Automatically downloading emails in Thunderbird when using IMAP

Lots of applications have an "offline" feature that allow you to access data (email, calendar, documents, etc) when you don't have an internet connection. These are great, but I can never remember to click the "offline" mode. Bandwidth and storage are never usually concerns, so I would just prefer if applications did this by default (or at least had the option). Google Calendar is about the only program that I use daily that does this without me needing to click on update/offline.

For those who use Thunderbird as their email client and use IMAP instead of POP, you can set it to have all of your emails stored locally by default without clicking the offline mode. The trick is a couple of settings in the advanced config editor (Options->Advanced->Config Editor):

1. mail.server.default.autosync_offline_stores to true (you might have to create this value if it doesn't already exist. Right Click->New->Boolean)
2. use_status_for_biff to false
   

More information is here.