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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.
I just think the new logo looks way cooler than the old one
I don't mean to start a flamewar, but KMail REALLY does seem a lot more responsive (especially when manuevering about in the pulldown menus) than Thunderbird. Do you agree? If not, could I have done something wrong at some point?
I still feel it chugs along a bit slowly at times...
I use it at home on gentoo box and it feels sluggish compared with the outlook client I use at work on a machine with a much lower spec.
I guess I'll be waiting for it to meander its way onto portage at some point.
Actually, that is not a bad point. It is a question if you want brand consciousness and a lot of jokes (you don't change the name to Thunderfox) or you want a similar naming scheme and a lot of jokes (you change the name).
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.
I'd say this is one of those problems that are best ignored, however not renaming it is the easier way out.
How does this compare to Ximian Evolution? I've been using it for a while, but i'd probably switch if it was really worth it.
And the l33t shall inherit the 34r7h.
For me, the most important new feature is IMAP IDLE Support. What this means is I can deploy TB to my 1500+ users. They can leave TB open all of the time and recieve instant notification of new messages. Our Courier IMAP Server which uses FAM for Enhanced IDLE Support means IDLE connections are using virtually NILL resources. Rather than polling every x number of minutes which causes a filesystem stat of the mailbox, FAM hooks into the Linux kernel, catches any changes to the mail folder, notifies Courier which in turn notifies the IMAP Client. This rocks!
I really hope so. I moved my parent's business PC to Thunderbird from Outlook about 6 months ago, and recently taught them how to use the Junk mail feature. The problem is that 0.5 seems to move a lot of legitimate email to the Junk folder (although it may be that my parents are marking things as junk when they just want to delete them - sigh).
Oh yeah, the new icon looks really nice too, almost as good as FireFoxs.
"If you work on a for-profit site, make every reasonable attempt to resist your manager's urging to violate the standard in favor of IE. Do whatever you can get away with without being fired!"
More to the point:
"Hi, I'm from [companyname] and we're trying to find [large quantities of some electronic product]. I've just been to your website and it says my browser isn't supported. Is there something you can do? No, it's not possible to use Internet Explorer on my computer. Really? I should get a Windows computer? So should I put you down as unable to supply [product name] then?
What I would love as a feature in Thunderbird, is the use of a database back-end.
...).
When you get a mail the headers are parsed and stored in a database... the sender and other receipents are then linked to your contacts that are also stored in a database. Mail folders like we know them now are then just a certain view of your mail (all mail of the last week, unanswered mail, mail from contact X (also if he changed email address in the meantime!), and other user-defined properties (e.g. regarding project Y)).
Evolution does this to some extend (virtual folders and db storage). But they've stopped where it got really interesting (like the linking to contacts, tasks, user-defined properties,
It would also be nice if this db can be remote; this way a webmail application could use the same database. In some way this would then be a new IMAP server... but with more flexibility, support for complex queries, virtual folder, and not mail-only.
Does anybody else think this would be interesting?
- Include it by default, or at least make it SUPER EASY to install. (It's not click-and-run like some other extensions are, because it's not pure XUL -- there's a native library involved.)
- Allow Thunderbird to handle sending and receiving of meeting invitations (I understand this is in the works)
- Schedule meetings while looking at the invitees' free/busy times. Since Thunderbird already has LDAP support, it should be trivial to look in LDAP for someone's free/busy list URL.
- Most importantly of all, it needs to support server-side calendar store! The open source community appears to want to standardize on IMAP (just a folder called "Calendar" full of vCalendar objects), and that's just a dandy way of doing it. Nobody (and I mean nobody at all) has implemented CAP because it's so damn hairy. WCAP has a small following because it's what Netscape...iPlanet...SunONE Calendar Server uses, but IMAP is still the better solution because every mail program already supports it.
This is important stuff, and it needs to get implemented and put into the hands of users ASAP.(And to answer the Slashbots' next question: yes, I'm already involved and working. Are you?)
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I hate to break this to all mail client developers, but after using GMail, I doubt I'd ever be going back to anything else.
The main problem with have desktop mail clients is about spam. I access mail from 5 diff computers, so it takes 5 times as much effort to train the clients junk mail controls (since they dont share data). With gmail's central reporting, not only do optimize my spam settings, but I also benefit from other people's reporting.
All gmail needs is some sort of inbox monitor and I'd be all set.
I'd really like to have my mail in both clients... anyone out there manage to export from thunderbird to Outlook Express?
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
When will they get rid of this theming junk and integrate things with MacOS X the way it does things?
/proceeds to prepare for negative moderation.
Keep in mind, I only use Firefox when I am in windows or Linux/FreeBSD. But after using Firefox on MacOSX (even with the theme), it just seems wrong. It doesn't follow the interface guidelines. Camino is about the best gecko browser, but Safari isn't as braindead as IE, so less of a need for a decent browser. As far as Thunderbird goes, I just couldn't use it until it actually uses cocoa widgets. It is painfully obvious that the theme doesn't work like MacOS X.
Well there goes my karma.
How does Thunderbird compare with Evolution, KMail, mutt, pine, Sylpheed, and Outlook?
[I use Mozilla Firefox for browsing but Evolution (on KDE) for email.]
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I'd love to switch to Thunderbird, from rickety old emacs RMAIL, but one thing keeps stopping me. I get a lot of business email and I need to keep it archived and organized well. My archive is organized by sender and year: about 350 files for different senders each year, averaging maybe 10-100 emails in each file, dating back now over 11 years (about 3000+ files). Keeping this in emacs RMAIL is trivial, because they're all just regular files in my home directory that I can rename or move to new subdirs at will, and I can save emails out of RMAIL just by typing "o" and giving the name of the file. And since Emacs is lightweight enough (!) to run over my DSL connection, I never really need to run an email client anywhere but from my main work machine where my archive is, even when I'm travelling, so I haven't needed IMAP capability.
When I look at Thunderbird and other modern clients, I just don't see a way to keep track of old email as efficiently. I can create "local folders", I guess, but it doesn't appear that Thunderbird is going to treat these as regular files that I can shuffle off into a 2004/ subdirectory at the end of the year. And worse, since Thunderbird is heavyweight enough that I'm not going to run it down a DSL connection, it's going to create them locally, not remotely on my work machine, when I'm reading mail from home or on the laptop while travelling. IMAP seems to be a partial answer but it's going to keep its data on the mail host, not in my home directory, if I understand right.
Surely people have the same problem - how do you solve it?
Is the nightly builds. It is SO easy to get nightly builds working. You almost never lose any of your settings, just delete the contents of the program directory, download the .zip containing the newest nightly build, plop it in the old folder, and viola, nice spanking new version. :) for that reason this .6 release isn't really a big deal to me!
Whens the last time IE or Outlook had an update?
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
The main reason I don't use mail clients like this is because they will not sync with my palm. I need to be able to make a calendar change in one application and have it on my handheld or vice versa. Does anyone know of plans to include this feature?