New Mozilla-based Mail Client: Minotaur

Ant writes "Minotaur is a redesign of the Mozilla mail component. Our goal is to produce a cross platform stand alone mail application using the XUL user interface language. We are modeling ourselves after the Phoenix rewrite of the Mozilla browser. Our intended customer is someone who uses Phoenix (or another non mozilla.exe browser) as their primary browser and wants a mail client based on mozilla that "plays nice" with their browser. Currently, mozilla -mail is not a good option for these users because link clicks and attachments end up going to mozilla browser windows instead of the preferred browser. In addition, by focusing solely on stand alone mail, we believe we can make some dents in the overall footprint and performance of the mail client by removing components and chrome we don't need."

Comments

Feature request

[nut]

I want to be able to put my mail on a shared FAT32 drive, and have access to my email seamlessly whether I boot up in Windows or Linux

Re:Feature request

[larien]

I started using IMAP for this; I have a PC at home which does my ADSL dialup & acts as router/firewall box using NAT for my other computers. I copied all my mail to the server's IMAP folders and now I can access mail from Windows or linux equally well. Added to this, IMP means I can use mail anywhere with an SSL web browser!

As for shared FAT32 drive, can't you mount the FAT32 in linux and symlink the mail folders directory in linux to the location on the windows drive? Never tried it, but it should be possible...

Re:Feature request

[borgdows]

Minotaur has nothing to do with that... even current Mozilla Mail can do that... you only have to specify the email client a directory where to save mail (whatever this directory is : fat32, nfs, floppy, ...)

I forgotten the command to specify directory, is there a Mozilla guru reading?

Re:Feature request

[Libor Vanek]

Use IMAP. Thenafter you'll be able to share your mails not even between Windows and Linux but also you can easily access them using webmail.

Re:Feature request

[Pembers]

As for shared FAT32 drive, can't you mount the FAT32 in linux and symlink the mail folders directory in linux to the location on the windows drive?

I had something like this working for a while with Netscape 4, when I was dual-booting between Red Hat 6 and Windows 98. As long as the mail program doesn't want to do any operations that aren't supported on FAT32 (I doubt it would), everything should be fine.

One thing that may trip you up is that the mail program creates index files for each of your mail folders to speed up access to them. In Netscape, at least, the naming convention was different in the two operating systems. That means that if you boot one OS, download some mail, and boot the other OS, (some of) your mail folders are newer than their indexes in that OS. This makes it think that you've hacked the folder manually, so it rebuilds the indexes to reflect your changes. Worse than that, neither version of the mail program recognises the other's index files, so it lists them as folders - but then claims they're not in the expected format.

My solution to this was rather than symlinking the directory that contained the mail folders, I created symlinks for each folder and its index file. This worked for me because the structure of my folders doesn't change very much. If you regularly create and rearrange folders, you might find it useful to run the Linux program with a wrapper script that recreates the symlinks.

Having said all of that, the Mozilla developers are probably aware of this problem. I wouldn't swear to it, but I think Mozilla uses the same naming convention for indexes on all platforms, so just symlink the directory and forget about it.

Re:Feature request

[Tanaka]

Yep, IMAP is truly liberating. Doesn't matter what OS or email client I want to use - all my mail with it's many folders are available at an instant. Best of all, when I am not at my own computer, then checking my e-mail is just a matter of opening a browser, and going to my squirrelmail site.

Re:Feature request

[Surak]

If you're the only user on the computer, of course, this is fine. But if you need to be able to set permissions, FAT32 is obviously not going to work.

OTOH, if it's a multiuser computer, you're not likely to dual boot Windows and Linux anyway. :)

Re:Feature request

[WowTIP]

I haven't tried IMAP myself, but have always thought of it as a nice thing. The question is, can you use IMAP if you need to store mail over a long period of time?

In my case, I need to keep mails for up to at least a year, which probably would fill up my IMAP account on the server pretty quickly.

The obvious solution would be using IMAP and saving important mails as text files or similar. This would otoh probably be very tedious in the long run.

My current setup is to leave mail on pop server for 14 days. This way I can save all mail on my local computer and still reach the newer ones from different places.

Re:Feature request

[Libor Vanek]

I store ALL my emails for a long time. Our email server stores all data on RAID array so it's more secure that downloading them on local computer.

And about size - see usage of my mail boxes:

2.5M Drafts
33M Saved/Discobolos
16M Saved/Konvertory
62M Saved
205M Sent
192K SPAM
206M Trash
475M total

And that's all running through 10 Mbit network and it's quite fast.

Re:Feature request

[Tanaka]

My e-mail goes back to about 1997 (247Mb). My IMAP server is an old computer running Gentoo. It sits in my attic with nothing more than a network connection (to an ADSL router/switch), and power source.

Re:Feature request

[OsCarJ]

I've been doing exactly that for about a year now with Mozilla's current mail.

Just move the mail folders (sometimes takes a little digging to find them) over to the shared drive and change the Account settings to point to the new location. (Hint: if you can't find this setting it's at the bottom of the server settings screen) It works pretty well except for occasionally being a little slow to index folders.

Now I just wish I could figure out how to do the same thing with prefs and bookmarks.

Re:Feature request

[Moloch666]

May I ask what mail server software you are using for IMAP? I've been wanting to run an email server but one of the biggest hurdles is figuring out what software to use. This will be my first time setting up a mail server in linux.

Re:Feature request

[Anonymous Coward]

[mailnews]edit>account settings>{servername}>server setting

Local Directory: [.......]

Re:Feature request

[cyb97]

Qmail and courier-imap.
Quick and easy, and relatively small footprint and low-cpu usage...

Re:Feature request

[silverhalide]

Get an IMAP mail account, and your mail will be accesible from your Windows and Linux installations as well as any other computer you may log in to on the internet.

Re:Feature request

[Phroggy]

I want to be able to put my mail on a shared FAT32 drive, and have access to my email seamlessly whether I boot up in Windows or Linux

Related Mozilla bugs include 58647 and 66259. Get a Bugzilla account and vote for these bugs, or contribute if you can.

Re:Feature request

[nut]

I did try setting this up with a version of Mozilla not too long ago (1.2, 1.3beta ?) using symlinks as a lot of people here suggested. It didn't work for me on Windows 2000, something to do with the fact that fact that Windoze needs to append a '.lnk' suffix to all it's symlinks I think... It may be fixed now. If anybody *is* doing exactly this I'd be interested to know exactly what versions of email client and OS's you are using.

Re:Feature request

[Anonymous Coward]

wow. my imap mailbox dates to july5 and is 238mb.
of course almost all of it is:
From: bugzilla-daemon@mozilla.org

Re:Feature request

[kousik]

> I forgotten the command to specify directory, is there a Mozilla guru
> reading?

I'm not a guru, but it is straightforward:

Edit -> Mail & News Account Settings -> account_name -> Server Settings -> Local directory.

I have put in a shared FAT32. Works fantastic. Once in a while I defragment the drive.

Re:Feature request

[Espectr0]

Is this for real?
You have been able to do that since netscape 4.7 or even earlier.

Re:Feature request

[Swaffs]

I've never tried this, but:

Mozilla's profile manager allows you to specify the location of the directory where your profile is stored. So setting that to a common FAT32 partition would store all of your profile information there.

I can't figure out though, how to change the location of your current profile. There must be something telling Mozilla on startup where to find profile information, but I can't find it.

Re:Feature request

[dcstimm]

why would you dual boot between linux and windows? are you crazy?

Re:Feature request

[Anonymous Coward]

It is in the "registry.dat" file.
Remove that file and it will ask you where your profile is.

Re:Feature request

[ryochiji]

>have access to my email seamlessly whether I boot up in Windows or Linux

One word: webmail.

I've been using my webmail interface as my primary email client for the last 2+ years and haven't looked at stand alone email clients since. My IMAP account has some 80MB worth of email, but even my sent folder with 2300+ messages loads in under 5 seconds from anywhere in the world (although, I should give Courier-IMAP and the Maildir format credit for that). As far as I'm concerned, desktop email clients are slow, inconvinient and obsolete.

Re:Feature request

[CvD]

Yup, I can vouch for this excellent setup. I use Postfix with Cyrus. Cyrus is an amazingly fast IMAP server, which is a good thing, seeing my mail server is a pokey 200 MHz machine.

On the client side, I use Mozilla mail whenever I'm behind my own desktop machine. When I'm logged in remotely, I'll use Pine (which supports IMAP) or through a browser with Squirrelmail, an excellent webmail client, which also talks IMAP. I also have my IMAP port open to the world, so I can use Mozilla mail when I'm at one of the computers at my university.

I have all my mailfolders the same everywhere, which is really nice. Now if there only was a nice way to share bookmarks and address books...

Cheers,

Costyn.

Re:Feature request

[WowTIP]

My point exactly. Most people don't have 475 MB accounts at their email provider, they are lucky to have 20 MB.

Sure, they could always set up their own Linux/BSD box and use it as a local IMAP server, but then the solution of reading the same POP mailbox on a FAT32 disk from both Linux/Win32 sounds easier (and cheaper).

Re:Feature request

[Xiarcel]

I'm pretty sure this can be done now (with Mozilla)

Re:Feature request

[Robert The Coward]

In my case, I need to keep mails for up to at least a year, which probably would fill up my IMAP account on the server pretty quickly.

No limit on the amount or time. In my case it is over 1 Gig. worth of mail for over 4 Years but that is on my home sever off a cable modem. If you are talking about a home sever that yes as much as you wants for as long as you want. If it is an ISP server or Corp. Server then there can be time limits placed on your email based on space avaible.

The obvious solution would be using IMAP and saving important mails as text files or similar. This would otoh probably be very tedious in the long run.

My current setup is to leave mail on pop server for 14 days. This way I can save all mail on my local computer and still reach the newer ones from different places.

Under Mozila and Outlook Express you can do something like that as you can have more then 1 Imap account under both. You could run a local IMAP at home and use the ISP/Corp. Sever and move you mail for starge into the local server/account.

Re:Feature request

[flacco]

Qmail and courier-imap.
Quick and easy, and relatively small footprint and low-cpu usage...

You're kidding, right? Setting up qmail is not easy.

I do agree that once it's up and running it's great, as is courier-imap with maildirs.

Re:Feature request

[Idaho]

I want to be able to put my mail on a shared FAT32 drive, and have access to my email seamlessly whether I boot up in Windows or Linux

Take an old computer, put Linux/Apache/PHP on it, make it run a webmail package (horde/IMP or something), install an IMAP server (very easy), and you can open your mail from everywhere, even in places where you can't (or don't want to) use IMAP, such as on public computers or over a slow internet connection.

The downside of this is, obviously, that you got to have 2 computers running.

Re:Feature request

[Anonymous Coward]

consider using an imap server.

Re:Feature request

[keramida]

As for shared FAT32 drive, can't you mount the FAT32 in linux and symlink the mail folders directory in linux to the location on the windows drive?

I had something like this working for a while with Netscape 4, when I was dual-booting between Red Hat 6 and Windows 98. As long as the mail program doesn't want to do any operations that aren't supported on FAT32 (I doubt it would), everything should be fine.

I'm not so sure... For instance, the safest way to "copy" when renaming it, in one, atomic operation, is to use hard links. The last time I checked, FAT didn't support those :-(

Re:Feature request

[mixmasta]

has anyone tried to hack your imap server "open to the world?"

Just wondering, because I might like to offer some services to the world, but am a little afraid these days.

Re:Feature request

[mixmasta]

Windows shorcuts (.lnk) are not symlinks. They are simply a file with a path to somewhere else. They are only followed by explorer and generally useless anywhere else, unlike real symlinks.

Of course NT supports symlinks on NTFS, but they can only be created by obscure 3rd party tools that no one knows about, and so they are rarely used.

Re:Feature request

[Libor Vanek]

475 MB you surely don't need for your private data. You need this space for work - and you should get it.

Re:Feature request

[cyb97]

It's pretty much making the UIDs and then running make...

If you want to run a public mailserver I guess that little hurdle shouldn't be too hard... if it puts you of, you're not ready to enter the world of open-relays and dictionary-spammers ;-)

Re:Feature request

[MarcQuadra]

I had too many headaches getting something like that working with Mozilla, the file system differences really nail you, paths are all different and stuff.

What I'd like to see is an option to add 'windows' and 'unix' options to the mail paths in prefs.js so when I run in linux the profile comes from '~/.mozilla...' and when I run in Windows it picks up from 'U:\.mozilla...' even though those are really the same folder.

I guess I should go enter this in bugzilla!

Re:Feature request

[larien]

Netscape used to have a roaming feature whereby you could store preferences either on a Netscape web server (Apache had a module to do the same) or on LDAP. This hasn't made it into Mozilla yet.

As for address books, that's something else LDAP could be used for.

Re:Feature request

[CvD]

I'm sure I've been portscanned a couple times, but as far as I can find there have been no vulnerabilities found for my version of Cyrus. I found a CERT Vulnerability Note which talks about version 2.1.10, but I have 2.1.12 (from Debian unstable).

So, make sure there are no exploits for your IMAPd and hope for the best... :-)

Cheers,

Costyn.

Re:Feature request

[Antity-H]

OTOH, if it's a multiuser computer, you're not likely to dual boot Windows and Linux anyway. :)

And yet, that happens more and more, my school (france) now has all its pc workstations on dual boot NT4/debian. And I heard a few other plans for universities to do so too.
However, the problem in these places is solved either by some kind of netowrk filesystem that allows users to acces their directory from any os (samba, nfs,...) so one might want to try this, but they also offer some kind of webmail system so that users don't have to do these kind of dirty hacks just to have a consistent mail system.
At home I also use IMAP, it is just great, it's a shame its so hard to find a good graphical (I come from windows world so I do like my graphical app sometime) imap client for linux (sylpheed I tried and don't like, which leaves mozilla-mail and that is what I call heavy taking 2mins just to check mail, I use it anyway, but I can't wait for minotaur).

Re:Feature request

[Surak]

At home I also use IMAP, it is just great, it's a shame its so hard to find a good graphical (I come from windows world so I do like my graphical app sometime) imap client for linux (sylpheed I tried and don't like, which leaves mozilla-mail and that is what I call heavy taking 2mins just to check mail, I use it anyway, but I can't wait for minotaur).

Hard? No, I wouldn't say that. Kmail, which has won various awards, fully supports IMAP. Screenshots are here.

Evolution, which is basically a feature-for-feature clone of Microsoft Outlook, also supports IMAP. Screenshots are here.

I've used both and they are both excellent GUI mail clients. I've also used IMAP with both, and their support of IMAP is very good. Evolution is nice because it is a total PIM/Groupware solution, while kmail is a nice "just-a-mail-client" app (it's a lot like Eudora). Both support nice filtering options for POP3 mail. With IMAP you really need server side filtering, though as there is no standards for filtering mail on IMAP. Both support multiple mail accounts and servers and multiple protocols. Both apps support all standard Unix mail formats, including mbox and maildir. In addition, Evolution supports Eudora, Netscape and Outlook Express mailboxes.

Both are nice apps, each has their strengths and weaknesses, but both are open source and run on many Unix platforms and of course Linux.

Pisses me off

[evilviper]

You know what pisses me off... Netscape/Mozilla has been around all this time now, and you STILL can't tell it to lauch an app other than Netscape Mail when you click on an e-mail link! Not just e-mail, but page editing, and the address book as well. That has been my main gripe with Netscape (besides the ever present performance and stability problems) for years.

Re:Pisses me off

[byolinux]

I use Outlook in the Office with Mozilla and at home use Mozilla and Safari both with Mail.app -- when you install Mozilla, just do a browser only installation, then it will use your existing mail client.

HTH

Re:Pisses me off

[Predsjednik Svijeta]

Yes, as an Eudora user I can add that it pisses me off too. But is that a reason to start writing an e-mail client from scratch? The open source movements needs more homogenization, we need one or two good e-mail clients - not 20 awful to average ones.

Also, is an e-mail client in this stage of development really a Slashdot-worthy news? C'mon, check freshmeat or sourceforge, there 100s of clients there.

Re:Pisses me off

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape/Mozilla has been around all this time now, and you STILL can't tell it to lauch an app other than Netscape Mail when you click on an e-mail link!

Google and FAQs has been around all this time now, and STILL users can't (or don't) use them.

// # User Preferences
// set mailto to external progam
user_pref("network.protocol-handler.external.mailt o", true);

Inserting this in your user.js solves your problem. HTH.

your friendly neighbourhood AC

Re:Pisses me off

[DoctorPepper]

I think the real gripe here isn't the fact that you can insert those lines in the user.js file. How the hell do you expect your grandmother to do that? How about you Mozilla developers actually giving us a choice in the preferences dialog? Would it be that hard to do?

Re:Pisses me off

[RevDobbs]

Have you used Phoenix? If Minotaur is half as good as that stripped-down browser is, it will soon be regarded as the best email client out there.

I just installed (yesterday, in fact) the latest Moz build specifically for the k3wl email spam filters, but am so much happier with the performance of Phoenix. Looks like I get to go back to my favorite Gecko browswer...

Re:Pisses me off

[evilviper]

Hmm... Good to know that it is working on Windows... but I don't use Windows.

Re:Pisses me off

[evilviper]

Why is exeryone so hyped about Phoenix? I've tried it, and it's had a LARGER memory footprint than Mozilla itself, and Phoenix was no faster than Mozilla at all.

What is it? Is everyone susceptible to the power of suggestion that they think it's faster just because the webpage says so?

Re:Pisses me off

[evilviper]

Again, that seems to be a Windows-only solution, and doesn't help those of us using Unix.

Re:Pisses me off

[TheRaven64]

The converse is true. I use the Mozilla mail client, but Opera 7 as a browser. If I click on a link in an email, then Mozilla launches the its browser component and opens the link in that. Back when I was using OE as a mail client and Moz as a browser OE had no problems launching Moz for html documents (as long as I set up Moz as the default handler for html files and http requests) and Moz had no problems launching OE to send mail, as long as OE was the default mail client (which it will be unless you repeatedly tell it not to be).

Re:Pisses me off

[byolinux]

...Windows *and* Mac OS X... If I remember correctly, works on Linux too.

Re:Pisses me off

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Phoenix has a smaller memory footprint and a smaller file size. It's not slower, it's the same speed as mozilla for rendering pages. It also starts faster.

I'm guessing you tried Phoenix 0.1 and gave up. Try a nightly build and then come back here.

Re:Pisses me off

[Anonymous Coward]

Get with the fucking program, the whole world uses Windows except for you. My sympathy for that kind of bullshit is nill.

Re:Pisses me off

[GiMP]

Phoenix is much faster for me, although it is most obvious on my older machines on which Mozilla is too big.

I've heard this complaint before and almost always it is because someone didn't read the FAQ. You must nuke your old Mozilla preferences (~/.mozilla in unix) before starting Phoenix; alternatively, you can create a new profile for Phoenix (-ProfileWizard or -ProfileManager). Phoenix will be very slow if you use a profile created by 'regular' Mozilla.

Re:Pisses me off

[evilviper]

And just how would it work on Linux? There is no way in Unix for the setting of a default anything... You would need some way to tell it the name of the program to launch, to handle mail.

Re:Pisses me off

[evilviper]

No, v0.2 actually... And yes, it has a larger memory footprint, and is just as slow as Mozilla.

Re:Pisses me off

[evilviper]

Well, I can certainly say that was not a problem in my case.

I don't suppose anyone has any benchmarks to prove what they are saying?

Re:Pisses me off

[Anonymous Coward]

0.2. And it's up to 0.5 and the nightlies are nearing 0.6. You have no leg to stand on. Try talking about Phoenix when you get a clue.

Re:Pisses me off

[RevDobbs]

Here are some bench marks on my old Dell P200:

mozilla:
20 minutes ago I typed "slashdot.org/" in the address bar; still waiting for Moz to acknowledge that I'm not at google anymore.

phoenix:
In the same 20 minutes I've authored 3 anonymous posts marked "flaimbait", 2 marked "troll".

IMAP proxy?

[jm91509]

Feature request I suppose.

Allow for an IMAP/POP3 proxy to allow access to webmail accounts from inside a firewall without using ssh tunneling stuff.

Re:IMAP proxy?

[ceswiedler]

I need the same thing. I stopped using Mozilla mail (and, well, Mozilla in general, in favor of Opera) because my work firewall is closed off to imap ports. I've been wondering if this should be possible with mod_proxy... couldn't I set it up so imap addresses of imap.server.com:80 got routed to my imapd?

Re:IMAP proxy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Minotaur is to Mail & Newsgroups as Phoenix is to Navigator. Most of the changes are going to be frontend only. If the developers of either Minotaur or Mail & Newsgroups (who overlap somewhat) were going to make a backend change such as implementing support for IMAP/POP3 proxies, it would be done in such a way that it would be available to both clients.

Re:IMAP proxy?

[please explain]

An IMAP Server and an MUA that can use certificates to authenticate people and TLS/SSL to encrypt their email activities is all you need here. Mozilla mail supports this and that's why it is still a very good MUA for business. The spinoffs never pay much attention to these features and end up with nice looking MUAs that cannot truly secure email routing and access. The company I work for can safely allow IMAP access without VPN or SSH because of this.

Re:IMAP proxy?

[ceswiedler]

no, you don't understand...it's a firewall port issue, not a security one. I can use Mozilla over tls imap, but I can't get to that port through my company's outgoing firewall. I was wondering if I could use an apache virtual host and mod_proxy to connect from work.

Re:IMAP proxy?

[please explain]

I do understand. The point I was trying to make was that your company's policy exists because control over that port, and the applications using it, is limited by what the IMAP server and MUA are able to do. Mozilla tls over IMAP is part of the solution. Certificate based authentication improves that enough to open the port in the firewall. BTW, this can also be used for SMTP auth and encryption. I'll assume they don't close port 25 because you receive inbound email. They just use an MTA that they trust (I hope).

I must admit that I do not understand what you mean about using mod_proxy and apache virtual hosts to get through your firewall without a web based MUA. I am familiar with the module and the web server, but without using a web based MUA and ssl you would just be un-securing the port for your company. Please forgive me if I am missing something obvious. Also, pure IMAP proxy daemons exist. I know of at least one that works well. Good luck with your search for a solution.

excellent!!

[garglblaster]

Actually this is what I've been waiting for some time now!

In fact I think it's a great idea to get away from the "kitchen sink" type of software packages and move on to more specialized programs that focus on one task and do it right!

Re:excellent!!

[miketang16]

Remember Mozilla really does have the kitchen sink. =D Hehe.

Re:excellent!!

[TheRaven64]

One of the key features of the *NIX philosophy is that programs should have a few (or ideally one) features which they do really well. Vim / emacs (Please delete as appropriate) is a good text editor, but that's all. gcc is a good C compiler. grep is a good search function. If you want something complicated, then you join multiple simple programs together. If you need to spellcheck a document, then your editor should pipe it through ispell (or equivalent) and parse the results. This amount of modularity meant that you could build very complicated programs out of shell scripts, and only have the parts you were using in memory at any given time. This seems to be being lost in the Open Source community, where everyone wants to implement their own version of everything (with one or two exceptions like gcc, although that forked for a while).

Re:excellent!!

[bunratty]

This amount of modularity meant that you could build very complicated programs out of shell scripts, and only have the parts you were using in memory at any given time.

This philosophy works in some situations, but not all. A few months ago I helped my wife convert a shell script she was trying to use into Perl, and as a result it ran orders of magnitude faster. The original shell script was repeatedly reading a 1.5 GB file but my Perl program was able to read it only once.

The Mozilla/Phoenix/Minotaur approach gives the best of both worlds. If you want the monolithic version of the suite, you can use Mozilla. If you want the modular version, you can use Phoenix and Minotaur.

Re:excellent!!

[owenb]

emacs [...] is a good text editor, but that's all

You're serious? Emacs does a lot more than text editing, so I'm told. I can't stand it myself (Vim forever!).

gcc is a good C compiler

gcc (the compiler collection not the executable) is also a fortran compiler, a c++ compiler, an objective c compiler ...

...But yes, actually I agree with your general point. It's better to do one thing well. It really annoys me, for example when Mozilla mail freezes just because the browser component is cranking away at some dodgy javascript.

Re:excellent!!

[Richy_T]

You mean you haven't tried

gcc -O2 -Wall -Read_Email foo.cpp

yet?

Rich

Re:excellent!!

[garglblaster]

well, actually emacs was one of those "kitchen sink" applications I had in mind in my original post..

:^)

Re:excellent!!

[ianezz]

Vim / emacs (Please delete as appropriate) is a good text editor, but that's all.

Emacs? You know, if people used to say "Emacs is a nice OS, but I prefer UNIX", there is a reason. :-)

GNU Emacs / XEmacs is to text editors what Mozilla is to web browsers (well, to "mere HTML renderers with some buttons attached" would be more appropriate). I'd go further and say that Mozilla is definitively the 21st century Emacs (a proof? Komodo).

Re:excellent!!

[dhovis]

I thought the joke was:

"Emacs would be a nice OS, if only it had a decent text editor."

Re:excellent!!

[Anonymous Coward]

you must have a cool wife

Re:excellent!!

[Anonymous Coward]

> emacs ... is a good text editor, but that's all

You mean it edits text too? Wow, they put in everything! :)

Chrome

[Matrix2110]

As long as I have a decent GUI rather then an obtuse CLI, I am all for it.

Re:Chrome

[kasperd]

As long as I have a decent GUI rather then an obtuse CLI

In fact what I would like to see is a mailer split into a CLI backend and a GUI frontend. The CLI backend should do the actual sending and retrieval of messages as well as managing folders. The GUI should be just that, it shouldn't store any data on its own, and all communication it should ever do would be with the backend and the Xserver. Configuration should to as large an extent as possible be stored by the backend, but a few options need to be stored by the GUI most notably the command to invoke the backend. It would be interesting that this command could possibly include a call of ssh to run backend and frontend on different computers (with display possibly being on a third computer). The communicaiton between frontend and backend should be kept as simple as possible. If I execute the backend directly from my commandline, I want a usable interface (at least for the average geek), but I don't want no fancy features like commandline editing or message editing. I want to use the exact same interface being provided as would have been to the frontend, and this should be as easy to use as telnet to an SMTP server would.

Re:Chrome

[lewp]

I just use mutt for the CLI, Mulberry for the GUI, and IMP when, for some strange reason, I need webmail. If you use IMAP everything stays in one happy place, and procmail+bogofilter handles sorting the mail before any of the MUAs touch it. A cron job updates bogofilter's lists periodically from the separate Trash boxes all three clients use, and they all use the same remote draft, saved, and record mailboxes.

I can think of a couple sort-of-good reasons for a mail client to take your approach, but for me at least it just makes more sense to have a couple different programs that are the very best at exactly what they're designed to do.

Re:Chrome

[arvindn]

It would be interesting that this command could possibly include a call of ssh to run backend and frontend on different computers

Isn't that exactly what IMAP is for?

Re:Chrome

[Lumpish Scholar]

... what I would like to see is a mailer split into a CLI backend and a GUI frontend....

Z-Mail was a (commercial) GUI wrapper around the (free) mush command-line mail agent. It was a great combination.

Re:Chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think this is a good idea. There's plenty of good CLI clients out there. Splitting this one into two new seperate ones would yield a slower app, and one of their primary targets is speed.

Too much frontend/backend stuff is what has gotten Unix systems a bit slow as far as user interfaces go (they're darned fast at straight I/O stuff). An app should for the most part try to do what it needs, not be running 7 other programs while piping and redirecting output and such. Having those programs there for the user to use them is great. Having other programs use them inheritly is slow.

Re:Chrome

[kasperd]

Splitting this one into two new seperate ones would yield a slower app

It would not necesarilly be slower. If the interface is not completely braindead there would not be need for much communication, and the communication between backend and frontend should certainly be far less than the communication between frontend and X.

The major work to do is not going to be communication between backend and frontend, but rather the management of folders and the actual producing of graphics. Both of which are tasks that has to be done anyway and is not going to be slowed down by the split. In fact since each of the two applications would be smaller, I believe more focus would be given to the performance of either. I can imagine I would personally look into the backend while I'm not that interested in development of the frontend. If they were too integrated with each other, I guess I might give up before even trying to get into it.

I think netscape is a perfect example of an application where the two parts in a single program doesn't give lightning speed. In fact management of folders is horribly slow. Had netscape been split into two applications like my suggestion, I'd have given the backend an amount of work a long time ago. Some of the advantages of the split would be that either part could be replaced with something faster without having to switch the other. I could have replaced the slow backend and kept the UI I liked. Another advantage is that it would be easy to switch GUI. You don't have to care about migrating mails, preferences, profiles, etc. since that would all be in the backend. Just connect an alternate frontend to your backend. You could even switch back and forth as you like.

is mozilla dying for phoenix/minotaur?

[protomala]

It's just me or less bloated software based on mozilla are making more sucess than the original? I use phoenix and it's much better thank mozilla IMHO, I don't see why to use something much more slow with not much more functions.

Re:is mozilla dying for phoenix/minotaur?

[JanneM]

No. This is what Mozilla is supposed to achieve. Mozilla really is a platform for doing browser-related stuff; the browser itself is more of a technology demonstration than an end-user app, which is why it conatins so much stuff. Projects like Phoenix/minotaur/Galeon is intended to grow out of Mozilla just like it has.

Re:is mozilla dying for phoenix/minotaur?

[Carewolf]

You mean like Itanium was not supposed to be a real processor or even fast, but just a demonstration of IA64 before the "real" Itanium II processor appears?

Bullshit.. But a really creative reintrepetation.

Re:is mozilla dying for phoenix/minotaur?

[Pejorian]

If projects like Phoenix, which are mainly about reducing bloat by making Mozilla smaller and faster, are supposed to grow out of Mozilla, doesn't it seem logical that the Mozilla team should be doing it themselves?

Why can't they set up the installer to have a custom / advanced mode that lets the user pick and choose how many features to add, so that Mozilla can either be a tiny, Phoenix-like browser or a bloated IE-like browser, depending on what the user wants?

I really like Mozilla, but I have to agree with the Phoenix guys that it is time for a diet...

Re:is mozilla dying for phoenix/minotaur?

[DrXym]

Sorry, but this isn't true. Mozilla isn't just a 'technology demonstration', it is a full blown, fully featured advanced browser, most determinedly aimed at end (albeit power) users. If it were just a demonstration, it would be mess of debug menus and QA tests rather than the highly polished browser, mail / news, JS debugger, editor suite that it is.

The XUL cross-platform effort is part of that development and Mozilla makes for excellent proof that it works. But that is not saying the same thing at all.

Re:is mozilla dying for phoenix/minotaur?

[Jugalator]

You mean like Itanium was not supposed to be a real processor or even fast, but just a demonstration of IA64 before the "real" Itanium II processor appears?

Bullshit.. But a really creative reintrepetation.

This comparison is flawed because Phoenix or Minotaur aren't successors to Mozilla or Mozilla Mail.

Re:is mozilla dying for phoenix/minotaur?

[Anonymous Coward]

If projects like Phoenix, which are mainly about reducing bloat by making Mozilla smaller and faster, are supposed to grow out of Mozilla, doesn't it seem logical that the Mozilla team should be doing it themselves?

Phoenix is an official mozilla.org project, as is Minotaur. All of the Phoenix developers either still work on or have worked on Mozilla.

Re:is mozilla dying for phoenix/minotaur?

[The Lynxpro]

I love Phoenix (when's the next release?) with the exception of it not using a standard install program and I can't seem to get the Shockwave plug-in to recognize it. I love the fact that you can select it to block all pop-up ads and then selectively enable individual web pages to allow for pop ups (say if you want to run AIM in a Java window)...whereas in the current release of Mozilla, you have to add individual webpages to the pop up ad block... totally bass ackwards...

Re:is mozilla dying for phoenix/minotaur?

[obotics]

I agree. Phoenix is a great browser. The milestone releases are bug driven, not date driven. In other words, the milestone will not be released until all of the bugs targeted for that release are fixed. To see the list of open bugs targeted for 0.6, see http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?product=Ph oenix&target_milestone=Phoenix0.6&bug_status=NEW&b ug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED. Currently, the Phoenix developers are estimating an April release.

It's made for the users, isn't it?

[termos]

we believe we can make some dents in the overall footprint and performance of the mail client by removing components and chrome we don't need
We don't need? Is it the developer who decide what the end-users needs are?

Re:It's made for the users, isn't it?

[JohanV]

First, it is not made for the users. It is made for the developers that want a nice email client for themselves and graceously let us use that email client too.
Second, after the choices have been made for what functionality is going to be in it, everything that is in the codebase that supports unwanted functionality is indeed unneeded code.

And if you don't like it, fork.

Re:It's made for the users, isn't it?

[Richard_at_work]

Why not start with very little and build up the features as people request them? I think thats what they are doing, as this is pretty much what phoenix did, and it works. Try it some time.

Re:It's made for the users, isn't it?

[UberLord]

Of course it is. You may need a flight-simulator easter egg in it, but I'll be damned if I'll put it in for you!

Re:It's made for the users, isn't it?

[Surak]

We don't need? Is it the developer who decide what the end-users needs are?

In the case of many open source projects, yes. Read esr's account of how fetchmail was created in catb, and you'll see that in most open source projects, the intended target end-users are the developers.

Re:It's made for the users, isn't it?

[arvindn]

You're trolling right? You've gotten modded up, so I'll reply anyway.

This isn't about removing features. They are talking about removing those parts of the mozilla code from minotaur that it doesn't make use of at all. End users won't notice anything (except the smaller size of course). Minotaur is just a mail client. So obviously it won't need the navigator/irc etc. parts of mozilla. Besides there would be some libraries that are not used by the mailnews component. So those can go too. Get it? BTW, You can learn more about how mozilla is organized here.

Re:It's made for the users, isn't it?

[Masem]

Pulling components that the average linux joe may not use regularly and yet retaining a nice plugable extention interface, as was done with Phoenix (built on Mozilla's extentions, but also such that Mozilla features removed in the main Phoenix binary could be recovered with extentions), is a better way to approach the building of applications instead of building monolithic applications that can do everything out of the box *cough*emacs*cough*. And if it's built on the same cross-platform ease as opposed to several other OSS email clients, I'd love that, as I typically interface my linux box from Windows, and while mutt works, I really am beginning to need something graphical to handle my mail better.

Re:It's made for the users, isn't it?

[mshiltonj]

Is it the developer who decide what the end-users needs are?

developer == end-user

Re:It's made for the users, isn't it?

[FooBarWidget]

And is it one end user who decides what other end users' needs are?

Re:It's made for the users, isn't it?

[y4h0oo]

don't they still have to keep the html renderer (Gecko) if they want to render emails that contain html ?

Re:It's made for the users, isn't it?

[ubernostrum]

don't they still have to keep the html renderer (Gecko) if they want to render emails that contain html ?

Yes, but the point is they don't need to keep the IRC client, the WYSIWYG HTML editor, the Web browser interface, the JavaScript debugger, the DOM Inspector . . .

Gecko is embeddable, and Gecko != browser.

Re:It's made for the users, isn't it?

[y4h0oo]

Yes, but the point is they don't need to keep the IRC client, the WYSIWYG HTML editor, the Web browser interface, the JavaScript debugger, the DOM Inspector since you can chose not to install all of the above, I still don't get it...

Re:It's made for the users, isn't it?

[ubernostrum]

since you can chose not to install all of the above, I still don't get it...

Observe this sad fact: the Mail application cannot be installed on its own. In order to have any particular part of Mozilla, you must install at least the browser. So if you just want the mail client, you're up the creek with no paddle until Minotaur gets a stable release out the door; the whole point of projects like Phoenix and Minotaur is that you can get just the app you want, without the entire Mozilla suite and backend code, which is a nice thing for some of us . . .

The other way too

[DeadSea]

Now if they could go the other way and make mailto links in mozilla and phoenix open my preferred mail reader. (bugzill bug #11459).

It's most probably not just you...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always been told Mozilla is a development suite of tools and technologies. Granted, lots of people still use it as if it were for end-users, which is fine (I admit I do too). But as we have seen since Mozilla hit the 1.0 milestone, more innovating has happened as the core technologies have been used for all sorts of things.

Phoenix uses the Gecko render core for browsing whilst largely trying to ignore the XUL chrome, Minotaur going for a standalone mail client (but which will still use the Gecko core for rendering fancy mail), and so on.

Each to their own, I know I like Mozilla (browser only). Haven't tried Phoenix yet, but until the GRE is in place, and widely used, I probably won't be trying out Phoenix yet. Leaving Mozilla open 24/7 means I don't have any real performance hits.

Just my $0.02.

Another wheel to re-invent?

[varjag]

Currently, mozilla -mail is not a good option for these users because link clicks and attachments end up going to mozilla browser windows instead of the preferred browser.

And that's it?

Wouldn't it be easier to add an option to specify preferred browser into Mozilla Mail preferences? I am not ranting - everyone is free to do whatever they want - but right now, when Mozilla Mail is finally stable and packed with some really good features, and at the same time many FS/OSS projects starve from lack of developers, what is the point of writing yet another MUA?

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[m1chael]

one mua is enough for everybody. :)

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[PhilHibbs]

So what other FS/OSS project would you expect Netscape employees to work on? Even if these were independent spare-timers, it'd still be their choice what FS/OSS project they work on. Flaming them for choosing to develop a bloat-free stand-alone mail client is simply bad form.

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[gr1dl0ck]

As specified on their page, "Our intended customer is someone who uses Phoenix (or another non mozilla.exe browser)". I use Pheonix on both linux and windows. In linux, I use Kmail but in windows, I dread having to use Outlook Express so I'm almost forced to have a copy of Mozilla installed, just to use the mail. And it's always a bummer to wait for that monster to load just to check my mail.

If speedups from Mozilla Mail -> Minotaur are as good as Mozilla -> Phoenix, then I think this is a good thing.

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[barberio]

Yay for people who *dont read the link in the article*. This is not reinventing the wheel. Its taking two of the wheels from an SUV, and using them on a bicycle.

Minotaur is Mozilla Mail, just without the rest of Mozilla. And as I curently use Mozilla Mail for its spam filters, but have to use IE for work reasons, this will be something I will use.

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[mjh]

at the same time many FS/OSS projects starve from lack of developers, what is the point of writing yet another MUA?

Because they've got an itch that they want to scratch. It's there itch. They can scratch it however they like. As soon as you put them on your payroll then you can complain about misappropriated effort. As it is, they don't work for you. Until they do, it's really rather intrusive of you to complain about what they do with their own time.

$.02

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[varjag]

As it is, they don't work for you.

I am not complaining, nor do I ask them to work for me, as I explicitly mentioned. I was just wondering on rationale of the fork, may I?

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[Ovidius]

Wouldn't it be easier to add an option to specify preferred browser into Mozilla Mail preferences?

Or just the system default browser. It's Bug #108455.

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[matt_morgan]

Here at work we have an IMAP mail server. We make people use IE as a browser, because we don't have the staff to support two of anything, and IE is pretty much always there (a battle we choose not to fight). But it would be great to have a really good, really compliant IMAP mail client instead of Eudora (which doesn't really get IMAP, still). I would have users use Mozilla for mail if the browser didn't have to be included, so this could be great for us.

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[Malcontent]

"And that's it?"

No. It also supports imap over SSL. To me that's the main feature but I also like it for lots of other reasons.

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[joib]

Yes. You can get it here. :)

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what, mozilla is good at reinventing the wheel. Look at what they did for browsers, they made a damn good browser. If that is reinventing the wheel then i'm all for it.

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[koreth]

I'm skeptical, though, that there'll be much speedup from Mozilla -> Phoenix+Minotaur -- quite likely it'll be slower, since you'll spend time loading a lot of duplicate code. Mozilla Mail already fires up pretty darned fast if you've already launched a Mozilla browser window, and vice versa. If speed is the only reason you're using Phoenix this may not be much help. (And if it is, then that says there may be a problem with Mozilla other than simple code bloat.)

To me, there are two beneficiaries from this sort of project: people who use a browser other than Mozilla (IE, Opera, Phoenix for some reason other than simply launch speed, etc.) and want to use the Mozilla mail client, and people who want to experiment with the mail code. They'll get a less complex development environment with a shorter learning curve once all the non-mail-related code is trimmed out.

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[Jord]

Considering this is another project just like Phoenix it is unfair and inaccurate to call it a fork. Phoenix, et al. are not forks of Mozilla neither is this.

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[mjh]

Why do they need to provide any answer other than "because I want to"?

I can't give you permission to, nor forbid you from asking your question. That's up to you. But I think it's rude and intrusive. Your question implies, I think, that they need to justify what they're doing, instead of contributing to other projects that "starve from lack of developers". If some other project, that they're not intrested in, is starving for developers, that is not their problem.

Now, I could, of course, be misinterpreting what you're asking. You might simply be trying to understand what other features they plan. I don't see anything rude about that question. If that's what you're asking, my apologies. But your question was easily confused because you mentioned starving projects. You don't need to couch a request for a description of features on starving projects.

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean here.

Re:Another wheel to re-invent?

[rickmoen]

m1chael wrote:

one mua is enough for everybody.

Why have one when you can have 115?

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

All we need now is some sort of news client.

[Gannoc]

We'll call it "Hydra" or something because of some obscure reference to heads/threads.

Then, after several thousand man-hours of work, we'll finally have the feature set of mozilla available to us.... BUT IN THREE SEPARATE BINARIES.

Sweet!!!

Re:All we need now is some sort of news client.

[Telex4]

You miss the point. Mozilla isn't meant to be an end-user browser, at least not in the long term. It's a platform from which people can develop their own Internet applications (web primarily, also email, IRC, web design). Mozilla provides a really nice HTML renderer (Gecko), a really nice GUI standard (XUL), and lots of other code, to let people go out and make their own applications.

If you try out Phoenix/Galeon/etc. you'll notice they all have many features that Mozilla doesn't, and have all chosen to specialise in oe particular area. GNOME users will love Galeon, users of slow machines will love Phoenix, and so on.

That there is now a fork in the mail project is a testament to the great success of Mozilla. It will have really suceeded when we have several different mail clients, web browsers, chat clients and web designers all branched from Mozilla, all filling a different niche, all compatable with one another, and all sharing excellent new features and ideas.

Re:All we need now is some sort of news client.

[Surak]

users of slow machines will love Phoenix, and so on.

No, not just slow machines... aside from being lightweight, Phoenix has features that Moz just don't have, such as user-customizable toolbars, the ability to open a whole folder of bookmarks in separate tabs in one click, a cleaner user interface, and pop-ups disabled by default

Re:All we need now is some sort of news client.

[Single GNU Theory]

Phoenix has features that Moz just don't have... the ability to open a whole folder of bookmarks in separate tabs in one click

Perhaps I misunderstand what you're saying, but Mozilla does, in fact, have this feature. I use it every day to open all of the web comics I want to read.

One thing I don't like about Mozilla's tabbed browsing is that there is only one close widget. I prefer Galeon's take, where I can have a close widget on each tab.

With pop-up blocking, Mozilla 1.3 grants finer control, with the ability to block pop-ups from specific sites. This grants me a little more leeway between no pop-ups and being able to use some UBB forums with all the JavaScript bells and whistles turned on.

Re:All we need now is some sort of news client.

[Surak]

Perhaps I misunderstand what you're saying, but Mozilla does, in fact, have this feature. I use it every day to open all of the web comics I want to read.

The last Moz build I used that wasn't phoenix was 1.2a... so I may be a bit behind here... ;)

One thing I don't like about Mozilla's tabbed browsing is that there is only one close widget. I prefer Galeon's take, where I can have a close widget on each tab.

I both agree and disagree...I like having individual close widgets on each tab because it's convenient and more intutitive, but at the same time I don't appreciate the extra space they eat up, which causes the titles in the tabs to be truncated even worse.

With pop-up blocking, Mozilla 1.3 grants finer control, with the ability to block pop-ups from specific sites. This grants me a little more leeway between no pop-ups and being able to use some UBB forums with all the JavaScript bells and whistles turned on.

That's in Phoenix, too. You can define which sites are allowed to popup and which ones aren't.

Re:All we need now is some sort of news client.

[mkoenecke]

Assuming you've got a three-button mouse, you don't *need* a close widget on each tab. A middle (or wheel) click on the tab closes it. Yet another little nifty feature I didn't know about myself until a few months ago.

Re:All we need now is some sort of news client.

[Single GNU Theory]

Hot damn! Thanks!

Now, do you know a way to make hitting the page-down button scroll a whole screenful, as when clicking in the empty part of the scrollbar?

That would make me a happy browser indeed. :-)

Re:All we need now is some sort of news client.

[tabby]

>>Mozilla isn't meant to be an end-user browser,

Which is exactly why the *Mozilla Project* should be the *Gecko Project*. That should be all they are working on. The XUL thing is molasses coating.

They should focus on the renderer and the interface people should be documenting the API and providing simple examples with various toolkits on various platforms on how to implement Gecko in different ways.

Maybe with all the work that went into XUL going into documentation and support we would have as many native win32 and OSX clients as Linux clients that embed mozilla.

Re:All we need now is some sort of news client.

[mixmasta]

middle click the tab, couldn't be faster, and no space wasted.

Re:All we need now is some sort of news client.

[mkoenecke]

Sorry; I'm using Mozilla 1.3 under Windows 2000, and that's the way the page down keyboard button behaves already. I don't know why it would work differently under Linux.

Re:All we need now is some sort of news client.

[Single GNU Theory]

I use Mozilla 1.3 and IE on W2K, and both Galeon and Mozilla on Linux.

IE, Galeon, and Mozilla all scroll by a slightly different amount if you hit the page down key vs. if you click "one page" down on the scrollbar. If you hit page down, you get the last couple lines at the top of the page which were just on the bottom of the previous screenful. Clicking in the scrollbar gets you a whole new screenful.

The last browser I used which did it the way I like was Netscape 4.7x.

I probably wouldn't have even noticed except I got used to Netscape's method.

Re:Togetherness.

[Kircle]

In addition, by focusing solely on stand alone mail, we believe we can make some dents in the overall footprint and performance of the mail client by removing components and chrome we don't need."

I think they're suggesting that even if you have, say, Phoenix and Minotaur running at the same time, it would still outperform Mozilla.

moz mail client bugs

[throwaway18]

I love moz as a browser. I rarely mention the mail client bugs because I should go and look at the source and help instead of complaining. There are lots of good clients around and my personal experiance is that a text only email client is better, firstly because of security holes (mainly thinking of outlook) and secondly because loading images in spam email shows up in the logs on the spammers web server, telling them the email has been read and resulting in lots more spam.

It will be a very good thing if minotaur fix the mozilla mail client and get the fixes back into the mozilla tree.

bugzilla.mozilla.org lists bugs where the mail client fails to retreive mail which have been open for years. I stopped using mozilla as a mail client due to bug 58301 which has been open for nearly three years.

Re:moz mail client bugs

[terrab0t]

Mozilla actually has an option to disable loading of remote images in mail and newsgroup messages.

For those using Mozilla Mail, go to preferences/privacy & security/images. The option is right there.

With that said, I will also switch to a lighter possibly more bug free re-write of Mozilla Mail so long as it has the SPAM filter Mozilla Mail currently does. In the meantime, I will read that bug referred you referred to, but it will have to be pretty nasty to tear me away from this SPAM eating demon.

Re:moz mail client bugs

[ncfoster]

The ideal option to me would be to have selective loading of remote images, whether based on "trusted" senders or selective verification that you do want to load the image components of an e-mail. This would be especially useful if a decent anti-spam filter was in the pipe before the decision of whether or not to load the images. Does any mail client currently offer this?

Stability

[Malc]

I can't believe they didn't mention the feature that I find most important: separation of the mail and browser in to separate processes. This improves stability and reliability. I don't want some misbehaving browser plugin causing a browser crash that also brings down the email client and message I've been editing for the last 30 minutes. I see process separation is on the Mozilla team's TODO list, but I suspect this will achieve that goal *long* before they do.

Re:Stability

[egghat]

Yepp. Dito for me.

Especially when you launch the lean browser (Phoenix) *and* the lean e-mail client (Minotaur) the savings in RAM and startup time compared to the great big beast Mozilla won't be that big. (I haven't verified my claims so far).

Bye egghat.

Re:Stability

[barzok]

But how will that play once Phoenix & Minotaur are both using the GRE (Gecko Runtime Environment). Sure, if the UI bombs in Minotaur Phooenix will probably be OK, but if the GRE takes a dump, you're no better off than you were with Mozilla.

Re:Stability

[Malc]

What do you mean by "the GRE takes a dump"? Crashes? It should be okay, unless it's running out-of-proc and shared by both processes. Or, corrupts the config/profile files? Well, aren't they also trying to have local profiles, or something? Personally I would like to see a config/profile service/daemon that runs all the time and is available for any Mozilla component. That will improve performance and decrease the chance of a UI crash corrupting the files.

Re:Re-inventing the wheel, and doing it with XUL

[Tanaka]

Well, I haven't yet found an e-mail client I am totally happy with yet. Shamefully, Outlook Express handles IMAP better than any Linux IMAP client I have used so far. Evolution comes close as a good overall e-mail program, but it has some very annoying GUI problems, like the tedious process of viewing the header/source of just one e-mail for example.

What's the big deal with IMAP

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still using SMTP. IMAP still hasn't convinced me it's a better mail protocol. Aside from the ability to download messages selectively, IMAP just seems way over hyped.

Re:What's the big deal with IMAP

[AveryT]

IMAP is an alternative to POP, not to SMTP. You still use SMTP to send mail even when you are using IMAP to read mail.

Re:What's the big deal with IMAP

[Anonymous Coward]

The main advantage of IMAP is that all of your emails are stored remotely and merely synchronized with any client machines you use. This means your home desktop, your laptop, and your ISP's webmail will have the same messages. This also means you don't have to worry about losing emails when you format your hard drive as they are all stored on the server.

Re:What's the big deal with IMAP

[nolife]

Really?

As others have stated already... IMAP is a much better cross platform solution, and with procmail and fetchmail, it gets even better.

Not to be redundant but I'll give you more advantages.

You can use ANY IMAP capable client on any platform with out having to import, export, or convert any messages. Pine, Evolution, Mahogany, Outlook Express, Pegasus, Opera 7.x, Mozilla, Web based like IMP, SquirrelMail and many others.
The mail, all folders, and all attachments are easy to backup and restore by tar.gz'ing your mail directory.
You can access all of your mail from ANY internet computer (depending on your home network setup) with any IMAP client. This can be secured via SSH or SSL.
Works seemlessly with procmail to direct your mail into specific folders and for spam filtering. These filters are not client specific so there is no need to create rules for every mail client that you plan on using.

Fetchmail to get your mail from other IMAP and POP (and others) servers (can use SSH and SSL also).
Anyone that has a cross platform need, does not want to constantly import and convert mail formats, and only wants to deal with filters one time should be using this trio.

Search Google for any of these for mounds of configuration and installation tips.

Re:What's the big deal with IMAP

[Richy_T]

Agree absolutely. I moved to this system about a year ago now and couldn't be happier. Fire up my web client and the e-mail has already been downloaded to the local network and filtered. Wife using the computer? Go upstairs and use another. Away from home? No problem. Course, this is nothing that couldn't be done with a CLI but...

Though I could be happier actually. My e-mail client of choice (Eudora) is somewhat sucky when it comes to imap. I am tempted to write an e-mail client that is absolutely stripped to the bone for IMAP access. It seems all the others out there are prone to creeping featuritis.

Rich

Re:What's the big deal with IMAP

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately the IMAP support in Mozilla is quite slow :-(

This is stated in quite a number of different bugs but nothing is being done about it. Netscape 4.x is much, much faster!

Re:What's the big deal with IMAP

[kubalaa]

"stripped" IMAP client -- I could definitely go for that too; though, I think it should also have NNTP. I suppose I want pine, but modernized.

Re:What's the big deal with IMAP

[Richy_T]

Hmm. Maybe allow for plugins (such as NNTP). But that's starting to get feature creep too.

Haveta think about it.

Rich

Oh great.........

[Anonymous Coward]

I've just converted all my mozilla mail to outlook because I'm sick of waiting for this bloated lizard to load just to check email (I use phoenix as my default browser).

I wonder if it is possible to convert to this minotaur from outlook?

Re:Oh great.........

[AveryT]

Good luck. Once your mail is in Microsoft's proprietary format, you can forget about getting it back out. Changing to a non-Microsoft mail client is frowned upon by the folks at Redmond.

Re:Oh great.........

[Anonymous Coward]

hrm, once it's in microsoft's format you could
1. drag it back to an imap server
2. use your favorite jet capable application to manipulate the mail -database-
3. help someone add jet support to mozilla mail

note that mozilla now supports importing cookies from ie, this was something netscape added (for some corporate reason), so it wouldn't be surprising if netscape at some point decided that transitioning people from Jet to mozilla would allow them to transition people from MSN to AOL.

I don't know

[lewp]

A mail client is one thing I never find myself wanting for on any platform. Even if you don't like Mozilla's bundled client (I don't), Windows users have The Bat!, Eudora, and Mulberry. I even heard Microsoft makes a mail client or two. Mac users have Eudora and Mulberry plus Mail.app and another Microsoft client. UNIX/Linux users get the always-fabulous mutt as well as Evolution and KMail. Oh, and Mulberry :D. It seems somewhere in that mess you could find one or two that meet your needs. I know I did, one for each platform. And I'm really picky about my e-mail...

That said, I did just switch to Phoenix from Mozilla because I like its interface slightly better. It may load a little faster too, but with my main client machines all being 1.1ghz or better and the same browser instance being open most of the day I don't really notice.

I don't use Mozilla's mail client, so I suppose there could be features missing or a stand-aloneness that some people want. In that case, go for it.

I just hope this doesn't take someone's time who would be working on GNOME, KDE, OO.org, or a decent replacement for Macromedia Freehand/Adobe Illustrator :).

Re:I don't know

[bogie]

All your points make sense but this one

"I just hope this doesn't take someone's time who would be working on GNOME, KDE, OO.org, or a decent replacement for Macromedia Freehand/Adobe Illustrator :)."

Remember that's not the way open source works and is actually a huge stereotype. People work on what interests them and just because they work on project doesn't mean they'd be interested in working on another project even if it were similar. Open Source developers are not just one big pool of resources that can be pushed around where popular opinion thinks they should go.

Re:I don't know

[Zathrus]

A mail client is one thing I never find myself wanting for on any platform

Wish I could say that.

if you don't like Mozilla's bundled client

What if you just don't want to use Mozilla, but would like to use the mail part? Oh... you can't...

Windows users have The Bat!, Eudora, and Mulberry

All of which are commercial and/or ad-ware, or (in the case of Eudora) repeatedly associated with allegations of malware.

I considered using The Bat! at one point... even downloaded it to try. And then my computer's clock got screwed up and The Bat! went into expired mode. And wouldn't come out. No way for me to access the email it had already retrieved (and it happily went off and tried to retrieve more email... and THEN wouldn't let me access it). Emails to the company were ignored as well.

I used to use Eudora, but the recent versions are bloated, filled with ads (unless you register), and they keep having allegations of spyware/malware. Even without the ads or spy/malware the bloat stinks.

I even heard Microsoft makes a mail client or two

Which are repeatedly filled with security problems... and lack features like not displaying embedded HTML graphics unless requested - essential with modern spam methods.

There are, of course, a host of other MUA's for Windows. I've tried most of them. Most stink. The one I'm currently using is ok, but it's dead - no future development. And there are some areas that could certainly use improvement.

Re:I don't know

[slothdog]

Windows users have The Bat!, Eudora, and Mulberry. I even heard Microsoft makes a mail client or two.

None of which are free, with the exception of Outlook Express. (If you want Eudora's free version, you have the choice of limited features or banner ads.)

As someone who switched to Phoenix because I couldn't stand Mozilla's bloat, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what Minotaur has to offer.

Re:I don't know

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

Remember that's not the way open source works and is actually a huge stereotype. People work on what interests them and just because they work on project doesn't mean they'd be interested in working on another project even if it were similar. Open Source developers are not just one big pool of resources that can be pushed around where popular opinion thinks they should go.

Good point, unless you want to pay me. If you want to pay me, I'd be happy to hack on OO or a Freehand/Illustrator clone for you. I know a lot of talented coders who'd do it for a rather minimal salary (e.g. 40K/year plus health benefits) just for the chance to work on open-source full time.

But if I'm working on open-source in my spare time, for free, then I'm going to work on whatever I feel like, thank you.

Re:I don't know

[ProfKyne]

Let me guess... you use... Mulberry?

Re:I don't know

[captaineo]

The problem is that most users need to satisfy a checklist of requirements for their mail software, and not all mail software has all the features people need. e.g. some people demand POP3 support, or local mbox support, or local maildir support, or IMAP support, or SSL, or Unicode, etc. Most mail software satisfies some but few or none satisfy all of these requirements.

Myself, I want IMAP, Unicode, in-line URL and image viewers, and hopefully maildir. I can't use the majority of mail software because it doesn't support IMAP or Unicode well. Mozilla mail does almost all I need, but its IMAP interface is lacking (it feels a lot slower than Outlook Express for some reason).

Re:I don't know

[taugenix]

I've been using Phoenix with Pegasus Mail (free) on my winders machine for quite a while without any problems, and they work together so well it's like they were made for each other.

Re:I don't know

[lewp]

Indeed. You're right. I'm not trying to imply that the OSS community has to work on anything more than anything else. I'm happy for the free stuff I get and the huge bodies of source code I learn from, no matter what it is.

I'm also not trying to imply that some OSS projects are more important than others (intrinsically; some certainly are to me).

But, just as much as this statement is true:

People work on what interests them and just because they work on project doesn't mean they'd be interested in working on another project even if it were similar.

I feel that this is true:

People who work on this project might (though it's certainly not guaranteed), were it not around, work on one of the other projects that I mentioned.

It is, certainly, their prerogative to do so. I'm ecstatic they're doing anything at all. But, personally, for the sake of my own selfishness, I hope this doesn't happen.

Re:I don't know

[nalfeshnee]

Just a few extra observations to your excellent post (your comment "There are, of course, a host of other MUA's for Windows. I've tried most of them. Most stink" is DEAD-on), from the perspective of the IT Head of a small online studio (= me, team = 30 people)

Eudora, although relatively customise-friendly (good support for LDAP, signatures, can be installed on networked drives, etc.) is not fantastically stable, and whilst *allegedly* conforming to MBOX standards, actually saves its HTML messages in a format which, e.g. Mozilla cannot interpret. So switching from Eudora to Mozilla is .. fun (conversion path Eudora -> Outlook Express -> Mozilla works, here using OE only as a conversion tool, funnily enough). We have used here however, since it doesn't attract viruses and has the network, LDAP and signature support mentioned above.

Mulberry does not support signatures which can be read from an external file. For someone like myself, who would like to globally set a signature for everyone in the company, this is an instant no-no for Mulberry. Even though Mulberry is very good with IMAP.

The! Bat! has dodgy IMAP support. Maybe better since I last looked.

Plus: all clients cost money, and/or are not available in German, which is the language used in my company. For me, this is an important point: I know Slashdot is no commercial forum, but consider shelling-out 30 x $1200 for The Bat or $900 for Mulberry. With that money I can buy a decent server anti-virus for our Mail Server (RAV for example) and standardise on Outlook Express. OK, one stills takes risks with OE, but it puts it in perspective. And -- one should not forget that some people do NOT speak English as a native language, and being unable to purchase Mulberry with German interface is ALSO, for me, a reason why I wouldn't buy it.

Mozilla, in comparison, costs nothing, supports IMAP OK, is available in German, and what's more, has a fantastic anti-spam tool, which, in daily usage over the last few weeks, traps 95% of all spam I receive.

Which all boils down to: if Minotaur is based on Mozilla and is fast and feature-rich, I'll be the first in line to test it out.

the microsoft way

[Anonymous Coward]

there is integration, then embedding. This works both laterally with other applications and vertically with differing layers of libraries, interfaces (common) or just sharing data and messages. I don't mind having a suite that does many things just as long as I can seamlessly switch out certain major functionality areas with other applications. This means to do what others here have mentioned and institute an abstracted system of interapplication communication. The result is that any ol mail client can call any ol browser and vice versa (that is the important part here, that of two way messaging).

Another aspect that is sadly overlooked by many is that of choice of interface. I really appreciate those applications and applets that which provide either the library with a complete API (meaning it is not dumbed down relative to the normal application) and/or provide just an API or other more abstracted method of interfacing to expose the functionality. It is more than a little frustrating to see "We have made this application that does X, Y and Z written in [GTK, win32, XUL, LMNOP]..." What I would like to see is "we have made this application that does X, Y and Z with a fully modular interface design that we include a reference GTK, CLI and Motif interface. Please see our website for our WELL DOCUMENTED API refrence which btw is complete and well organized following professional software engineering principles." In the absence of a well known or accepted API methodology then I admit it can be difficult to follow the defacto standard sometimes. Perhaps that instead of constantly having people reinvent the wheel and drain other needed projects of talent and resources, an effort to create a standardized "meta language" or guidelines for external API program references, user interface elements and dependancy/feature management could be implemented.

Why? Oh Why? WHY?!

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is wrong with these people? Why can't these developers just work on the fucking project and improve it and make it better without having to rewrite into yet another application?

I had the exact same feeling when I saw the Phoenix announcement: WHY?!

I used to work for Netscape and I know what I am talking about. Mozilla was designed as a modular app. That's what XPCOM in there is for. So the right thing to do when you start bloating is refactor: take a big component, break it into nice modules and then let the USER decide which modules to install on his machine.

This way, it's like the user composes the app out of modules, so he can install there a Mozilla, a Phoenix or a Minotaur.

I use Mozilla Mail and I know COUNTLESS bugs and problems that need to be fixed and addressed. The only reason they are not is that there are not enough engineers to do that work.

So why is engineering effort spent on these spin-offs instead of spending it on the mail product and providing the needed requirements THERE?

Hey Minotaur Team, why? Hey Scott McGregor, is the ego trip more important than your contribution to Mozilla? Does it feel better to have your own pet-project than to add your (anonymous) contribution to the mail codebase?

That was always the problem at Netscape/Mozilla: EGO. Look at JWZ, RickG, KippH, Adreesen. Big mouths, big plans, but falling short on delivery.

I don't even KNOW who works in the IE dept. at MS and they kicked Netscape's ass all the way to AOL.

Shame on you!

Re:Why? Oh Why? WHY?!

[horza]

I had the exact same feeling when I saw the Phoenix announcement: WHY?!

I think you've just destroyed all your own arguments. Phoenix rocks.

Hey Minotaur Team, why? Hey Scott McGregor, is the ego trip more important than your contribution to Mozilla? Does it feel better to have your own pet-project than to add your (anonymous) contribution to the mail codebase?

wtf? You can't *make* someone work on Mozilla if they don't want to. And if he thinks he has a good idea, and actually has the time and energy to make it a reality, then I look forwards to seeing the results of his efforts. If it's any good then I'll use it. That was a severely misguided personal attack.

Phillip.

Re:Why? Oh Why? WHY?!

[spinlocked]

I had the exact same feeling when I saw the Phoenix announcement: WHY?!

Not affiliated with this project at all, but I thought I might comment on this. I compiled mozilla 1.3 on a fairly well spec-ed, 2-way SPARC/Solaris box a few weeks ago. Once the source was unpacked and about 4 hours later the source had almost finished building - it ran out of disk space. I was surprised.

At that point 'du' reported ~/mozilla (containing source and object files) as 1.6GB. Now that's bloated.

Personally, I don't like having the mail client integrated with the browser. I don't want HTML mail support (reading or composition). I certainly don't want any scripting support. I don't want a newsreader built in (I use pan/nget for that). I want smarter filtering capabilities, or no filtering capabilities and lastly I don't want any of the offline reading support. I'm not even sure I want the address book.

I'm all for splitting the applications. I seldom use the composer (but it's nice to have there, when I need it). The IRC client is installed but has never been used, it's just wasting space. I usually run the mail client on one machine and the browser on another so that they're on different screens.

Mozilla mail is the certainly the nicest IMAP client that I've come across, but I want the smallest possible RSS (especially on SunRay servers). A fresh start is often a good way of clearing out the cruft in a application. It's now at the point where it's almost unusable on a 5 year old machine.

Re:Why? Oh Why? WHY?!

[Phroggy]

I used to work for Netscape and I know what I am talking about. Mozilla was designed as a modular app. That's what XPCOM in there is for.

Except that currently it is not possible to install Mozilla without including the web browser component. This is theoretically supposed to be possible, so inability to do so is considered a bug, but not a high priority one. Hopefully Minotaur will contribute their fixes back to the Mozilla tree, and will result in the main Mozilla project offering the same capability as Minotaur.

Yeah, so this fork is ego-driven. Sometimes that's a good thing. Having a small number of ego-driven people in charge of a project, instead of a messy bureaucracy, can make things run more smoothly, at least for awhile. Once they've got the bulk of the work done, their changes can be back-ported, either by them or by others.

Re:Why? Oh Why? WHY?!

[brundlefly]

That was always the problem at Netscape/Mozilla: EGO.

Larry Wall would tell you that Hubris is one of the 3 great virtues of a programmer.

Sometimes people do individual hacks because they want to. So be it. Individuality is great, so is personal invention. Long live the lone hacker on his own code branch.

"Forcing" people to work on common code branches "for the good of the people" smacks a tad bit of socialism. And that's a stigma the open source movement needs like it needs a hole in the head.

Re:Why? Oh Why? WHY?!

[axxackall]

I think you've just destroyed all your own arguments. Phoenix rocks.

I don't see where it rocks. It's an experiment in all its quality. Especially in its deliverability. I can build Mozilla on almost every major platform: Windows, MacOS, BSD and of course many Linux distros. Phoenix build is broken or doesn't exist for the most of them. Being downloaded in binaries it crashes.

Mozilla browser's quality today can be compared to Opera's and IE's one. Mozilla mail's quality is not far behind. So I don't under "WHY" as well.

Re:Why? Oh Why? WHY?!

[Anonymous Coward]

so you are one of those idiots that think that mozilla needs to do html editing, Wordprocessor, spreadsheet, non linear video editing, 3d rendering, filesystem management, IRC chat, Email, Weather Model forcasting, Geological data analysis, Cd burning, Graphics editing, photo retouching, and act as the OS too?

Please let me smak you. as you are a fricking retard.

phoenix is the best thing to ever happen to the netscape/ mozilla. hell it's better than anything that netscape ever created. It's a BROWSER and ONLY A BROWSER... radical idea eh?

It's time to beat the hell out of every developer that things a program needs to do 2 or more things.

Re:Why? Oh Why? WHY?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish Larry Wall would just shut his fucking mouth.

Re:Why? Oh Why? WHY?!

[cygnusx]

Personally, I don't like having the mail client integrated with the browser. I don't want HTML mail support (reading or composition). I certainly don't want any scripting support. I don't want a newsreader built in (I use pan/nget for that). I want smarter filtering capabilities, or no filtering capabilities and lastly I don't want any of the offline reading support. I'm not even sure I want the address book.

Ah, the classic minimalistic vs maximalistic school of design battles. I'm not getting into that, but I'll point out this:

- Bloat of the codebase is irrelevant, as long as the developers can understand the code and tackle it. Disk space is cheap. Working set still matters, but I'm sure Sun would be happy to sell you heftier E15Ks :)

- While I too don't like my mail client integrated with the browser, I don't mind if they share the same toolkit (e.g. IE and Outlook Express share the Win32 toolkit, Windows Common Controls, Common dialogs, common HTML renderers, etc)

- Lots of people like HTML email. In particular, those composing multilingual email. (and HTML email is not bad per se, it's just implemented poorly in many MUAs, leading to web bugs and email viruses)

- Scripting: many commercial organizations would *die* without this; the "big 2" popular corporate email systems (MS' Exchange/Outlook, IBM's Domino/Notes) are both uber-programmable for this one reason. Notes's security model was way better than Outlook's VBA/COM approach, of course.

- Smarter filtering/no filtering: ubergeeks need no steenking filtering in their MUA, they've got procmail. Us mortals need smarter filtering. MailNews 1.3's bayesian spam filter rocks here.

- Offline reading support: Laptop+IMAP warriors will die without this

- Address Book: how will you realistically take care of conveniences like autocompleting addresses in a portable, platform independent way, especially given that on many platforms there is no standard way to store addresses?

Re:Why? Oh Why? WHY?!

[cobar]

The problem at Netscape is ego.

The whole reason these forks exist is because Netscape managers won't let anybody fix the absolutely broken UI that's in Mozilla.

There are something like 30 pref panels for stuff that is absolutely useless to 90% of users like:
Validating CRLS
Choosing whether Chatzilla italicizes text
Playing sounds when a popup doesn't popup
because no one is allowed to decide what should go. Instead more bloated features keep getting added and the problem gets worse. For christ sakes, why is View background image in the context menu.

Meanwhile, quality fixes like the Customizable Toolbar from Phoenix don't get added. And because there is all this crap in XUL, half of which is overlays to support additional XUL files for the commercial Netscape tree, startup time takes like 10 seconds on an Athlon XP 1700. Instead, Phoenix at least takes more like 5, uses like 10 mb less memory, and actually improves from time to time. Plus the UI feels more friendly and professional. Now Phoenix hasn't had added lately, but at least it doesn't go backwards like Mozilla does.

I don't think you're really an ex-Mozilla or ex-Netscape guy, because if you were, you'd point the finger at Netscape management. Because from meeting a number of Mozilla developers in person and chatting with them on IRC, I have a decent understanding of some of the things that Netscape does which waste far more time than "pet projects". Things like:
Preventing key developers and contributors to the project from working by holding constant meetings to the point where they spend more time in meetings than actually working
Compromising the Mozilla tree to support stuff for the commercial release that doesn't belong in Mozilla
Showing _no_ respect for their developers. Case in point: Dave Hyatt hated all the shit he took from Netscape, so he left for Apple and loves it, because they actually let him work. Countless guys quit from being overworked and being treated poorly
Stopping anybody from actually addressing the UI issues, because people like Marlon (who may no longer be at Netscape) hold complete design control over the UI. And based on her decisions, backed by Netscape's usability studies which were never made publicly available, we have great features like having the Home button on the personal toolbar.

If you want to point fingers, why not direct them at the guys at AOL who are _being paid_ to write AOL Communicator. AOL Communicator doesn't attempt to address the UI issues in Mozilla Mail even though it is closely related to Netscape, and instead does a Minotaur-like facelift, only you'll never see the source code for it and it won't run on Linux, OS/2 and maybe Mac. Scott McGregor, Blake Ross, Dave Hyatt, et al who are working on Phoenix and Minotaur are doing it on their spare time. That's right, they make $0 to produce this. So why do they have any obligation at all to you.

Way to go dude, you're my hero. You won't even state your name, yet you'll shamelessly bash anybody who's actually _working_ on the Mozilla codebase. Why don't you come back when you're actually committing patches to address these issues in the Mail client which you don't bother to state either.

Re:Why? Oh Why? WHY?!

[Jamie Zawinski]

Hey, don't you dare blame me for this shit -- I've opposed both of the from-scratch rewrites that happened (Netscape's 4.0 and Mozilla's 1.0.) And the abortive Grendel/Javagator thing got cancelled due to Gessner's group's incompetence; my project was ready.

I still read my mail with Netscape 3.02.

Re:Why? Oh Why? WHY?!

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is wrong with these people? Why can't these developers just work on the fucking project and improve it and make it better without having to rewrite into yet another application?

Because attempts to improve Mozilla's UI have failed. The inertia is huge. The engine development works. The UI develpment is a failure.

I had the exact same feeling when I saw the Phoenix announcement: WHY?!

Because the entanglement of various apps in one process sucks. Because Mozilla's UI sucks.

I used to work for Netscape and I know what I am talking about. Mozilla was designed as a modular app. That's what XPCOM in there is for. So the right thing to do when you start bloating is refactor: take a big component, break it into nice modules and then let the USER decide which modules to install on his machine.

XPCOM doesn't fix the entanglement problem. Besides, the COM overhead is bad. Component binary compatibility is useless, because everyone just recompliles the whole thing now that the source is available. Binary compatibility for plug-ins is useless as well. XPCOM plug-ins were an utter failure.

This way, it's like the user composes the app out of modules, so he can install there a Mozilla, a Phoenix or a Minotaur.

No, you can't. Mozilla-the-browser's UI is not as good as that of Phoenix.

So why is engineering effort spent on these spin-offs instead of spending it on the mail product and providing the needed requirements THERE?

Because the inertia prevents such changes in the main project. There may be egos behind the inertia.

Re:Why? Oh Why? WHY?!

[tgrigsby]

Personally, I don't like having the mail client integrated with the browser. I don't want HTML mail support (reading or composition). I certainly don't want any scripting support. I don't want a newsreader built in (I use pan/nget for that). I want smarter filtering capabilities, or no filtering capabilities and lastly I don't want any of the offline reading support. I'm not even sure I want the address book.


In fact, you don't really want the computer. You'd rather chip messages on stone and have a messenger slap on his sandles and run the slabs to the recipient.

You're kidding, right? Personally, I like to have the HTML reading capability (combined with the option to not receive the images, thereby foiling some spammers), and while I don't use the address book that much, the autofill on the address line is indispensable.

But I have to agree with an earlier poster: a rewrite is the WORST possible approach. If they meant "refactor", then I whole-heartedly support the move. Modularization would certainly be appreciated. But read , which directly mentions Netscape, to see why a rewrite would be a Bad Thing.

My boss recently came to me with the idea that we could "rewrite" the application to do X, Y, and maybe even Z. I showed him that article and then sent him an email with a project plan that had us implementing X, Y, Z, and the other 23 letters of the alphabet in a timely manner with a minimum of stress. And y'know what? He was ok with that.

My apologies sir.

[palad1]

This oversight will never happen again.

Here is your JVM farfile
and you popup blocker jarfile
and your bookmark manager jarfile
and your irc client jarfile as well.

Shall I call a delivery truck or do you want to pick up the 12megs tarball yourself?

Re:Re-inventing the wheel, and doing it with XUL

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, yeah I agree with that. I wrote the comment above yours. I use Outlook Express myself, and I store all my email on a Linux box running Cyrus IMAP. Other windows clients:

Eudora: poor interface, quirky features.
Outlook: very slow interface, worse IMAP than Outlook Express
Mozilla: interface bugs and slowness / non-standard-ness

This new XUL one isn't going to do it for me though, for the same primary reason - poor interface. Sigh.

Sometimes I still use PINE. So it's PINE and Outlook Express and Cyrus IMAP for me. Not very pretty.

Skins

[r_arr]

I hope they make some decent skins for it, so far that gui looks but ugly. And I kind of like mozilla mail. It works for me and I've never had a problem with it.

Re:Skins

[sconest]

There is a quest for a Minotaur theme

Re:Skins

[The J Kid]

Actually, they are looking for people to design a new deafult skin (in the style of the phoenix skin)

Read More

what about webdav

[stonebeat.org]

OutLook on Windows and iCal on Mac use WebDAV to store public calender information. i have yet to see something on linux/unix.

Re:what about webdav

[GeorgeH]

Mozilla Calendar supports WebDAV to store public calendar information, and it uses .ics files so it plays nice with iCal. Also, if you're getting into the whole shared calendar thing you might want to check out PHP iCalendar which will give you a web interface to peer into that .ics file Mozilla just uploaded.

Re:Status?

[Surak]

No, only half bull. ;)

Apple Plug

[mrpuffypants]

Well, but this is all about what Apple is doing with their iApps:

Wanna make a movie? iMovie
Read your mail? Mail
Chat? iChat

I like this approach a lot better than a bloated program that has 50 features I never use. When I just want to read email and look at my calendar I just open up Mail and iCal. Done simply and effectively.

Re:Apple Plug

[mbbac]

Same here. Especially when it gives you an address book as good as Address Book that all of your applications can use.

Re:Apple Plug

[ocelotbob]

Depends on your needs, really. I happen to like the integrated approach KDE's taking with their Kroupware project that's supposed to be merged into KDE 3.2. It provides integrated PIM features that make sense, like being able to manage contacts, and calander information from a single group of windows; the default app is the mail app, which you'll probably have running most of the time anyways, with additional programs executed as needed. It makes sense, really. Usually when you're looking someone's info up, you're going to be using that info pretty immediately, so why not have it already at your fingertips. It's got some rough edges as far as appearance goes, but it works pretty well right now, and it's based on open standards.

Re:Re-inventing the wheel, and doing it with XUL

[Azghoul]

"interface" is your whole problem? I thought the nicest part of XUL was that it was an easy-to-read interface language. So you could build your own, and just talk to the features that are built-in to Mozilla/Minotaur.

Can't you?

Kewl

[Anonymous Coward]

this will go good as a stand-alone with either phoenix or K-Meleon

Not installing mail isn't a good option for me

[DeadSea]

I use mozilla to read my mail but not to send mail because mozilla does not allow me to use arbitrary from addresses. (Well you can, but you have to create an account for each one, not a great option if you have hundreds of addresses from which you want to send mail.)

Even though I use Mozilla mail, I still would like to be able to have mailto: links open in something else.

Re:Not installing mail isn't a good option for me

[mixmasta]

You might want to write an enhancement bug into their bugzilla, and then vote for it.

Re:obnoxiously bad grammar alert!

[JanneM]

I'm sorry for not having english as my first (or second) language. Meanwhile, I do believe I did manage to communicate the intended meaning of my post to any interested readers, and, after all, that is the purpose of language, right?

Doesn't work for OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Outlook in the Office with Mozilla and at home use Mozilla and Safari both with Mail.app -- when you install Mozilla, just do a browser only installation, then it will use your existing mail client.

Unfortunately, this isn't an option for OS X users as we don't use an "installer program" to install it, we just copy the files to the hard disk (or network drive, or whatever.)

While it is true you can do some surgery on the Mozilla.app directory and remove the email client and other unwanted stuff, this is not an option for regular users, and not exactly a cakewalk for an advanced user like myself.

put this in your user.js file...

[bill_mcgonigle]

user_pref("network.protocol-handler.external.mailt o", true);

(of course take out the space between 'mailt' and
'o' because Slashdot's lameness filter is designed to prevent information sharing among technical folks) ...and it will use the system-defined mailer. Don't ask me why this isn't the default...

The user.js file in in your Mozilla profile - it there isn't one, just make a new one. user.js doesn't get whacked by upgrades.

Re:put this in your user.js file...

[jd142]

Hmm. I'm using Mozilla 1.3. I don't have a user.js file, I have a prefs.js file full of my user_pref settings. When I add the line and restart Mozilla, mailto links still bring up the netscape mail program. I also saved a user.js file with just this line.

What's worse, is that after I did that, I lost my ctrl+l to get to the address line and my ctrl+f for find on page. And when Mozilla initially started up, I had to click in the address line to start typing. When I took the line out and deleted user.js, it was back to normal.

Re:put this in your user.js file...

[bill_mcgonigle]

Make sure Mozilla isn't running when you change the file - it writes it on quit and only reads it on start. Send me an email if you need a hand.

Re:put this in your user.js file...

[cortana]

It might be broken or otherwise removed from Mozilla 1.3--I just checked about:config and there is no entry for network.protocol-handler.external.mailto. :(

Re:put this in your user.js file...

[jd142]

Make sure Mozilla isn't running when you change the file

Yep, knew that and Mozilla was closed when I made the changes. This is Windows XP, Notepad, and Mozilla 1.3.

Like the other poster, the change didn't show up in my about:config listing.

It's not that big a deal to me, but it would be nice. And considering how easy it is to change the default programs to handle html editing, mailto links, newsgroup links, internet calls, etc., in IE, I'm surprised it isn't easier in Mozilla. You'd think it would be the other way around, given the history of IE.

Re:put this in your user.js file...

[bill_mcgonigle]

Sounds like a windows user.js bug to me. There's bug 197708 which looks like something's wrong.

There's also a general info page on customizing Mozilla.

Re:put this in your user.js file...

[nutbar]

This doesn't work on Linux. Anyone know a different way to tell Mozilla to use an external mail agent?

I'm REALLY frickin' fed up of copying and pasting mailto: links into evolution.

Re:put this in your user.js file...

[Anonymous Coward]

user_pref("network.protocol-handler.external.mailt o", true);

Current state of Minotaur

[Mika_Lindman]

Currently, mozilla -mail is not a good option for these users because link clicks and attachments end up going to mozilla browser windows instead of the preferred browser.

Once we release our first alpha release to the public, we'll add a link here for you to get it. Or you can build it yourself if you are already familiar and comfortable with building mozilla.

Looks like choosing the browser isn't the largest problem here.. The fact, that the software isn't even on alpha stage yet, isn't apparently worth mentioning in your post.

I know how much you slashdotters enjoy all gpl/linux/etc stuff, but please, posts like this are really worth nothing.

Re:Current state of Minotaur

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one always find these initial stage software updates somewhat interesting. It gives the general community a idea of what the developers are thinking and allows us the users to have our input, gain interest and contribute to the project. Even if it is just by spreading the word that sort of support goes a long way these days.

2nd rule of software

[tomk]

I thought the first rule of software was: "No software is truly complete until it can read email".

I guess we need a second rule: "Once software reads email, it must be split into pieces."

I'm waiting for a third rule: "Each piece must then evolve until it can read email again."

It's the circle of life.

Re:2nd rule of software

[Phroggy]

Hmm, I do wonder if a mail client will someday be added to Phoenix or Camino.

Re:Re-inventing the wheel, and doing it with XUL

[cyb97]

mutt is the best IMAP client I've tried so far...
IMO far better than Outlook (Express), Netscape and Evolution put together ;-)...

But not very graphical I guess

Great!

[paladin_tom]

I've been wanting a standalone Mozilla-based mail client for a while. Kudos to the Minotaur team! I'm looking forward to trying it out. =)

Legitimate question

[sacrilicious]

My take is that the post was not flaming for bloat... it proposed an alternate solution - and a technically much simpler one - to potentially achieve the same end, and inquired as to why that path wasn't being taken. So far (at the time I write this) nobody has actually answered this question; that doesn't mean there isn't a cogent answer to be had, but it remains to be seen.

Thank you

[Ars-Fartsica]

I'll tell you why, because downloading some source and changing a file menu is how these guys want to get notariety. Phoenix and Minotaur are pointless forks designed to get someone free cred points on the back of anothers' work.

Re:Thank you

[supercargo]

Your post and its parent are barely worth commenting on, but I'll give it shot: Mozilla is a whole lot more than I want or will ever use (integrated IRC? Composer?), Phoenix is small and fast, which is a beautiful thing. Have you ever used Lotus Notes? That's another do-it-all app that seeks to replace your operating system with components half as good as those developed for a specific task.

Phoenix and Minotaur are pointless forks designed to get someone free cred points on the back of anothers' work.

What exactly is the problem with standing on the shoulders of giants?

Freedom for the people! Liberate mail from the evil clutches of the Web Browser!

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for repeating the minor points of your parent post. What slashdot really needs is more redundancy like this, more people just repeating what someone else said.

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

> Mozilla is a whole lot more than I want or will ever use (integrated IRC? Composer?)

So only install the browser component. This is what the parent post was talking about.

So you can choose browser only. I can choose browser + mail + composer (the 3 I actually use daily).

And we both get the same features/bug fix at the same time.

And the bloat removed is removed for everybody.

Is that so hard to understand ?

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

Running a mailclient in the same process space a browser is a very terrible bad bad idea.

People said this when mail appeared for Netscape 2. They didn't listen.
People said this when Netscape 3 shipped. They didn't listen.
People said this when Netscape 4 "Communicator" shipped. They didn't listen.
People said this when Mozilla appeared. They didn't listen.

The only fix for these people is to use open source and fork it.

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey ... if the editors can do it, why not the users?

Re:Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

Phoenix and Minotaur are pointless forks designed to get someone free cred points on the back of anothers' work.

Phoenix and Minotaur are mozilla.org projects. The people that develop them have all worked on Mozilla. Many of them still do. This is not a fork.

Mozilla isn't that bad!

[mikefoley]

Am I the only one who likes Mozilla? I switched from Outlook Depress on my Windows 2000 laptop to Mozilla 1.3 for my browser and email and I love it!

The tabbed browsing is excellent. The fact that from Mozilla Mail I can control-click on a link and it shows up in a new tab without messing up my previously viewed pages is worth the (low) price of admission.

The email spam filters are working well, at least till I get around to a better server-based solution.

I just started looking at the Mozilla calendar. Looks good so far!

Now if anyone can reccomend a web page that describes how to set up an LDAP server to replace my address book so I don't have to manage multiple address books, I'd be eternally grateful!

Are there bugs with Mozilla? Yes. The Googlebar for Mozilla needs a little bit of work. But all in all, the bloat isn't that bad, certainly no worse than Microsoft but with MUCH better functionality and stability! I can pay that price.

To the Mozilla developers, a BIG thank you!

Re:Mozilla isn't that bad!

[Anonymous Coward]

I like it also. I dumped outlook because it was/is such a huge security issue.

It would be nice to have The Bat! under Linux

[horza]

The Bat! is the best email client I have ever used on any platform, and I've tried many. I would LOVE for Minotaur to be a Bat clone. The closest thing under Linux I've found is Sylpheed-claws. I currently use Evolution but I don't rate it very highly for mail (why doesn't it use a separate inbox for each account instead of mixing up all my mail? Where is the backup/restore feature? etc). There is definately space for another email client.

Phillip.

Re:It would be nice to have The Bat! under Linux

[nalfeshnee]

.. when The Bat actually supports IMAP *and* saves mailboxes in standard format. ;)

Nalfy.

Huh?

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

First we have Phoenix, a browser, now we have Minotaur, an e.mail client.

What next Elfix as an OS?

The developers sound more like D&D players every new release.

Re:Huh?

[Slime-dogg]

What next Elfix as an OS?

No, dude... The OS is going to be Postfix

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to have forgotten that many modern Unixoid OSes use ELF Binaries. :P

Just one thing I'd like to see...

[DMadCat]

I haven't yet found an email client (that I like) in Linux that will disable the preview window. I don't mean just minimize it so that I can't see it executing when I click on an email, but completely disable it. Netscape, Mozilla, KMail, Evolution. None of them will completely disable it as far as I can tell.

Re:Just one thing I'd like to see...

[kenstcyr]

Sylpheed has been my my email client of choice for some time now.

It can completely disable message view on click, or minimize, or show.

Re:Just one thing I'd like to see...

[spydir31]

In Evolution, View -> Preview Pane.
Am I missing something?

PGP ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can enable PGP (or GPG) signing and encryption in this stand alone mail client, you will be my hero. I am still waiting for the day when PGP becomes commonplace and a great mail client with a great (and simple) encryption interface would be spectacular. Not all of us can afford S/MIME.

Stop whining

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe how much whining there is about this. Kudos to people here who are trying to explain what Mozilla is about to others who obviously don't get it.

Thanks Mozilla (and all of your offspring) for the SUPERIOR products you give us for FREE without any strings attached.

Mozilla 1.4a = FAST

[Anonymous Coward]

There are speed improvements in 1.4a (try the 3/25 nightly build for instance) in install, navigator and especially mail/news. A very noticeable improvement!

name change

[jmd!]

According to their changes page:

Renamed the executable to thunderbird instead of minotaur. We may switch this back though.

So it looks as if they're changing the name. Sort of.

Speaking of which, Phoenix still has no new name.

GPG integration? :)

[Matt Ownby]

I've been using Mozilla with Enigmail for GPG, but unfortunately this only is working for me in Windows right now because Debian Mozilla (which is what I use in linux) doesn't seem to be compatible with Enigmail.

When I saw this project announced, my first thought was "Ah ha, now I can use Debian Mozilla and a mozilla-based email client with GPG." But I didn't see GPG listed anywhere.

Some of you may be saying "Use evolution!" and believe me, I do, but evolution seems to only support PGP/MIME and the developers seem to be unable (unwilling?) to add support for PGP/INLINE according to mailing list posts that I've read. Maybe I've misinterpreted the situation though.

And thus my linux quest for PGP/INLINE support (enigmail) with built-in anti-aliased fonts in my browser (debian mozilla) continues...

If anyone has a solution, I'd be glad to hear it ;)

Re:GPG integration? :)

[squidinkcalligraphy]

I've used gpg + enigmail + mozilla successfully in debian/woody. I think I had to install enigmail as root, then configure as root or something like that. It ain't seamless, but after a few purge+reinstalls of mozilla I got them working.

Mozilla mail is nice, and I use it, but there are those one or two things that would make it that little bit nicer...

Perhaps then...

[HiThere]

I'd like to use the Mozilla Mail-News client and Konqueror as the browser. (Sometimes I've preferred Mozilla, but right not not... however). KMail is nice in many ways, but nothing that come close to the Mozilla Mail Junk filter. And KDE has never had a news reader that worked as nicely (for me) as the Mozilla news-reader.

So this client is "Thunderbird"?

[Jugalator]

I expected it to be called like that, and then I checked the recent changes:

March 18th

Renamed the executable to thunderbird instead of minotaur. We may switch this back though.

Is this yet another trademark problem, as with Phoenix?

Re:So this client is "Thunderbird"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this yet another trademark problem, as with Phoenix?

Not really. You see, Minotaur was first started last September and was just meant to be a stand-alone version of Mozilla Mail & Newsgroups.. Around the same time, the Phoenix team decided to create a mail client to accompany Phoenix called Thunderbird.

This revitalised Minotaur project combines the aims of both the old Minotaur and Thunderbird and I don't think they're quite sure what they're going to call the end product yet.

This MozillaZine article explains things well.

Re:So this client is "Thunderbird"?

[RedBear]

Is this yet another trademark problem, as with Phoenix?

Yes, the Ancient Greeks had their lawyer send a C&D letter.

Sincerely,
The Mino^H^H^H^HThunderbird team

Re:Get cryptography in there from day one please

[Anonymous Coward]

cryptography is illegal under the Patriot Act, Section 14a.

Argh... links!

[mivok]

link clicks and attachments end up going to mozilla browser windows instead of the preferred browser.

This has been my major gripe with much of the KDE tools (and pretty much any integrated system which simply assumes you must be running all of their tools because you happen to like one). I run phoenix, and getting knewsticker or kmerlin (msn client) to open links in phoenix is pretty much impossible (yes yes.. I know.. use the source luke and all that, but thats time I dont have at the moment - too busy posting to slashdot :P ).
And the other example in windows, where any link you click automanically (sic) opens everything in iexplore, despite setting the default browser as phoenix.

A cry out to developers.. please please PLEASE if you have highlighted links in your app, let the user configure which browser they want to start it up in. And not through some weird edit /etc/unituitivename/.hidden_weird_config_file and add the line "faj3fs.kfj.browserN = phoenix", but in the normal settings dialogue. (gaim does this, but there are very few others that I have seen that do).

Re:Argh... links!

[spitzak]

Better yet, Linux should provide an "open" or "start" command so any program that does a link can do this:

bool click_on_link(const char* link) {
if (i_understand(link)) {
return open(link);
} else {
return fork_and_execp("open", link);
}
}

Then there can be lots of versions of the "start" program, and you can even replace it if you don't like it's behavior.

One very annoying fact is that it is easier to do this on Windows and OS/X than on Linux. Very very bad.

Re:Argh... links!

[TheAwfulTruth]

FYI (Or the 'I' of any other windows developers out there). On Windows the command to use to do this is "ShellExecute" from the shell api. The shell then makes the decision on what program to launch to take care of the file type or link type you give it. In the case of http:// URLs this becomes your preferred browser, whatever it is. This also works for mail URLs, ftp whatever...

From other ./ articles

[axxackall]

So what other FS/OSS project would you expect Netscape employees to work on?

Let me try... Perhaps E17?

Re:From other ./ articles

[PhilHibbs]

Let me try... Perhaps E17?

By that I presume (after a bit of searching, "Netscape+E17" didn't turn up many hits) you mean Enlightenment. Why would Netscape be interested in putting their resources behind a window manager for X? In what way is that anything to do with their business? Like I said, these aren't sparetimers, they're doing their job, what they're paid for, i.e. developing Netscape's software.

maybe it's not *meant* to be ...

[timothy]

"You miss the point. Mozilla isn't meant to be an end-user browser, at least not in the long term."

I know that's their stated position, but it seems to me that's with a (perfectly fine) wink and a nudge. Mozilla makes a great, excellent, admirable daily web browser, whatever they say about it being an experimental bleeding edge wacky developers-only danger will robinson danger risk to the brain.

General, sweeping statement: Mozilla used to crash; now it doesn't :) Actually, I'm sure there are sites / code which make Mozilla crash, and maybe if I opened a hundred tabs it would die, but in my own day-to-day, all-day use, Mozilla releases have been solid for a while. I'm using a 1.3 build now, and it just works.

I like Phoenix as well, and it's obviously a bit trimmer, but with Mozilla, I get IRC (Chatzilla is now quite acceptable as a client), mail (ok, I check mail via a text terminal, but I *have* used Mozilla's, and find it a very nice way to do mail), and (!) calendar. The calendar works very nicely, btw. If not for the calendar, I might stick with Phoenix, since on a Linux box I'm happiest with XChat for irc, ssh-in-terminal for mail ... but the calendar swings the balance, and I honestly find not much speed difference between Phoenix & Mozilla for most things on any of my machines (incl. 600MHz Athlon, which by my reckoning is not a "slow" computer, but Hey ;))

timothy

hides empty settings by default

[yerricde]

I just checked about:config and there is no entry for network.protocol-handler.external.mailto. :(

That's because it defaults to null (not set to true, not set to false, use app default), and about:config seems not to list null settings. You have to create it first with right-click -> New -> Boolean.

Re:hides empty settings by default

[jd142]

right-click -> New -> Boolean.

Oh that's a neat trick. So how long has it had this capability? I remember using the about:config with Netscape 4, but didn't know about this.

This works, btw. I can now send email through Eudora.

Thanks a lot for the right-click info.

Hopefully non-sucking IMAP support

[cras]

I can't believe how bad the IMAP code is for pretty much all of the IMAP clients. Authors haven't probably even bothered to read the whole RFC and assume way too much how servers behave. I haven't found a single usable IMAP client for X that plays nicely with other IMAP clients modifying the mailbox.

Here's something to read for IMAP client authors: IMAP Client Coding HOWTO.

MOD DOWN TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

you obviously have never used phoenix or minotaur, you fucking jackass.

Re:Status?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god.

I liove the mozilla mail client, but IMO Opera is a better brower (the new version sucks though.... sigh)

GCC *compiles* your mailer

[yerricde]

In all seriousness, GCC can read e-mail. Write an e-mail program in C or C++, place it in foo.c, and do the following

gcc -Wall -O2 foo.cpp
./a.out

That's because GCC compiles your mail program.

Sharing is the point

[barzok]

As I understand it, one of the reasons for the GRE is so that you can have multiple Gecko-based apps running, without the bloat of firing up multiple copies. So yes, if the GRE crashes, all your dependent apps would go with it.

Re:Sharing is the point

[Malc]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding how the GRE works, but AFAICT tell, it's only shared on disk. Each process loads the DLLs/libraries in to it's own process space, so one crashing doesn't affect another currently running one. I'm not familiar with the product, but I suspect it works much like any other COM component under Windows, wher the component is shared on disk, but not memory (sort of).

<http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/MRE.h tm l>
"The primary purpose a GRE serves is the need for multiple Mozilla based applications to share the same Mozilla distribution on disk."

Re:Sharing is the point

[bartok]

This is not a COM component but a bunch of regular DLLs. To my knowledge, dynamic libraries, hum... actually, I'm not sure if dynamic libraries run in their own address space (out of process).

Re:Sharing is the point

[Malc]

Err, you're right about it not being COM. There are some XPCOM components, which is a similar concept. In reality, COM is a bunch of binary compatible objects with a centralised lookup system that are bundled in to DLLs. The system offers the ability to load in-proc, or out-of-proc (shared or unshared) with marshalling, but that is abstracted away.

So, DLLs are normally loaded in-proc. Crashes within their code should just affect the relevant process. There is some global stuff that is shared, but that's not normally relevant, e.g. read-only data and code segments. Heaps, stacks, etc are per process. Attach a debugger to any Windows process and you will see all the DLLs that are loaded in to its address space. Now, I'm not familiar with the implementation of the .so shared libraries under UNIX, but I would guess that many of the concepts are similar... ?

My Dream Mail Client

[praxis]

What I would love to see (and will start writing myself when I have some extra time in a few months unless someone starts before me) is a cross platform, centralized data, M2-like (M2 is Opera 7's client with heavy use of virtual folders a la Evolution), easy to use mail client that supports flowed text, does not display the HTML version of email if a text part is available, does not download images unless I tell it to (on a per-message basis), syncronizes with Palm devices, has a spell checker and has PGP or GPG integration. And a full featured address book is a must as well, that also syncronizes with Palm devices. Calendar and todo list are secondary, but also welcome additions. I guess I am really looking for the offsping of M2 and Outlook.

If something like that exists, please let me know. The closes I found so far is M2.

Re:My Dream Mail Client

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution does everything you want it to except for the text/plain vs text/html thing, but you could easily hack it to display text/plain instead.

Re:My Dream Mail Client

[praxis]

Oh, I was not aware--nor could I find mention of on their webpage--that it ran on any incarnation of Windows. I use Solaris, Linux, and Windows throughout the course of a regular day so the first requirement I listed was that I needed something cross platform.

Re:My Dream Mail Client

[please explain]

I would guess that the MUA that comes closest to meeting all of your requirements is Microsoft's Entourage which comes with Office X for Mac OS X. Entourage has no per message basis for image loading (that I know of). It is also not cross platform. IMAP standards are supported better than in M$ lookOut. I would call it the offspring of Outlook and a good standards based IMAP 4 client. GPG integration and Palm Sync are both available. I think it would be an interesting example if you ever get to writing your dream mail client. I don't use it anymore since Mozilla 1.3 runs much better now on OS X.

Because they had to

[Alderete]

What the fuck is wrong with these people? Why can't these developers just work on the fucking project and improve it and make it better without having to rewrite into yet another application? I had the exact same feeling when I saw the Phoenix announcement: WHY?!

I think you've missed the point of the Phoenix project. Have you actually used Phoenix? The browser UI is wonderful -- and that's impossible to achieve in the Mozilla project, because it has to be all things to all people.

Try taking the Is Phoenix Right For You quiz; if you like Mozilla better, great. If you don't, great.

Either way, stop complaining about what other people choose to do with their time.

Feature request

[Rikardon]

Please, let it store the password for my POP3 account without pestering me for it every time. Mozilla does this -- but only if you use the Master Password feature. So every time I want to check my mail, I get to choose: I can get prompted for the mail password, or the Master Password.

This is the single biggest reason I'm still using Outlook Express.

Moderators on speed?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell is _that_ offtopic?

DDR too

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did you say Finland is? North EASTern Europe right by the old USSR?

Do you play Dance Dance Revolution? Do you have double data rate SDRAM in your computer? Well, the initials "DDR" stood for Deutsche Demokratische Republik, the name of communist former East Germany.

Two drawbacks of Mozilla Mail

[yerricde]

I switched from Outlook Depress on my Windows 2000 laptop to Mozilla 1.3 for my browser and email and I love it!

I run Outlook Express in the restricted zone, and I stay with OE rather than Mozilla Mail for two reasons: 1. OE can read Hotmail, and 2. OE's newsreader can "combine and decode" multipart files from Usenet.

Ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

Our intended customer is someone who uses Phoenix (or another non mozilla.exe browser) as their primary browser and wants a mail client based on mozilla that "plays nice" with their browser. ... we believe we can make some dents in the overall footprint and performance of the mail client by removing components and chrome we don't need..

The irony here is of course that when you in the end do run this new mail client and Phoenix at the same time, they will most likely together have a bigger footprint than Mozilla when performing the same tasks.

Sure, you do have the option to quit one and not the other, and yes, if one crashes the other doesn't go down, but if stability is a problem, maybe one should fix the crashers instead?

Look closely at Mail.app on OS X

[weave]

If you are going to implement a mail client, look at how mail.app works on a Mac. I love the way it handles imap folders when off line. All I do is connect to my mail client, it downloads my inbox or any folder i open. Then when I go off line, I can read/delete, copy messages to other folders, send mail, move between folders, anything like I am online. Next time I go online, it just transparently resyncs all folders and makes the changes I did while off line.

I love it.

Another downfall of open source

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this what Open Source is? Taking other peoples work, calling it your own and letting people copy off of you? Sounds pointless.

No wonder "real" businesses use propietary software. You make money and protect your investment. Linux, GPL, and that whole "free as in beer" movement can go suck it!

I will always use Outlook until...

[gilgongo]

I find a mail reader (that works well on Windows) that allows me to check multiple POP accounts and read all the incoming mail IN ONE PLACE, and then lets me reply from the right email address to these mails.

Outlook 2000 lets me do this. The Mozilla mailer is cool, but insists on keeping all my POP accounts in separate inboxen. I've tried The Bat, and Eudora, but nothing seems to beat the ease of use of Outlook (well, if you ignore the unhinged Options layout - so very clearly designed by people on drugs).

Re:I will always use Outlook until...

[Anonymous Coward]

Without sounding like a troll, Outlook's support for IMAP, whether it is 100% spec or not is awful. I use Mozilla Mail exclusively on all platforms. Mozilla Mail works perfectly for pop3, imap etc and supports multiples. Everything else I've tried is garbage.

Re:I will always use Outlook until...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Pocomail. At a guess, you can find it at pocomail.com, but I can't be arsed googling...

Re:I will always use Outlook until...

[mooman]

...until I find a mail reader (that works well on Windows) that allows me to check multiple POP accounts and read all the incoming mail IN ONE PLACE, and then lets me reply from the right email address to these mails.

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding you, Eudora does this just fine. You create "personalities" for each POP account. Using the filters you can easily have them go into one common folder or mutiple ones, whichever you prefer. I'm pretty sure it remembers which personality each message came from and will default your settings appropriately. If not, the "from" line is a pulldown anyway so you can change it instantly within the message. (This is actually handy since I set up a "Mail Administrator" profile that I use when replying to get companies to remove my email from their lists. The "admin" informs that no user exists with that address, so please remove it. Obviously this isn't for autospam, but POPFile catches all that anyway)

I can't think of anything that Eudora can't do for me. I've been using it for close to a decade now and have never even considered abandoning it... I also bask in the fact that I've never heard of a virus that can hurt a Eudora user (short of stupidly opening a boobytrapped attachment) while Outlook seems to have a steady stream of exploits...

I've got all my bases covered: Eudora (mail) + Forte Agent (news) + Phoenix (web) + Putty (telnet) + WSFTP LE (ftp) + POPFile (antispam). Every app does one thing, and one thing well...

why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use hotmail or yahoo mail.

Independent Mozillas

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

You can currently run several independent Mozillas. It involves fiddling with enviroment variables and is probably platform dependant.

I have to do it if I want to try side by side Mozilla and Phoenix.

I haven't yet dared to switch my mail to Mozilla but since 1.3 is the first version that hasn't yet crashed here while browsing, I am thinking of it. And maybe I'll split a mail Mozilla and a browsing Mozilla.

Are you ok?

[Jedbro]

Lies...
My God, what a pathetic way to try and get your idea across to people, "yeah, I worked for netscape". Oh! Were you that ugly-ass coffee boy they had as their whore?

First off, Scott McGregor NO LONGER WORKS ON MOZILLA officially, what I mean by that he is no loger paid to "work" on Mozilla. Thunderbird is just his love child. Many.. many month ago Blake Ross promised us Thunderbird when Phoenix reached 0.5 (ok, he said "hopefully"). But Blake is busy (school). So Scott McGregor realized the importance of thunderbird and took it on. Ego? Hell I sure hope he has one after pulling this one off!

Dude, you need to re-think your life before you waste it on posts like this anymore.

Get the facts straight.

Why?

[slriv]

Why are we wasting time on a project like this? Why not just fix and speed up Mozilla Mail? Same thing applies to Phoenix. I don't get why people are so quick to branch when they could actually do more good by fixing the broken code.

Re:obnoxiously bad grammar alert!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to apologize for my inappropriate flame. I saw "sweeden" post-facto.

There's always alcohol

[rice_burners_suck]

At the beginning, I had a lot of hope for the Mozilla project. I thought it would kick Microsoft's ass like you can't believe. But it took forever for anything to materialize out of it. When stuff finally started to happen, it was much too complicated.

The Mozilla browser is based on so many layers of stuff that it boggles the mind how the thing even works. Actually, it doesn't boggle the mind because it really doesn't work all that well. Every time I tried out Mozilla, with a little hope that this time it would function better, I was disappointed.

Mozilla is bloated, huge, ugly and complicated. Its three zillion layers of features, languages, protocols and other elements make this perhaps the most complicated piece of software in proportion to what it does. In other words, I used to think that emacs was much too complicated for what it did... but Mozilla is so much worse! It's simply supposed to give you access to endless piles of advertisements and spam all over the Internet. It's not supposed to become "The Everything Program." I mean, hell, if it had to be that, then the Mozilla project should add:

• an integrated word processor that includes all the
  features of every word processor ever released plus more,
  utilizing 6,000 new layers of unnecessary complexity,
• an integrated spreadsheet that includes all the features
  of every spreadsheet ever released plus more, utilizing 6,000
  new layers of unnecessary complexity,
• an integrated presentation maker that includes all the
  features of every presentation maker ever released plus more,
  utilizing 6,000 new layers of unnecessary complexity,
• an integrated development environment that includes every
  programming language ever invented plus a virtual machine for
  every architecture and chipset ever invented, all of which
  include all the features of every integrated development
  environment and virtual machine system ever released plus
  more, utilizing 165,000 new layers of unnecessary
  complexity,
• an integrated CAD/CAE/FEA/CAM (computer aided design,
  computer aided engineering, finite element analysis, computer
  aided machining) environment that includes all the features of
  every CAD/CAE/FEA/CAM environment ever released plus more,
  utilizing 671,051 new layers of unnecessary complexity,
• an integrated video game engine that includes all the
  features of every video game engine ever released plus more,
  and supports every video game data file ever invented, even
  from game consoles, in order to play any video game inside the
  web browser utilizing only the data files and no other
  executable... all of which would, of course, utilize 6,000 new
  layers of unnecessary complexity,
• an integrated operating system that includes all the
  features of every operating system ever released plus more,
  utilizing 6,000 new layers of unnecessary complexity,
• an integrated video editing suite that includes all the
  features of every video editing suite ever released plus more,
  utilizing 6,000 new layers of unnecessary complexity,
• an integrated photo editing studio that includes all the
  features of every photo editing studio ever released plus
  more, utilizing 6,000 new layers of unnecessary
  complexity,
• an integrated vector drawing and animation program that
  includes all the features of every vector drawing and
  animation program ever released plus more, utilizing 6,000 new
  layers of unnecessary complexity,
• an integrated enterprise multi-tier database solution that
  includes all the features of every enterprise multi-tier
  database solution ever released plus more, utilizing 6,000 new
  layers of unnecessary complexity,
• and last but not least, an ad-blocking solution that, you
  guessed it, includes all the features of every ad-blocking
  solution ever released plus more, utilizing 6,000 new layers
  of unnecessary complexity.

Or that's my opinio

tiny wimpy email accounts

[sethdelackner]

Most people don't have 475 MB accounts at their email provider, they are lucky to have 20 MB

When did slashdot become the site for "most people"? My email/shell account (www.jtan.com) has a 1 gig limit. Once in a while I backup my email, but it lives there and I just use IMAP from wherever to access it.

Last Post!

[alpg]

X windows:
The ultimate bottleneck.
Flawed beyond belief.
The only thing you have to fear.
Somewhere between chaos and insanity.
On autopilot to oblivion.
The joke that kills.
A disgrace you can be proud of.
A mistake carried out to perfection.
Belongs more to the problem set than the solution set.
To err is X windows.
Ignorance is our most important resource.
Complex nonsolutions to simple nonproblems.
Built to fall apart.
Nullifying centuries of progress.
Falling to new depths of inefficiency.
The last thing you need.
The defacto substandard.

Elevating brain damage to an art form.
X windows.

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