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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!)
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
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"