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Technical Details
This is more information on the inner workings of the Gmail IMAP interface and how the Gmail Buttons extension works with it.
Before getting into the rest of this, it is important to understand that the IMAP folders that are seen in Thunderbird are not real folders in the usual sense. They are virtual folders based on the Labels in the Gmail web interface. This means that a message (and not a copy of a message) can be in more than one folder at once. Additionally, some folders perform special functions on the Gmail server when messages are moved into them (more details)
I have a feeling that since Gmail provides so much storage, they expect that you will never need to delete any messages. When you delete a message through the Gmail IMAP interface, it only deletes it from the current folder (more details). If you are like me, I really don't want to keep the reminders that my bank statement for this month is ready or what was on sale on some store this week in my All Mail folder forever.
So, if we want to get rid of a message for good, we do not want to delete it. We want to move it to the [Gmail]/Trash folder. We could set Thunderbird to move messages to the [Gmail]/Trash folder when they are deleted, but this has some unwanted side effects. For example, auto-saved drafts will show up in the Trash - so if you spend 30 minutes writing an email, there will be 6 copies of it in your Trash and All Mail folders.
So, we let the Delete button do what Gmail wants it to do - only remove the message from the current folder(label). If we want to get rid of a message permanently, we must move it to the [Gmail]/Trash folder. This can be accomplished by menus or clicking and dragging in Thunderbird, but gets to be cumbersome. Thus, the Trash button was created in this extension to do this in a single click.
Gmail also has it's own built in Spam feature, so they expect that you will not be using the Junk controls in Thunderbird. Again, we can do what Gmail expects in Thunderbird by clicking and dragging or through menus, but that is irksome. So, to make it easier, this extension replaces the built-in Junk button with a Spam button that moves the selected message to the [Gmail]/Spam folder. This is the same as clicking the "Report as Spam" button in the Gmail web interface.