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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!"
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
Yes, it is a 0.1 release for a reason. It crashed on my Windows system only once or twice, and that was probably due to some misconfiguring on my part. It was easy to configure, unfortunately it still reeks of "I-look-like-netscape"ocity (a problem plauging mozilla).
Linux distribution is quite good, it won't take over from Evolution just yet.
It's a good start. Remember, people, before you start posting whines about things not working, remember, this is a 0.1 release.
Make sure you get your favorite features from the extensions ;)
h ttp://texturizer.net/thunderbird/extensions.html
Extensions:
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/
...available for Mac Linux, Mac OSX and Windows.
Mac Linux? That's a gnu one.
(bad-dump-ching!)
Is it any good at retrieving porn binaries?
MozillaZine Thunderbird Forums
FAQ and tips at Texturizer
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.
Very stable, it is based off of the Mozilla Mail/News 1.5a which is a VERY stable mail client.
Thunderbird is only 0.1 in terms of being a Stand-Alone App (with a load of new features).
Nidelven IT just put up a new article called An Introduction to Thunderbird. Looks pretty solid.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
I don't think it's an official milestone, perhaps more of a release candidate, but test it out for the team anyway!
Berto
Does anyone have a pointer to a binary for Silicon Graphics IRIX?
o ad/irix/1 .4/
BTW, I see that SGI has posted an IRIX version of Mozilla 1.4 in both tarball and inst/swmgr native tardist installable format:
ftp://oss.sgi.com/projects/mozilla/downl
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
I've got two years of mail in my .mozilla folder and I don't intend to hack together some sick bastardized transfer.
A version 0.1 is not something you trust valuable data with. Never. If you really want to test it, backup you email and put it safely away, preferably in another non-connected physical machine where the new software can't have a chance to find it. Read again the version number: 0.1. Even running smothly this is the sort of version that eats your real mail, misfilters all the spam and trash your disk on the side.
I've been using Thunderbird as my primary PC mail client at home since the first nightly build. Aside from a few small issues at first, I haven't had any problems for a while. It's the nicest looking alternative that I've found. Eudora has a nasty interface, and the MS stuff is well, just that. It's nice to have a decent alternative and I highly recommend it.
Dispite using mostly X11 based desktops (SGIs, Suns, x86 Linux) I do really like the look and feel of Microsoft Entourage. It does way more than Outlook Express, but doesn't need to rely on an Exchange server.
e ntouragex.aspx?pid=entouragex
e ntouragex.aspx?pid=whatsnew
Microsoft has recently dropped the price for standalone Entourage to $99, and I think they have an Entourage/Word bundle for $190. (It's still probably a better deal to make use of the Office OEM bundle when buying a new Mac from a reseller).
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/entouragex/
There are also a few good screenshots of the app too... doesn't look like the commitee-designed beast that Outlook XP is:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/entouragex/
This thing has the best IMAP support for windows of any mail client.
-no "phantom" messages like OE (my previous favourite) gets
-ssl support
-automagic configuration of namespaces (something most imap clients don't do even though it's in the RFC)
-conditional subfolder checking for "new" in case you have server side filtering
-"delete", "mark deleted", and "move to trash" support, instead of the simple "mark deleted" most imap clients have
-50% more pie
It means that Thunderbird is now 0.4% cooler than it was before. It's a major improvement.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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!
Now they need to figure out why...
My guess is that people are using Mozilla to get a handle on pop-ups.
I've been using Thunderbird on Windows now for about 3 weeks and I haven't had a single problem. I much prefer it to Eudora, my previous email client.
By the way, something useful for non-US English users that took me a while to figure out: Thunderbird uses MySpell dictionaries which can be downloaded here.
And lots more tips for Thunderbird here.
One of my favorite features in Evolution is the safe preview: when you look at an email message, it renders the message in all ways that do not involve hitting a server. So an HTML message with bold, italics, colors, pictures, etc. will display correctly... except for anything that would touch a server.
Why is this important? Because spammers make special URLs that encode your email address, and their servers use the special URLs to track you. If you even preview the message in Outlook, or in Mozilla Mail, their server gets a hit and they know your email address is a good one.
There is a command on a menu, "Load Images", that will go ahead and put hits on servers and render the message completely. You can use this for email from sources you trust. (It ought to be a toolbar button, but it isn't yet in Evolution.)
If Thunderbird doesn't already have this, I ought to file a bug.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
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.
Here's my theory:
The Mozilla developers realized that the slow and gradual climb toward Mozilla 1.0 was the most magical and exciting time of their lives. Every time they released a new 0.x version, they created a buzz of excitement as people speculated about how much longer it would take to get to 1.0, and even more people complained about how long it was taking them to develop Mozilla, how bloated and slow it was, and so on.
And then Mozilla 1.0 was released and the Open Source world rejoiced. No doubt this must have been an exciting time for the Mozilla developers.
Imagine the let-down after such a climax.
1.1? Who cares. 1.2? Yeah yeah, blah whatever. Yeah we all know it's good now, yeah we're all using it (or other browsers which use its rendering engine), except for those whacko Konqueror lovers. It's not news anymore, it's just the next version to upgrade to.
Needless to say, the Mozilla developers must have sunk into a deep depression. Finally, at a meeting of the devs, one of them must have come up with a bright idea....
Dev 1: "Hey, I know how we can recapture the magic of those pre-1.0 days!"
Dev 2: "Really?? How? Something has to be done, because I've been drinking non-stop and my wife's about to leave me!"
Dev 1: "We can dump 'Mozilla'--it's just too boring now that we're past 1.0--and instead split it into separate mail and browser components. And we might as well dump the Composer, no one uses that anyway."
Dev 2: "But why? We've been ignoring the 'Mozilla is too bloated' crowd for years, why bother to change now?"
Dev 1: "Don't you see? Even though we're using the post-1.0 code we already have, we can consider the separate browser and mail components to be _new programs_...."
Dev 2: "You mean... we can start them at version 0.1!"
Dev 1: "Exactly! And we can recapture the magic of working toward 1.0 with not one program, but two!"
Dev 2: "Genius! Fscking genius!"
Well... that's my theory anyway.
"This is just a draft. Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 has not been released yet."
D'oh.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I believe this is a moot point. The default theme is horrid, I agree, but there are a variety of themes to choose from at http://themes.mozdev.org. <personal_preference>Orbit 3+1 rules!</personal_preference>. And I don't notice Mozilla's speed problems, but I have a top-of-the-line computer, and understand that not everybody else does, and I understand it's something the Mozilla team needs to work on.
In the same period Netscape has lost more users than Mozilla has gained.
It states IE6 adoption is increasing (my gran could've told you that) but fails to state the movement of MS's overall market share.
Why would a mail client need ActiveX support? You're thinking of Firebird, http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firebird/
Christopher S. 'coldacid' Charabaruk -- coldacid.net
After hitting an ATM earlier today the amount of money in my pocket went from $1 to $40, a 4000% improvement! I'm amazed you managed to get $39 out of an ATM.
7. Opera 6.0 0.6%
Methodology: A global usage share of xx percent for browser Y means that xx percent of the visitors of Internet users arrived at sites that are using one of OneStat.com's services by using browser Y.
Just as an example of why these types of numbers need to be taken with more than a single grain of salt. In the example above, Opera 7.0 (and I think 6.0) defaults to reporting itself as MSIE. So unless the user cracks open the prefs and digs deep into one of the many preferences panes and flicks a switch, those visits will be taken away from the Opera totals and heaped onto the MSIE totals.
They are most likely assessing the reported user agent string to their network of websites which may or may not be the actual browser being used.
-----
Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
Mozilla hates my cookies. NOT ANONYMOUS.
Jebus.
VOTE!
Even when you tell Opera to report itself as MSIE, it includes "Opera" in the user-agent string. There is no way to specify a custom user agent string.
This is how MSN identified Opera users to serve them a different style sheet. This is how my bank prevents me from using their online banking application.
Mozilla, OmniWeb, and many other alternative browsers let you override the user agent string to whatever you want. Opera does not allow you this flexibility. I know this because I'm a registered Opera user.
For more information, click here.
"lies, damn lies, and statistics."
That adage is totally irrelevant here, because no data is being hidden, and there is no handwaving to distract from the real numbers: they are given up front. No one is claiming they are poised to take over the market over the next year, or anything stupid like that. It's just a little pat on the back, that says "hey, word is spreading that our product is in fact getting better, and more people like it". Kudos to them.
Save your adages and sarcasm for statments like "In a massive upset in browser market share, Thunderbird has surged ahead with a 33% increase in usage."
"In addition to automatically detecting junk mail using the same method as Mozilla Mail, Thunderbird also sanitizes HTML in mail marked as junk in order to better protect your privacy and give peace of mind when viewing a message identified as junk.".
;)
In other words YES, it does. As long as the message is marked as JUNK MAIL, it will stripp it of anything that could be dangerous for viewing, if it is not dangerous, just mark as "not junk"
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/
The built-in spamfilter rocks, too, and it's really fast and responsive - so give it a try. :)
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
yep.
tasty electronic music vittles
..when's mozilla.slashdot.org going up?
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!
I've been using some of the nightly builds, and it has been pretty stable. I did experience a problem where the preview pane would freak out and get stuck in a reload loop. That wouldn't happen too often (it seemed like it was triggered by some bit of html in the message) and it appears that it was cleared up a few weeks ago.
Even with the instability, I still loved it. It doesn't quite have the speed advantage over Mozilla mail that Firebird has over the Mozilla browser, but it's noticeably faster. I've been using it on Win XP. I tried to use it on Linux, but it would not even load on Red Hat 8 or 9. I'm going to try 0.1 on my workstation tomorrow when I get to work.
Our market share has increased from 1 person to 3 people, a 200% increase!
> The sooner that IE is a minority the better
Excuse me sir, but have you noticed that you have monkeys flying out of your butt?
First, if you like integration, wait a bit. The plan, according to the Mozilla roadmap, is to make things like Thunderbird functional as both a standalone as well as browser-integrated component in the form of an extension. However, it should be noted that intercommunication between standalone components *should* be doable, due to the existance of XPCOM (just expose certain Tbird functionality which Firebird can then call remotely). As such, I'd expect to see that feature eventually.
;)
As for the resource issue, again, just wait a bit. Once the GRE is implemented and in common use, all these components will be able to share the same runtime. As a result, the various mozilla libraries will only get loaded into memory once and then shared by all the components just like any other shared libary.
So, no, splitting up the programs was definitely *not* a step backwards. The issues you list will be dealt with, and the result will be a far more flexible, customizable, and maintainable system. At least, IMHO.
Opera's M2 Email Client http://www.opera.com/products/user/m2/ Also has a filtering agent that does not contact outside servers so your privacy remains intact. It should also be mentioned that M2 is not an ordinary email client, it uses access-points instead of folders. Takes some getting used to but it is really useful and cool once you know how to use it.
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.
Also, Moz is so much more standards compliant. If you've ever tried making a webpage with CSS you would see. Opera is not horrible (certainly not as crappy as IE when it comes to CSS), but the page elements always seems to be off be one pixel or so in Opera, so I have to resort to hacks to get it to look right in Opera. In Moz all of me CSS just works the way it should.
Like I said though, it's not like Opera is really bad, its just not that great, and I really don't see why people on /. prefer it so much. (It's not even open source!)
It's probably just people finaly upgrading from Netscape Communicator....
Advanced users are users too!
This only served to remind me of a call I had from a little old lady today that was using Netscape 7.1 for her e-mail.
She'd been using the internet since the Old Days, back when Netscape was being used by the masses. The problem is that the mail client for Netscape 7 likes to use the sidebar buttons entirely too much.
How too much? Twice, to be exact. Only twice, you ask?
Well, twice is way too many. Because once you hide your mailbox list on the left side, and the message index pane at the top, all you see is the one message you had selected.
Or, when you start the application, you see the web page that you put in as the start page for mail (god knows why you'd want one). So all our Little Old Lady from Silicon Valley could see was our home page. Which happened to also have a link to our webmail. Imagine her confusion when she found that she had no mail when she logged on that way. Not to mention the confusion of the level 1 techs below me, who couldn't quite decipher what the hell was going on.
This is where the story gets interesting, and more importantly, points out some very important interface design flaws in Netscape and Mozilla.
Those buttons to hide and unhide the left and top panes are strictly for the sort that reads Slashdot. Their purpose is not obvious. Their very existence is not obvious. And if one were to click them accidentally, it's not obvious what happened. More importantly though, is that they are fucking impossible to describe over the phone. They don't look like buttons. Hell, the border that they reside on isn't something you can describe either, especially when the border that exists around the web page being displayed is much more obvious. Personally, I'm certain that there is no real reason to use them in an e-mail program, because quite honestly, the folders list should always be visible, and the index list should likewise always be visible. If they should ever disappear, the user will invariably wonder where they went and complain to someone like me. Outlook Express at least, has menu choices to bring them back. Netscape does not.
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. While this makes it superior because of better features, it makes it very hard to do technical support for it over the phone. As such, people like me will continue to recommend it to customers, and will continue to get people started with it in the first place. It simply makes our jobs easier.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
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?
Eventually, yes. All the functionality of the current mozilla suite is going to be migrated over to the quicker, less bloated framework that firebird, thunderbird and sunbird(calendaring) are currently using.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
Hmmm, well, there's always Dillo if you're after lean, clean and fast. But Dillo doesn't yet have https support and - while probably at least 95% functional for everyday use - the rendering engine does have difficulties with complex sites. But the browser is ultra-tiny and rocket-fast - oh, and from what they say on the website, it sounds like they could use some help!
But if you want *all* the bells-and-whistles (we're talking javascript, CSS, and full internet standards compatibility here) then I can't see how this is going to happen without at least some code-bloat and a slow-down. MozillaFirebird isn't that bad when you think about it - it's *quite* fast without being outstanding, but when you consider that I can (and regularly do) have more than 50 tabs open at once I think it doesn't do a bad job.
I also can't help thinking that the current MozFirebird default theme is pretty decent - it's certainly streets ahead of the old Mozilla 1.0 default/modern looks. In fact, I'd say the look-and-feel of Firebird is the one other area apart from speed in which I really can see a big improvement - while Mozilla was only ever a power-users browser the Firebird developers seem to have taken some pains to simplify the interface and make it more friendly to the computer-illiterate, whilst still retaining the power-user capabilities.
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
Saying that there's a 33% increase from 1.2% to 1.6% is not sound. Maybe the numbers 1.2% and 1.6% are the results of rounding 1.2499% and 1.5500%, respectively. Whoops, now it's only a 24% increase.
A more correct statement would have been that the increase is between 24% and 43% - that's really everything which can be derived from the given numbers. Remember, numbers without error/uncertainty estimates are almost always useless.
There is a difference, you know...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
you propably saw konqueror running on cygwin. It is possible, but not as easy as download one package, double-click and it is installed. With the new QT for Apple, The Safari Team (actually old Mozilla developers, wonder why) could get backstapped by its originator KHTML, also running on Konqueror.
(yes this can be compared with sex)
I wouldn't be so certain it is lots of people, instead of few LOUD people.
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.
Oh get off your high horse. As if Microsoft never came up with stupid UI/program decisions. The second I start up OE6, MSN messenger decides that it's needed, for no reason, despite it being turned off in the options dialog. How is any reasonable person supposed to know that the "contacts" bar in OE opens up MSN messenger? Certainly isn't immediately obvious (my mail program should not be opening up my IM, particularly not one I don't ever use) to the end user. This took a question to the MSN newsgroups to solve.
And maybe in between your ranting you would've realized that Thunderbird is NOT Mozilla Mail 1.4. This program is geared for the masses, much like Firebird is supposed to be the common man's Mozilla. Maybe you would've even realized that Thunderbird fixes the very problem you're bitching about. No "my sidebar", no grippy to accidentally close the folder list with.
There ARE tangible benefits to moving over to Thunderbird, spam filtering among them. Intangible benefits include not being reliant on Microsoft for everything.
This discussion isn't about Netscape Mail, it's about Mozilla Thunderbird - making almost all of your tirade invalid.
/. readers but not for granny-on-the-telephone.
One of the reasons the Mozilla Firebird and Mozilla Thunderbird projects were started was to concentrate on usability, getting rid of all the extra features which make Moz great for
Specifically Mozilla Thunderbird doesn't have the buttons you're ranting about for your entire post.
There are sure to be other annoyances but this is only a 0.1 release - usability is only going to improve. People I know who have seen Thunderbird find it very easy to use and tend to switch. Do us all a favour and stop recommending IE/OE
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Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
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.
...a Mozilla geek got laid. This means the sex rate has increased from 0% in the last year to 1% now, an infinite improvement!
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