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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!"
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!)
MozillaZine Thunderbird Forums
FAQ and tips at Texturizer
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.
Nidelven IT just put up a new article called An Introduction to Thunderbird. Looks pretty solid.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Look at How do I migrate my Mozilla mail and settings to Thunderbird
FWIW, I've been runing Mozilla Mail 1.3 and Thunderbird side by side (using the same profile/email stores) and no problems.
I don't think it's an official milestone, perhaps more of a release candidate, but test it out for the team anyway!
Berto
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!
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)
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
It is possible to hack your profile directories and use your Mozilla Mail data. I just recreated the accounts and pointed Mozilla Mail to the t-bird profile folders in mail prefs. That way, I can use MozMail or T-bird -- primarily using T-bird when I'm hacking Mozilla and need to restart often.
.1 issue, the core code here is based upon Mozilla 1.5-ish, so the datasource functions for mail are well tested, the UI not so much.
On other imports, I successfully imported 500mb of Outlook data with no problem. Easy to share the data between t-bird and mozmail too.
As to the
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.
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.
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.
"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?
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.
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..
I'm not really flaming you, it's just a despairing situation. I use mutt, and I find it very difficult to use anything else. mutt is text only, but of course it can launch external viewers for graphics. It's super fast, and keyboard controlled. If you're handling large amounts of mail you can't use Outlook, because you're too reliant on the mouse. The rules are fine in Outlook but they're just not configurable enough to power sort email. Flagging has been available since Outlook Express 4, and you could easily sort by flag, shift-click to select, and move the messages. Now, this can be done automatically with some "flagged mail" folder. How is this killer?
I could do T (tag pattern) then write a regexp based on from, to, subject, body, etc, then have all matching messages tagged in a flash. Or I can tag some messages manually. Then ; to action the tagged messages, and in a flash copy them to another folder, forward them all to someone, reply to them all as one neatly formatted message, and so on. This is power email, and it's not in a GUI, and it doesn't take up massive resources. It is compatible with several mailbox formats, IMAP and POP. It can even write to several mailbox formats, it doesn't have an import/export hell.
Most corporate email I see is a complete mess thanks to Outlook. Notwithstanding all those stupid disclaimer signatures that aren't even line-wrapped properly and all that. OH, and don't even get me started on MS-TNEF and winmail.dat attachments which I still get from the occasional new client. Why should I run Outlook in order to receive mail from them, or why should I have to call them to change their settings, when MIME encapsulation, uuencode and base64 have been perfectly adequate for years before that client gained ground?
Outlook has a lot to do with this chaos, because it's such a prevailing piece of software... but I wouldn't call it a prevailing standard. The standard was set by PC-Pine (at least in my experience) on Unix/Linux around about the time of (maybe before) Win 3.11. Outlook is STILL playing catchup, some 10 years later. That's just plain crazy.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
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
... but of course that depends on coders to be consistent with their numbering, which they aren't: one person's 0.1 could be anothr persons 5.2! Bear in mind that this is based on established, well-tested mozilla code. By all means back up your mail, but 0.1 does NOT imply that it's going to eat your mail, trash your disk or anything like that!
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.