Slashdot Mirror
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 would have thought that they would have renamed it to fit in with Firefox. Thunderfox isn't that bad a name, is it?
I switched from some murky client which didn't exactly have a bright outlook regarding spam
That's geekspeak for Outlook Express, if I remember.
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.
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.
As I'm sure lots of people will ask, the Thunderbird name is staying.
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!
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.
Try to win your boss over away from the "we're a Microsoft Partner" way of thinking! Show him that everytime you violate the standard to appease IE, you are taking money out of your pocket and giving it to Microsoft, and are moving one step closer to a Microsoft-only Internet, complete with Microsoft-only viruses and trojans.
While I agree with your general concept (which I think is that standards are a good thing and we shouldn't use browser-specific extensions on public-facing Web sites), I don't really understand how making sure sites work in the browser that 90% of my customers use "takes money out of my pocket and gives it to Microsoft." If my customers can't get to my content, they keep their money to themselves and spend it elsewhere.
Don't make any consessions for IE. In fact, turn IE users away at the door. Put up some links for them to get with the program and download a standards-compliant browser.
Uh, dude. C'mon. I really think you've gone over the hedge here. People don't want to be hassled when they go to a Web site -- they just want it to work. I'm all for making sure things work in Moz, Safari, etc., but most bosses rightly won't let their employees turn their Web sites into some kind of crusade for the software they prefer.
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.
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.
I know that some people will flame on about the "small tools" approach, but it would really make sense to tightly integrate Mozilla Calendar into Thunderbird. Like it or not, people have expectations, and the general expectation is that their email program will be a full PIM suite (Calendar, Tasks, Contacts). As nice as Thunderbird is, there's a large segment of the population that will take a look at it and say "No calendar? Then I'll stick with Outlook." And that's a shame, because getting rid of Outlook is one step on the road to getting rid of Windows.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
--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.
"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?
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.
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.
I am sure your date will go really well if you inform the cute girl that you equal her asking you out, with a "technology preview" of a mail-reader.
*grin*
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
"I don't really understand how making sure sites work in the browser that 90% of my customers use "takes money out of my pocket and gives it to Microsoft.""
Yep, the money's not really going to microsoft is it, so much as to your competitors. But, for anyone who gets the 90% argument from their boss:
"Designing for 90% of browsers is our policy? Here's a question. If I answered 10% of the sales calls with "hello [companyname], could you please fuck off", how would that affect our sales?"
"Now imagine if our website gave that same impression to 10% of customers"
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.
*sigh*. Is it EVER gonna get a single local mail tree for all POP accounts feature? Is it even on the list of planned enhancements? Until it gets this, I WILL NOT SWITCH TO IT. Nor will quite a few other people. I wish the developers would get a clue.
This issue pisses me off, a lot. Because I'd love to switch from OE, but I won't put up with not having this feature.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
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.
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?
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.
No, that's a build for Cygwin.
I can get Thunderbird on windows with no additional effort (IE just the installer.) For kmail I have to step through loading the POS that is Cygwin, load KDE, then load kmail and hope nothing fucks up on the way down.
I don't know the answer to this, but it does make me wonder something else.
How many folks on a Mac are really interested in using anything other than Safari and Mail? Camino, Mozilla, Firefox, etc. all run comparatively slow on my G4 iBook. Clearly a lot of optimizations have occured to make the "native" Panther apps run quickly. And they all integrate fairly nice together and have good feature sets so I just really don't see any incentive to change. It is just a question for you guys, would be curious to get some feedback.
Win32 is another story. The default mail and browser suck royal ass. And, Mozilla and friends run nicely.
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
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
I wouldn't say that Mozilla has lost grasp on real world problems. They're simply attacking the issues from a user's perspective rather than from a sysadmin or organizational perspective. Firefox allows users to have a safe secure and powerful browser, an admin could accomplish about the same feats by locking down IE network wide, blocking ad sites and spyware downloads, etc. Thunderbird is the same way, SPAM can be blocked at the client level. Mozilla simply gives the user's and the admins the choice to make it a client issue or a network/sysadmin issue.
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.