Mozilla Thunderbird 0.1 Released

An anonymous reader submits: The Mozilla Thunderbird (stand-alone Mozilla based mail/news reader) developers have just released their first milestone: version 0.1, available for Mac Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. The v0.1 release notes highlight some of the bigger features like customizable toolbars, UI extensions, contact manager sidebar, simplified UI, 3-pane mail window option, and spell checker. Also of note, Mozilla's usage share has risen from 1.2% in February to 1.6% now, a 33% improvement!"

Comments

Re: Firebird

[E_elven]

There're two main problems with Firebird. 1) It's a side project of Mozilla and 2) it's a side project of Mozilla.

If one were to extrapolate, the problems arising from the former include the engine -taking the turret out of a tank doesn't make it a sportscar. In this day and age it should be pretty obvious that refactoring something existing only goes so far. The other problem is XUL. I don't know who came up with it, but they need to be employed as a underwater repairman for the transatlantic telegram cable. Don't get me wrong, Firebird is an improvement over Mozilla, but that's only because Mozilla is ridiculously bad. FB is a decent browser, and it's not going to get any better. Consider: Firebird is a horribly incomplete browser when it comes to additional functionality -it only barely does a fair job at being an extremely barebones browser. Have you ever heard adding code without modifying any of the existing stuff making it better (the few freak accidents aside?)

What could they do better? It's hard for me to say -I must admit I haven't viewed the source to either project all too carefully because I don't feel any interest to do so. I don't like them.