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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 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.
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 like kmail a lot, I just wish it wasn't so bloated with all the kde stuff. I only use a few kde apps.... kdevelop, quanta, kmail...
I could replace those with GTK apps (anjuta, bluefish, evolution or thunderbird), but I really like the responsiveness of the qt applications. I like the gtk apps, but as long as I'm using kmail, I might as well just use the kde apps.
Actually I'm a long time user of evolution. I would still be using it, if I hadn't one day corrupted my inbox by moving it to itself, and then trying to restore it...and erasing all my emails in my inbox. I still don't know how I did it. But I do regular backups every day now, just in case. I probably could go back to evolution... But the icons in evolution are just so BORING. I wish Ximian would release some Official icon sets, or at least have an official way to customize the icons of Evolution, like Thunderbird does. Then I'd probably go back to evolution. (as you can tell I hate the icons in evolution). Why doesn't Ximian add support like this? I've tried the crystal icon hack for evolution, but it doesn't get all the icons, and ends up looking messy.
"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?)
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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