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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!"
But will I be able too painlessly move my email from Moz over? I've got two years of mail in my .mozilla folder and I don't intend to hack together some sick bastardized transfer.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I still use Microsoft Entourage in Mac OS X.
My first real e-mail client was a little doodad written in HyperCard, and on my own machine, was Netscape 2.0 on an old Duo 270c. I used Netscape 3.0 when I had to, and then started using Outlook Express when Netscape 4.0 Standalone was introduced.
Since I moved to Outlook Express, I have tried many e-mail clients including newer versions of Netscape, Mozilla, and even Apple's Mail.app, but the utility of OE/Entourage has yet to be beat in my eyes. It is a pretty polished app, and it has been quite stable and usable with one notable exception (my own fault, however.)
I've tried every version of Mail.app just to make sure I'm not missing out on anything, and every time I've gone back to Entourage. I'll be happy to see what Panther/10.3 brings, as the competition is definitely welcome. I also want to see what MS does in regards to their Exchange server support in the next month or two.
Much as I hate Windows, Entourage is still my favorite client under OS X.
Is there any news on the PGP/GPG integration? I was reading enigmail documentation the other night and there was some talk about encryption going in all the way and not just as an extension. Enigmail goes a long way in making that easier but it's still way beyond most people.
While Thunderbird does have a few quirks to work out, it is pretty sharp, and I can tell you that it really rocks as a mail client! I like it's look & feel better than the standard mozilla mail client in fact. I've set it up to work with Fastmail fairly easily, and it does a great job of syncing up to my IMAP account. Better than Mozilla Mail from what I remember.
I'm also writing this on Mozilla Firebird which is a sleek and fast browser for Windows and Linux. I really don't use IE anymore except to access some corporate reporting type websites at work and to access all those lame webpages on the web that are designed for IE lusers instead of the entire web.
As soon as the Mozilla team builds a better OS/UI for Linux or Windows, I'll be switching my gaming computer over completely!
I actually like the mozilla/thunderbird mail user interface, and it would be nice to view attachments directly, but I still use mutt in a terminal window because I hate editing with a mouse. Are there any GUI mailers that support vi (or, heaven forbid ;-) emacs --- ok, I'm sure emacs *is* a gui mailer, it's everything else ;-) so never mind that...)? It looks like there is a gpg plugin for M/T, so the editor is the only thing holding me back...
.... and I liked the look of it, the features (or the future features... didn't test all the buttons yet), and the spam filtering...
The one thing I don't like about it and Mozilla Mail is that you get one "From" address for each account. In Mail.app, I separate mail addresses with commas, and I get a drop-down to choose from.
If anyone knows how to do this in Mozilla and/or Thunderbird, please let me know. I like Mail.app, but Mozilla Mail seemed faster, and Thunderbird seemed even better.
dochood
Finally the spam i get got too much for me, and i switched over to Tbird due to its filtering system. Love it. Never went back to Outlook, 'cept to export my mail and address book.
Only ONE complaint about Tbird, aside from some minor cosmetic work--at this point in time it requires a third party app to check any sort of webmail--yahoo, netscape, Hotmail/MSN, etc. This IMHO is a BIG setback, as programs like hotmailpopper et. al. don't cut the mustard (seemingly incapable even of marking messages read once TB gets them, deleting msg's as they're deleted from TB's inbox, etc)
Make Thunderbird work with hotmail and it will look alot more appealing to alot of people
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
> -- unfortunately it still reeks of "I-look-like-netscape"
/.ing folks) are content with that direction, however, so I see no hope of them changing it, either. <personal_preference>I currently use Opera7 on both Linux and Windows, mostly because it's completely spiffy (small(er), fast, fully functional (popup blocks, cookie controls), comes with a great mail program and on top of that it's elegant.)</personal_preference>
:P
The problem is it feels like Mozilla. Monolithic, megalithic, slow and hard on the resources. Of course, it looks crappy, too.
I so wish I could support some open-source-collaborative browser, but Mozilla and its spinoffs (like Firebird) seem to be the only alternative -and I don't happen to agree at all with the direction the browser development is going. Seemingly they (and most of the
I'd be interested in knowing if there're any more or less mature open-sourced alternatives for me out there -heck, if need be, I can even put in some work on it
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Flame me if you want, but the Thunderbird team (who are doing a great job IMHO) should take a look at the outlook 2003 beta. There are two killer additions to the client:
1. Three vertical panes. 1 thin pane for folders. 1 pane for folder contents and 1 pane for displaying the selected mail. It is a MUCH more efficient use of space.
2. Follow up flags. Flag an email and file it away to reduce your inbox clutter. You can keep track of flagged mails in the "Flagged mail" folder (durr!). Use different coloured flags and even flag a mail for follow up in the future.
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
You clearly have not tried Mozilla's firebird browser. It is a lightweight version of Mozilla 1.4, and is much faster than IE, not to mention more secure. IE is bloated -- and the full extent of its bloat isn't known because of its integration with the Windows OS. To give you an Idea, IE has a footprint of 13,000+ Kilobytes in System memory, while Firebird (with 8 Tabb'd windows) only has 3,700 Kb of RAM as a footprint.
War isn't about who's right. It's about who's left.
I've tried Thunderbird (and mad dog 40/40 har har) 0.1 combined with firebird 0.6 and the first problem that I came across was enough of a show-stopper to make me switch back to the traditonal suite.
That being the inability to right-click on a web page and have the "send page" menu option.
I have a low-end system, but I'll make a point of finding resources to get this kind of functionality.
Splitting the two programs up seems like a step backwards, in my opinion.
It's amazing that people would rather PAY money to purchase pop-up blocker software for IE than to use a better web browser.
I'm trying to get my friends to switch to Mozilla but it's very difficult to convince people to try a different web browser.
Although the junk filter is pretty good, it still misses one or two junk mails a day, mainly because the spammers are getting really inventive and varied. And although in most cases you can just look at the subject/sender and mark it as junk anyways (and be right), it is not always the case.
:)
And for the more normal non-geek user, it should really help them more with this.
I'm well aware of the odds (slim) that any non-geek uses Phoenix or Mozilla Mail for that matter at this point, but no harm in looking forward is there?
I think it should sanitize *all* mails not explicitly marked as safe - just make a little blurb (like the "Mozilla thinks this mail is junk" notification) that "This message tries to talk to a server. Do you want to allow that?" with a link to an explanation in the help files or something like that.
One thing that really could go a long way would simply to disallow all automatic loading of any url containing parameters. Of course, that could be bypassed by using parameters in the PATH instead, but it would probably weed out lots of these cases. What legitimate email would need to send parameters in an image url?
I cant wait till theres a window manager written for Mozilla and a desktop. Mozilla has a some nice apps for it like IM clients and IRC clients, games etc.
:).
:). Great OS apps. Lovem. Well, i'll find out if i love thunderbird.
I know OEone (or whatver its called) exists but its mainly for redhat right? And it seems as if its mainly for the beginer. Its application focus with kidna doesnt sit well with me.
I think once a Moz Desktop is developed we'll be set. Wont have to bugger round with other GUI's and mozilla apps will load a lot faster
When thunderbird and firebird are the main components of the mozilla build, i'll start downloading that again so i can take advantage of the fullness of mozilla and the apps that are developed for it.
But for now, Firebird and Thunderbird it is
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
I downloaded the app for OSX to give it a test run. I think I'll stick with Mail.app for email, since the I've got the junk filter all trained up and it gets my hotmail, but I'm very happy Thunderbird is a decent news group client.
A few months ago I went on a search to find a free news client with a decent UI. While Thunderbird is a little clunky (some bugs in the UI, graphics missing on tabs) it's already much better than anything else out there I managed to find. Now I won't have to use a cgi script to read news groups anymore!
This is one of the funnier posts I've ever been tempted to mod Insightful. I mean come on, how many pre-1.0 programs work as well as Phoenix 0.6? I imagine the same is true of Thunderbird 0.1, though I've only used its predecessor "alpha" releases sparingly. In a way its a little irritating, because when I try to tell people about Phoenix, some will say "oh its only version 0.6, I'll wait a while on that one."
At the same time though, the Mozilla 1.0 release WAS way cool, very stable, and really the model of what a 1.0 release should be. And thats a big part of why nobody seemed to care when 1.1, 1.2, or 1.3 came out. 1.0 wasn't really broken (leaving aside security issues).
Hmm... makes me wonder what Phoenix/Thunderbird will look like when they hit 1.0.
It might be very nice, but it's hardly innovative (unless you're comparing it to the miserable Mozilla mailer) -- all of those features have been available for years in Gnus, a mail client good enough to learn Emacs for.
'jfb
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
Threaded replies
Highly functional spam filtering
Automagic contact-gathering
Automatically-created "views" for each contact? Just click "Sender," and things sort based on who sent it. Else, just enter some text into the "Subject or Sender contains" bar for some fast, arbitrary filtering. More complicated "views"? Use the "View" dropdown.
Why would in the world would I want to pay money for this stuff?
Kid-proof tablet..
Are there plans for Mozilla to support common binary file formats, like yEnc, I guess?
http://junglevision.com -- Shamus for Gameboy
I agree, Netscape 4 was rightly much miligned for its poor HTML rendering but there was much else to like about it, and the Roaming Profiles will be much missed.
This allowed you to store bookmarks, preferences, addresss books etc. in an LDAP server or (less often) a web server. You could then log in and retrieve them from anywhere.
LDAP support in Communicator 4 was generally excellent, and has generally disappeared from Mozilla apart from address lookup. I have some LDAP experience, if anyone is interested in resurrecting roaming profiles perhaps we could rebuild this service?
Well, no...but pulling off most of the heavy armor, removing the non-essential systems, pulling off the turret (mail), but realizing it's still a perfectly good cannon, and handing it off to a second team to tweak and make into a mobile artillery platform (Thunderbird) leaves them with a fairly light (in comparison) frame, driven by the same engine that's used to driving a much heavier vehicle around. The result is a vehicle that's quite fast, but looks like hell
Why use a standalone email and news broswer? Do the Mozilla people think the people who use their software are going to use Thunderbird and Internet Explorer? Or Thunderbird and Opera?
I really can't stand not using at least Mozilla unless I can't use it for some reason (such as having a new comp not connected to my broadband conn), although I prefer Firebird, which I find alot slicker and smooter to use.
As for Mozilla increasing their share in the broswer market this can only be a good thing!
--
I've been using Thunderbird as my main mail client at home and the office for -- well, it feels like a few months, but it can't be. A while anyway.
Reasons for sticking with it:
Less crashy than Eudora. I was a die-hard Eudora user on the Mac OS 9 and below, but had to switch to Windows at work and was never able to get Eudora to be acceptably stable under Windows 2000. Despite the TBird builds to date being nominally alphas, they have been more reliable for me than release versions of Eudora.
IMAP. As an IMAP client, Thunderbird Just Works. I have no higher praise for an application.
It's not OE. Nuff said.
The killer for me though, is the junk mail filtering. I work for a website (www.cyclingnews.com if anyone's interested) that has its main editorial addresses on every single page. As a result we get vast amounts of spam, and because we're in the address books of hundreds if not thousands of people over the world we also get vast amounts of viruses. Even with filtering at server level that catches most of the junk we're assailed by, we get perhaps 80 or 90 pieces of junk per day, from around 300 emails.
After a few days of teaching Thunderbird what was and was not junk, and whitelisting the people I definitely wanted to hear from, that junk flood is down to a trickle. Skimming subject lines in the Junk folder for likely non-junk is far less onerous than deleting spam after spam till you have an inevitable spam-spasm and delete the wrong thing.
Other features I like:
*The quick sorts provided by the 'View:' and 'Sender or Subject contains:' pop-up menus
*Ability to sort by order received - though I note this seems to be broken in thelatest release.
*Control. I get to decide whether to read mail as plain text or subject myself to some drooling cretin's idea of 'design'. I can turn off loading of remote images. I can view attached content in the message or not (if TBird can handle it, of course). My choice.
That last may seem trivial, but it's surprisingly not. Eudora seems to be randomly unable to display some attached jpgs; Mulberry (a very powerful IMAP client) can't display them at all; persuading OE NOT to show you attached pics... well, I gave up trying; I'm sure it can be done, but grinding through Microsoft's broken idea of a prefs system just to use that disgusting, broken child's-toy email client... fnuh.
Things I'd like to see improved:
Importing from Eudora is clunky. I just switched my wife's email as she was drowning in spam; the imported messages show up as if they were plain text, so you get to see all the code in html messages. Not great.
General speed and responsiveness. It's fine on a fast machine, but the 800 MHz AMD I have at the office chugs a bit.
Quick question--
I've been using thunderbird for about two months now, and I have one feature that I sorely miss from OE. In OE, I had the machine "syncronize" each folder, so it didn't have to hit the server for each message. How can I make T-bird do the same?
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
Netscape will never again be ready for primetime. There are two reasons for this: IE and Outlook Express comes with every computer on the planet, (or near enough to make no odds) and Netscape's/Mozilla's interface was designed by geeks, for geeks.
Funny... I have switched EVERYONE at my office... both on their desks and at home to mozilla for one tiny little feature....
Popup blocking.
and it's spreading like wildfire... at least 10 users have came back to me for another CD copy of the installer as they have lent out theirs to so many people that their Cd was lost or broken.
enjoy your Microsoft dreamworld... Mozilla will silently and suddenly topple IE... and it cannot be stopped.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Has anyone been able to successfully synchronize the Palm Desktop with Thunderbird? Would someone be so kind as to let me know?
I hate all sigs, even this one.