Learn to Quickly and Easily Integrate Skype Into Mozilla Thunderbird

The concept of unified communications aims to put your contacts within reach wherever you are. It is convenient to click on a contact's name or personal information in an email message to initiate a call, without being required to launch a softphone. This can be achieved by integrating a VoIP softphone service such as Skype into your Thunderbird email client. 

How to Make Skype Calls From Inside Thunderbird 

Your computer uses a protocol handler to govern how things are done—how calls are initiated or how data is transferred, for example—over the internet. Each application works with a protocol represented by a prefix such as http: for web pages, sip: for session initiation protocol, and ​skype: for Skype calls. The integration app identifies phone numbers in email messages and elsewhere and uses the protocol handler to map the number to the respective identifier in the service. As a result, a single click triggers the calling app to call the contact. 

Here are a couple of Mozilla add-ons for making Skype calls by clicking on contacts in Thunderbird. There are not many of them around. Of the few that exist, these two are the most up to date. They have ongoing support and deliver the goods satisfactorily.