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Mozilla Thunderbird 0.6 Released
KonijnenBunny writes "May 3rd sees the release of the 0.6 version of Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail and newsgroup client, featuring improved junk-mail controls and a new brand identity, including a new Firefox-style icon.
I switched from some murky client which didn't exactly have a bright outlook regarding spam to Thunderbird a while back and was not dissapointed. Grab this latest version at Mozilla.org." Mac OS X users can also enjoy the new Pinstripe theme, which matches the previous theme of the same name applied to Firefox.
There's a great post by Jon Hick's about the design process for the new icon/logo.
Jon has been helping us with the visual identity work on Firefox and Thunderbird and doing some really great work.
Keep in mind, the artwork will continue to improve. Two issues we are particularly focused on improving are the small versions of the icons, and the visual consistency between the Firefox and the Thunderbird icons.
As I'm sure lots of people will ask, the Thunderbird name is staying.
Mozilla is starting the drive to firefox 1.0, and Ben Goodger (the firefox guy) is requesting that everyone report/nominate their most favorite bugs so that they have a better chance of getting fixed.
Thunderbird now comes with an installer for Windows making it easier than ever to start using Thunderbird!
The new Pinstripe theme fits in with the look of Mac OS X.
The algorithm for the adaptive junk mail controls has been heavily redesigned to learn faster and catch more spam.
To be consistent with the Mozilla Foudation's goal of brand identity, Thunderbird has a new logo and supporting artwork thanks to the fine work of the Mozilla Visual Identity team.
IMAP users can now benefit from support for the IMAP IDLE command which allows the mail server to push notifications such as new mail arriving as soon as it arrives.
Thunderbird supports server-wide news filters that apply to all newsgroups on a server.
Thunderbird includes Secure Password Authentication using a new cross-platform NTLM authentication mechanism for IMAP, POP3 and SMTP.
Mail filters can now mark messages as junk.
Offline support is an optional download component in the Windows installer and is no longer a separately-downloaded extension.
Mac OS X users now get new mail notification in the system dock.
The DOM Inspector is an optional download component in the Windows installer for theme authors.
Tools > Options > Compose > HTML Options allows you to set up default HTML compose options such as font, size and color.
Attachments can be opened directly from the compose window to verify their contents before sending.
Thunderbird now supports the notion of multiple identities per mail account. This makes it easy to have several e-mail addresses which end up going into the same account. Read More about how to set this up.
In the case of a failure when copying a message to an online Sent folder, Thunderbird will now ask if you would like it to try again.
0.6 on Windows includes several improvements to Simple MAPI that allow it to work with older versions of Microsoft Office.
Pasting data from an OpenOffice.org spreadsheet no longer pastes random HTML garbage before the actual spreadsheet data into HTML compose.
Fixed several situations where LDAP connections were left open when using LDAP auto complete or performing searches on LDAP directories.
Improved view source behavior.
Mail notification for POP3 messages that are marked deleted or marked read by mail filters no longer occurs.
The "Mark All Read" keyboard shortcut now works for Linux GTK2.
--From the thunderbird webpage--
Upgraders: DO NOT install Mozilla Thunderbird into a directory containing program files from a previous version. Overwriting files from a previous release WILL cause problems. To re-use the directory of a previous install, the directory must be deleted and recreated, emptied, moved, or renamed. You should not file bugs in Bugzilla if you choose to ignore this step.
The program directory does not contain profile information; any existing accounts, account settings, options, e-mail, and news messages will remain intact. This release does not require changes to your profile to function properly.
Important: If you used a prior version of Thunderbird and installed themes OR extensions, you need to do the following or Thunderbird may NOT run properly. Find your profile directory. There should be a sub directory called chrome. Remove everything in chrome. This will not affect your mail data or preferences.
As my post above suggests, .6 adds IMAP IDLE support which is an advanced IMAP function only available in a handful of IMAP Clients/Servers but well worth it if you have it. I've found TB's IMAP support to be excellent. It's one of the few clients that can correctly show my Courier IMAP Server's folder tree with all other folders *not* being children of INBOX. It's very fast in grabbing message headers, even on large folders it seems limited only by the bandwidth. It also does a good job of cacheing the info so that the 2nd time I open up a large folder is much quicker than the 1st (unless of course another IMAP client has significantlly changed the existing mail messages). Offline support has also been added with a plugin although I have little reason to try it since most of the time I use TB, I'm connected.
Right-click the folder's name and use "Compact this Folder" from time to time. Removes the leftovers from old mails from the index file. Eudora has the same stuff, for example, so it's not an example for a sucky mail client, but for an architecture I don't really understand because I'm not a developer :-D
-- Power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Calendar extension for Thunderbird. Have fun :)
-- Power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Remember that Thunderbird is still pre 1.0 release which means that you should be prepared for "features" (bugs).
I switched my own laptop from XP-Outlook to Thunderbird 0.5 a few weeks ago, and I am delighted with the huge gain in performance, the improved virus protection, spam filtering as well as the fact that the new platform is Open-source.
However, when I did the import from Outlook, it mangled some of the email address and attachments, so I keep Outlook for backup purposes, so I can check old emails. I would not switch back, but just keep a record of all the files you use. Of course, we are all careful and audit-trail all of our work, aren't we!
To sum up: great product and project, but handle the delivery with care.
For those who are running Thunderbird on OS X, what made you choose this over Apple's Mail program? What features does Thunderbird offer that Mail does not?
Usenet. I'm quite happy with Mail.app for email, and Thunderbird for reading newsgroups.
In fact, turn IE users away at the door.
This is utopian and dumb. If you are running a business there is no way you would be so stupid as to turn away 90+% of your customers at the door simply because you don't like the way they are dressed. Idealistic, yes. Web standards are well and good, but the real world intervenes.
On the other hand, they might run into trademark-problems once again if they try to change the name of the program to Thunderfox. There are only so many words one can use for a product/company per market niche.
Good point. FYI a quick search only brings up one software package called thunderfox - a video game from the 80's, and a bunch of posturing on whether thunderbird will change it's name to thunderfox. Discarding those just leaves us with people who call themselves thunderfox on the internet, and just happen to be talking about software. So if there is a software package called thunderfox, the authors apparently don't care about anyone knowing about it.
I'm sad to say this, but the Thunderbird filters are pretty crap.
I switched to an IMAP setup at home - I have about 8-9 mailboxes on 4 different servers I check, getmail snags them all and courier serves them via IMAP. I use Thunderbird, TheBat and Mutt to read it. Nothing really special about the setup.
I haven't had time to implement any kind of server-side spam filtering, so I've been using Thunderbird (it's on the always-on desktop) to filter junk mail. The filtering is poor, to say the least. I've been using TB for about 4 months now, training it. I get a lot of spam - 100-150 piece/day - and right now it catches about 70%. Recently, I fed it about 6000 pieces of mail, all spam. It caught less than half. The false positive ratio is also too high for my liking - about 5-8%.
I probably wouldn't be bitching if it hadn't been for POPFile, which I used back when I was checking accts via POP. With POPFile, the accuracy rate ran at 98.5%. Nuff said.
Not much. Mail.app is much more elegant than Thunderbird, but it doesn't provide a newsgroup reader. I stick with Mail for - ahem - mail, and use Thunderbird for usenet. In fact, the #1 reason that I don't use TBird for Mail is that it doesn't integrate with Address Book.
I just tried thunderbird 0.6. Let me say... Thunderbird 0.6 is VASTLY improved over 0.5. I don't know if it's because this isn't a packaged rpm, but the menus are SO much more responsive than 0.5. Opening a new email takes almost no time at all. I must say, 0.6 is a great improvement over 0.5. I think I may just move over to Thunderbird now, especially since I just found an extension for Mozilla Calendar for Thunderbird.
I switched from Pine to Thunderbird a few weeks ago; here are the most important things I miss:
Another feature which would be nice to have (but not nearly as important to me) is support for mbox folders in subdirectories of the top-level mail folder.
Anyone know whether it's possible to do any of the above in Thunderbird? If not, what's the best way to make the feature request?
- Kevin B. McCarty
You could accomplish this by including a ISP customized option, this allows you to add your own radio button instead of just Email Account and Newsgroup account. The file you wish to create is \defaults\isp\US\custom.rdf. This allows you to set defaults for your user's such as the IMAP and SMTP server addresses, SSL support and preference settings. I was unable to find a definitive site for creating the customizations but Google helped me piece things together.
That's not the current plan. The current plan is for them to retain their current names. They did originally say "don't worry; it's just a codename" but since putting such effort into finding a unique trademark-free name they're now planning on keeping it (witness the new artwork and brand identity work).
Why is anything anything?
What's New?
Improved Junk Mail Controls
The algorithm for the adaptive junk mail controls has been heavily redesigned to learn faster and catch more spam.
To get the best possible experience from the new junk mail controls, we highly recommend that you re-train the filters from scratch. Tools > Junk Mail Controls > Adaptive Filters > Reset Training Data. Be sure to train an equal number of good and junk messages. We recommend several hundred messages of each.
The enable/disable option for adaptive junk mail detection appears to apply to all accounts (Tools > Junk Mail Controls > Adaptive Filters). It is, however, a per account option. To set the option for a specific account, choose the account in the 'Account:' dropdown on the 'Settings' panel, then switch to the 'Adaptive Filters' panel and set the option. Repeat per account as needed.
Get Firefox!
A lot of people are posting interesting suggestions and comments and some people are posting the reasons why they don't yet use Thunderbird.
To those of you who actually want to see your suggestions implemented, I suggest you file a bug or at the very least, submit it for discussion at the Mozillazine Forums.
Most importantly of all, it needs to support server-side calendar store!
# share
Thunderbird can publish calendars that are compatible with Apple's iCal calendar format. It's not exactly a replacement for groupware-type stuff like Exchange, as far as I can tell, but you can subscribe to others' calendars and keep your own calendar online so that you can access it from whereever you want.
More info: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/faq.html
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You are clearly in need of the Firesomething plugin!
I'm certainly pleased with Mozilla Lightningwhale.
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Mozilla Moonbadger.
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Mozilla Moonstarfish.
Mail.app's handling of multiple mailboxes is horrendous - it puts all the mail from multiple inboxes into ONE inbox! Holy cow, Batman, which acid monkey dreamed that one up?
Hmmm... I'm running Mail 1.3.4 and have 4 inboxes, one for each mail POP3 account (3 are on one server, the fourth is a different server). Now, the way it looks visually, the 4 individual inboxes are listed UNDER a parent "Inbox", but there are actually 4 separate inboxes underneath it. Are we talking about the same thing?
I like the ease of being able to take an account offline by right clicking on an inbox icon. Most of the time I want my desktop receiving work email and don't want the iBook butting in, however when I'm off site with the iBook for work purposes I can have Mail fetch my messages.
You're deploying a "technology preview" to 1500+ users? Thunderbird is great and all (I use it), but that's ballsy.
.37 and the next it's 1.0 ... Even the linux kernel, when going from 2.2 to 2.4 and from 2.4 to 2.6 was fairly arbirtrary... it's not like alot of changes didn't go in after the version rollover. (and critical bug fixes too)
Eh? I've always been stymied by people who view anything less than "1.0" as "not ready for the enterprise"
In the Open Source world, version numbers are somewhat irrelevant. One day it's
Simply put. All software has bugs. Version numbers are simply markers for points in time. While some builds are more stable than others, you shouldn't sit pining for a 1.0 version, when 0.6 is probably damn fine, and less bugs than Outlook.
Better yet, ever heard of the "3.0" Microsoft Schedule?
Microsoft tends to release software FAR too fricken early, known as 1.0 (Opensource would call that 0.2)... It's buggy, useless and not worth looking at.
Then 2.0 comes out, delivers the bare minimum of functionality, but still sucks featurewise, and has some significant bugs (Opensource calls this 0.5)
Then 3.0 comes out, delivers the promise of 1.0, not too buggy, but functional. Looks like a real app now. (Opensource calls this 0.8)
Then 4.0 comes out, and Has tons of bells and whistles, and a huge userbase, 'cause they've gone thru 4 versions. Opensource calls this 1.0
feh.
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."