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

Opera Rant!!

[Anonymous Coward]

All hail Opera, which is the browser god. haha

Mozilla is Dying

[Anonymous Coward]

It is official; Netcraft confirms: Mozilla is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Mozilla community when IDC confirmed that Mozilla market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web browsers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Mozilla has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Mozilla is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Mozilla's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Mozilla faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Mozilla because Mozilla is dying. Things are looking very bad for Mozilla. As many of us are already aware, Mozilla continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Netscape 7 is the most endangered of them all, having lost 100% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant firing of all 50 Netscape developers by AOL only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Mozilla is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Mozilla.org leader Mitchell Baker states that there are 7000 users of Mozilla. How many users of Firebird are there? Let's see. The number of Mozilla versus Firebird posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Firebird users. Camino posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Firebird posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Camino. A recent article put Netscape 7 at about 80 percent of the Mozilla market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Netscape 7 users. This is consistent with the number of Netscape 7 usenet posts.

Netscape went out of business and will probably be taken over by AOL who sell another troubled browser. Now AOL is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Mozilla has steadily declined in market share. Mozilla is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Mozilla is to survive at all it will be among browser dilettante dabblers. Mozilla continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Mozilla is dead.

Fact: Mozilla is dying

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.