uses TB for its email.

I think you have the bull by the horns. Thunderbird is a mail client. So no there will not be a fix to make it into a calendar. They tried that already in Sunbird. It was a general failure.

Outdated in I have no idea that a gmail category it. What I do know is it is not standards based email or Thunderbird would support it. Thunderbird is not a gmail client it is an email client.

Perhaps you should use the google calendar along with their categories.

No one said anything about making thunderbird into a calendar application. The lighting add-on does that by itself. All I want is to make the forced email tab to be closed, simple as that!

No one said that thunderbird is a gmail client either, but like other mail clients such as Outlook its functionality is to show mail clients such as hotmail, and gmail. If it cannot cope with their functionality then it's useless, hence why i don't want to use it for email, and only for the calendar add-on.

And I do use google calendar, i just use the lighting add-on to show it in thunderbird. The categories are not for calendars, they are for emails. Categories sort emails into different categories, and are customizable. Making it very easy to check emails. TB doesn't have that therefore it is outdated.

Email client connect to mail server. using IMAP and POP mail protocols, What you see as gmail and hotmail (that web site) is not mail. It is the gmail and hotmail mail clients respectively. So your basic assumption is not correct, your comparing four mail clients and complaining that one does not represent mail like another.

So back to your original point, which of reasons that totally escape me you keep pushing. You will not be getting to close that tab. Use the gmail calendar, it is built into your existing gmail interface that you apparently like.

Or

Use Sunbird. It still runs, just no one has maintained it in a few years.

Well you misinterpret every that I say. When you import for example a gmail account in Thunderbird, it has options to sort the gmail folders, and move spam to the spam folder in your gmail account etc. And there many add-ons to make these tasks easier in thunderbird. So it shows the folders inside your gmail account but cannot show the somewhat new function of categories, hence outdated.

Back to my original point, like I said i use the "Lighting" add-on that is built for Thunderbird, and is better than Sunbird, and is maintained. So my calendar needs are satisfied with the Lighting add-on. I just wanted a simple task of closing the email tab in Thunderbird, through userChrome or config editor if possible.

Categories are not standards based email... their are a feature of the gmail mail client. They might be of huge import to you, but in reality they are totally irrelevant. So not outdated, different from the competing interface. You might say inferior as your appear to like it.

I use Thunderbird because I find the gmail message display indecipherable. Others must like it as the add-on for Thunderbird that introduces the same sort of view has it's followers. The folder options are just a nuisance. Using POP stops that rot.

So to close this.... "I just wanted a simple task of closing the email tab in Thunderbird"

Three times I have told you that you can not. That is probably not technically true, as a programmer with plenty of time in is probably possible, anything is possible is you write your own program, but I do not think you or I are programmers with free time to waste on such a pointless outcome. I know I am not.

I never said the categories are a standard of all emails, but that's why TB is not very good for emails, unless someone would make an addon to implement the categories. There are many other reason to why TB is not very good for emails too.

Anyways, no you never actually answered my question before that with a simple "no you cannot close that tab". No I'm not a programmer, nor should I be just to to a simple task. Hence why I recommended that the developers could make an option to remove the email tab in thunderbird for those that wish to use thunderbird for its addons, and not for its email, like me.

Thunderbird is an email client, where email client means that it complies with well known internationally agreed RFC standards, namely the POP, IMAP and SMTP (protocols). Standards exist to enable and ensure interoperability between different systems. This is why and how regular email works on just about everything,

Gmail is not email. It's a proprietary system which does not need to comply with the standards. Google are free to add arbitrary features, such as categories, whatever they are, and they almost certainly do this to create an impression of advantage over competing services. As a courtesy to users of regular email, they offer some degree of compatibility with regular email clients by offering servers which provide close approximations to the RFC standards. This is also in their own interests, as it encourages users like myself and Matt who don't like the Web-based experience to make use of their service. I have several Gmail and calendar accounts, which I find very useful but manage by and large to avoid going to their website.

The simple truth is that Google have added to their Gmail system a feature which is not present in the systems represented by the RFCs. So there are no commands in the existing email protocols to convey the concept of Google's categories, hence no way for Thunderbird to implement them.

If such features are important to you then use the interface offered by Google. Don't expect standards-compliant software such as Thunderbird to accommodate arbitrary 3rd-party extensions of the standards. I have to say that I'm puzzled by why you have installed Thunderbird/Lightning. Perhaps even you are disappointed by Google's Web-based calendar offering?

BTW, it's LightNing.

Well I've used Firefox from day one when it came out, and then Thunderbird too for a while eight years ago. But it wasn't very feauture rich at that point so i switched back to Outlook for my calendar and contacts needs. Recently Outlook proved disappointing again when it deleted all my contacts from its client and web after i switched emails so I decided to switch again to Thunderbird.

And of course it should be obvious that I do not wish to use the web UI of Google calendar and contacts, thus i chose Thunderbird. I didn't wish to use their web gmail either. Why would anyone choose a crappy web UI over a customizable application? That's why i have been struggling for four days to make thunderbird work the way i want it to with gmail, but failed. It's not just the categories either, blocked remote content by default is another problem.

Google have only just stopped blocking remote content by default. Thunderbird will extensively modify it's system in the next release, until them there is this http://kb.mozillazine.org/Privacy_basics_%28Thunderbird%29 which has been around since Version 1.