Thunderbird 0.7 Released

aeinome writes "Right on the heels of the release of Firefox 0.9 comes the official release of Thunderbird 0.7. Updates are similar to Firefox's, with new extension and theme managers and slight increases in speed. Be sure to read the release notes for the complete list of new features, and then download it from the Thunderbird homepage."

Comments

Nice.

[chewy_2000]

New version of my favourite email client, always a good thing. Keep up the good work Moz team.

Re:Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks. I always like to achieve something, even if it is a waste of disk space.

Re:Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bandwidth will only be an issue until it gets modded down into oblivion. You need to work on your trolling insight.

Re:Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why we should all type in smaller fonts... to save disk space.

Re:Nice.

[trey_killer]

schweet!

Re:Nice.

[jhobbs]

And don't forget that a simple semicolon will do in many situations where you may be tempted to use a whole colon.

Re:Nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have added nothing interesting to the discussion. Your post is a waste of disk space. Good job.

You have added nothing interesting to the discussion. Your post is a waste of disk space. Good job.

And now, it's a huge waste of processing power... Recursion is the enemy!

yes, but...

[jjeffries]

will it win critical acclaim?

Re:yes, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Thunderbird Rocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been using Thunderbird for quite sometime now. It is EXCELLENT. The spam filter works well after you train it.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[Araxen]

Aye, the spam filter sets this email client above all the rest.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[darien]

I disagree entirely. I used to use Outlook, with SpamBayes as my spam filter. The Thunderbird spam filter is far, far less effective. I have a suspicion it doesn't read email headers or something. All I can say for sure is that after training SpamBayes for two weeks I used to get maybe one email a week in my "suspected spam" folder. Then I moved to TB's built-in spam filter, and since then I get more like three spams a day delivered straight to my inbox. Not good. If this new version doesn't fix that I'm just going to go back to SpamBayes, even though I'll have to run it as a separate process.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[Erwos]

I agree, too. One of Evolution's big mistakes was not integrating with SpamAssassin more heavily. I mean, OK, it's pretty stupidly simple to set up right now, but I really would like better integration so I don't have to do _any_ set up.

Well, maybe next version.

-Erwos

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[mlmitton]

I've been using Thunderbird on Linux (Fedora) since .3 and I love it. However, when I upgraded to .7 from .6, it didn't import all of my mail, account information, and preferences. In all of my previous upgrades, all of these things imported on their own. Did they change the folder where these things get stored? How do you import them?

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[WhiteBandit]

That just means it has more spam to train from! :)

In all seriousness though, I agree. I believe mscott actually changed the algorithm the bayesian filter uses in the 0.6 release. I've noticed more spamming getting through the filters from the 0.6 release and onward. Not sure exactly what was improved. Before 0.6, hardly any spam got through the filters.

However it doesn't mention that anything was changed regarding the filters in .7, so more of the same I guess.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[WhiteBandit]

Doh. I just noticed the release notes mention something about "minor changes to the junk mail system"

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[Luscious868]

Your exactly right. Before 0.6 almost nothing got through and there were almost never false positives. Now there are 4 or 5 spams that have been getting through every day. I just reset the training data and am going to spend the next week or so retraining the filters. Hopefully that will do the trick.

Believe it or not, I am forced to use Outlook 2003 at the office and it actually does a better job than Thunderbird has been doing since the 0.6 release. Hopefully the developers see the error of their ways and go back to the old filters or further tweak the new ones to work out the kinks.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[Alan]

I filed a bug for this *ages* ago (relating to being able to integrate bogofilter as well IIRC) and it was shot down immediately with a "this is stupid, we'd never do this" comment.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[adamfranco]

Check out this forum post. I had this problem on OS X, but it involved renaming a settin in the "profile.ini" file to use the old xxxxxxx.slt location instead of the new one named "default".

Hope that helps.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[It'sYerMam]

However, surely one could download another spam filter for TB, rather than use the builtin one?
Myself, I have never used Outlook, due to security risks, instead using Pegasus Mail, then Evolution upon switching. I found that Evolution bugged horribly when I tried to update, and wouldn't start. So I installed TB and got fun spam filters, etc.
For me, though, there are other advantages of TB, such as extensions, skinning, sleekness, etc.

The point of the Spam filter, though, is that nothing extra needs to be downloaded. I'm quite sure that better filters can be downloaded, just like with Outlook.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because it is stupid. Spam filtering should be done at the server end, so you won't see the spam no matter how you access your email.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[SimplyCosmic]

I eventually found myself doing exactly that, and running POPFile as an anti-spam proxy POP3 server, which can be run on multiple operating systems including Windows and Linux, and allows you to run use your email client of choice.

I've also heard good things about K9 on the Windows side, which supposedly has a smaller memory footprint than POPFile, but can only be run on the one OS.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[caluml]

What they need now is GPG integration. ( Windows, Linux )

Make it so!

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[Jugalator]

I did it the other way around. First used Thunderbird's filter, and now use SpamBayes. :-) I really like that filter and who cares if you need to run it as a separate process? :-/

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[jumex]

Local spam filters are great and all, but I seriously prefer using procmail if you can get it. I have been using Thunderbird (and loving it) with an IMAP account and a very simple procmail setup and it has caught almost all my UCE, and I usually get 40-50 UCE a day. I have been getting 0 false negs for about 6 months, and false pos are pretty rare. If you can do it I highly recommend this method.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[TDRighteo]

Doesn't EnigMail handle GPG encryption/decryption and signing?

Or have I been using vaporware for the last year?

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[NumbThumb]

well, duh. Ideally, the filtering would be done on the senders box, so the spam would never leave the outbox. But the world isn't perfect, you know? As long as many ISPs don't provide good spam filtering, it's nice for Joe Average to have a mail client that filters out the crud -- without manually setting up a pop proxy, or some such.

why am i replying to an AC, anyway?

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Saddam Hussein is not disarming. He is a danger to the world. He must disarm."
-G.W.Bush 1/31/03 on WMDs in Iraq

You God Damn Liberals! Always spouting lies to support your elitist views. What Bush really said was:

"Saddam Hussein is disrobing. His naked penis is a danger to the world. We must prevent him from disrobing."

And that's exactly what we did. Hussein is permanetly clothed now, his old-man naked wrinkley body is a danger to no one now.

God save us if Gore had been in office, he would not have had the guts to dress up Hussein. Who knows where the world would be today if Bush hadn't been there to cover up Hussein's penis.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[sir_lichtkind]

i do not import just create a new mail repository and copy your old in it. it always worked flawlessly cheers

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[caluml]

As you so rightly point out, yes Enigmail does this. I thought it was just for the Mozilla mail part though.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[nuintari]

do remember that spam levels are on the rise, and the advent of filter busters has made bayesian filtering far less effective.

The problem may be that TB's filter is on par with your other one of choice, you just can't see any better results, because of these two factors.

Simple fact is, you will see more spam today than you did last year, and you'll probably see more next year if current trends continue. I just hope the spammers don't find a way to break razor for a while yet, I am enjoying the peaceful state of my inbox right now.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[Augie De Blieck Jr.]

I'd recommend POPFile for spam filtering, too. I had mine filtering spam just over 98% of my spam correctly, with only a very rare false positive. Plus, the web browser interface is easy to use and intuitive. It has plenty of options available to you, but it's not overwhelming. The stats tracker on it is invaluable for the curious.

Thunderbird's spam filter is rudimentary, by comparison. It only catched about half of my spam mail. Nice start, but not good enough in comparison to POPFile.

-Augie

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[FictionPimp]

I still dont understand why spammers try to break spam filters. They are in place because the user wants to get rid of spam. I would say it is safe to say that means users who setup spam filtering wont be buying anything from said spam.

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[WuphonsReach]

I still dont understand why spammers try to break spam filters. They are in place because the user wants to get rid of spam. I would say it is safe to say that means users who setup spam filtering wont be buying anything from said spam.

The rumor that I've heard is that the situation is similar to people with "no solicitation" signs on their front door. Supposedly, door-to-door salesmen know that anyone with such a sign is more likely to be an easy mark.

As to how true that story is... (shrug).

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[compEmikey]

Actually, for me, it seemed like 0.4 was rock solid when it came to filtering junk email. I would get 1 email every month or two in my inbox, and also I would get 1 email every 3-4 months that was legitimate in my junk folder. 0.5 was a little worse than 0.4, 0.6 was a little worse than 0.5... I still have to see how 0.7 goes...

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[Corhonio]

Well, I'd be interested to listen that/how the spam filter works from a person who does buy viagra and microsoft applications hehe :P

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, thank you. My faith has been restored. Except ya missed by one...

Re:Thunderbird Rocks.

[nuintari]

because spammers themselves are not usually the selling party, they are the "advertising agency" if I dare call them that. Joe Viagra company seeks out a bulk mailer to advertise for him, the spammer charges by the number of people they blast with the spam, not the number that respond.

Having valid recipients increases the spammer's profits, but addresses that are 100% guarenteed to never respond to spam, while increasing the spammer's profits, reduce the profit margins of the actual seller of the product.

But of course, in a perfect world, people would learn that advertising with a spammer is a great way to get a very bad reputation at your own expense, and the profits for spammers would drop off. Never happen though.

Great

[$calar]

This is great for my parents' computer because they are still using Windows. But I really like Evolution better on the Linux side of things. Thunderbird is very good overall and I recommend it to all existing users of Outlook and Outlook Express. Get out now while you can!

Re:Great

[DrLZRDMN]

Get it now while you can!
Too late, it is now known as thunderfox.

Re:Great

[danheretic]

I'm waiting until it's renamed Thundercrotch. THEN I won't be able to resist it.

Re:Great

[tickleboy2]

But then you'll have to change Firefox to Firecrotch and nobody wants to have that! ;)

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

And just what is wrong with redheads?

Re:Great

[tonie]

I recommend it to all existing users of Outlook and Outlook Express

Why?

Re:A really impressive browser.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're posting in the wrong story. Perhaps you wanted this one?

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

-1: Doesn't know what he's talking about.

The problem with Firebird was that it had proper MIME handling. If the server sent .wmv files with mime-type text/plain, it would treat it as a text file.

blah

[Anonymous Coward]

what? Jeff Tracy hasn't finished Thunderbird 1 yet? jeez...

Re:Difference between Firefox and Thunderbird?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. One checks your mail. The other lets you browse the web. As for killer features, it depends whether you like getting your porn in your inbox or downloading from websites.

Re:Difference between Firefox and Thunderbird?

[gnatman64]

Firefox is a webrowser, and Thunderbird is an email client.

Fedora?

[rleibman]

Same questions as for firefox, when can we expect it in the Fedora updates?

Re:Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a source-based distro and you wouldn't have to "wait" for dependency-burdened updates.

Yeah. You just have to "wait" for it to compile instead.

Re:Fedora?

[JFitzsimmons]

That's hardly an answer to the question that was being asked. Either answer the question or say nothing at all. Spewing masked zealotry doesn't help the problem at all. Either answer the question or don't say anything at all

That being said, after that, I don't have the answer either... Ahhh, the pleasure gained from hypocracy is immeasurable.

Re:Fedora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it matter? I've always downloaded the file, extract and run. There is no need to wait.

Re:Fedora?

[Rinisari]

It's probably on Fedora.us already. They're pretty good about that. If it's not, get the spec file, change the headers around, and build the RPM yourself. I'm sure you wouldn't be the only one to appreciate that.

Re:Fedora?

[mulesex]

Use a source-based distro and you wouldn't have to "wait" for dependency-burdened updates

Source based distro users still have to wait for the source packages to be created. But then people who would rather compile software than allow experts to compile it for them aren't really going to be bright enough to see things like this.

If you wanted to call fedora 'pants' (which it certainly is) you should have done so.

Re:Fedora?

[Disevidence]

Use your eyes and realize that he doesn't care about any source-based distro.

Re:Fedora?

[ModMeFlamebait]

I'd actually expect fedora to include the very-latest-only-we-have-it thunderbird 1.0-pre-doesn't-really-work-cvs in the standard install. what's up with these guys? come on, they should keep their standards :P

(disclaimer: i had a client install fc1 and i call it crap, never bothered to look at fc2, heck, even mandrake is more stable and polished. i use debian on my systems exclusively but some people just like the niceties of plugging in a pendrive and seeing it on the desktop - that's 100% fine with an office box although i'd never set up a fedora/mandrake/... server... brr)

Re:Warning: Release Candidate status still...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this is a separate release that has left release candidate status. (Yes, that's 2 releases in 3 days, but open source always says to release often...)

Still Room for Improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

I used Outlook for a long time before getting fed up with it, and now I'm going through the same thing with Thunderbird. In fact, I still can't seem to switch between HTML and plaintext email composition without changing my overall composition preferences, which is buried at least four or five clicks away from the composition window.

I'm not sure if it's a config design issue as much as it is a familiarity issue. I dumped Outlook because of its history with security, and Outlook 2002's poor compatibility with Windows XP. Thunderbird is better in some ways, but it definitely has its downsides, not the least of which is the painful configuration of multiple accounts and general preferences.

Firefox and Thunderbird are incredible aps but Thunderbird especially has a lot of room for improvement. When Thunderbird can piece together split usenet files and handle Y-EN/C then it will probably truly have arived for many of us. After that you need to out-exchange exchange :) and realize email is a centeral pda application and to that end we need scheduling, adress books that sync with our newtons, and help us manage our lives. Indeed, do Thunderbird right and you can really shake up the world because there's a real hunger and need for an ultra powerful email/usenet/scheduler/contact/pda manager.

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[vena]

in outlook 2003, i have my composition settings set to always convert to plaintext. at the top of each email it converts, it has a little notify pane that tells me it's converted from html. if i click that, it forms a dropdown from where i can select "convert back to HTML."

might be time to give it another look?

i too switched to thunderbird for a while. that is, up until it started folding in on itself. one day i'd load it up, and it had decided to duplicate every email in my store. a week later, it corrupted the entire store and rendered every email blank. the files themselves were blank. there was no real reason for this to happen, it just goes to point - thunderbird is not a release-ready application and is still very much beta software.

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you want to send html email in the first place? It's bad etiquette.

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[OverlordQ]

Write an Y-EN/C extension then.

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[psylent]

"In fact, I still can't seem to switch between HTML and plaintext email composition without changing my overall composition preferences, which is buried at least four or five clicks away from the composition window."

Doesn't [shift]-Write work for you?

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

After that you need to out-exchange exchange :) and realize email is a centeral pda application and to that end we need scheduling, adress books that sync with our newtons, and help us manage our lives.

Argh. No way.

I don't have a PDA, and use a separate scheduler program. Leave the PDA stuff for extensions, I don't want it cluttering up my mail client. If Thunderbird wants to interact with separate scheduler applications, then that is no problem either, but turning Thunderbird into a Mail Client/PDA Synchronizer/Scheduler/Life Manager/Java IDE/Tetris Game monolithic application sort of defeats the "do one thing well" ethos that it began with.

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I've never seen the usefulness of combining your calendar/scheduling app with your email app. Makes about as much sense to me as combining a web browser with a word processor. Why not just leave them as separate applications?

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[cheekyboy]

WHY ISNT this info in the TOOLTIP for the write button?

Its little things like that , that really make a great app, proper hints that are usefull, and inteligent software.

No one has the time to read 100 pages of docs.

Dont know if .7 does this, but when you customize your toolbar, you should have the option of adding ANY MENU command into a button!!!!! That is of such usefull and obvious importance.

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[ArmorFiend]

I think their plan is eventually to have a little drop down menu next to each of "write", "reply", "forward" etc, that lets you choose text or html. Or maybe I'm getting that confused with inline versus attachment forwarding.

What I really want, though, is to be able to switch a message mid composition from one format to another. Because sometimes you need a little finesse, sometimes you need a lot.

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[rjhall]

Well, that does work for me.
But I ctrl-m to compose a message, and ctrl-shift-m doesn't do what you would (or, at least, *I* would) expect.

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[lvdrproject]

In fact, I still can't seem to switch between HTML and plaintext email composition without changing my overall composition preferences, which is buried at least four or five clicks away from the composition window.

I'm not using the new version, but i can't even figure out how to change 'my overall composition preferences'. Is there some way i can set it to ALWAYS, BY DEFAULT, use plain text? Because it always uses HTML until i tell it not to for me. :/

Or has this been fixed (if applicable) in the new version?

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[mvdorpe]

Hold shift while clicking the compose button to change your HTML/plain text settings for the e-mail you're about to write. This does not change your default settings.

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[tuxnduke]

> can program as well as Linux himself, I too would prefer if my box can program herself... but it won't. Do I treat her badly of what, or are you referring to Linus [Li:nus]?

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[Sunspire]

It's done on a per server basis. Open up Tools->Account Settings, look under "Compositioning & Addressing" and uncheck "Compose messages in HTML format".

Note that if you don't use any of the HTML controls, even if you're in HTML editing mode, Thunderbird is smart enough to send the message as regular plain text.

Re:Still Room for Improvement

[pmw57]

On writing plaintext emails
Doesn't [shift]-Write work for you?

Alright, I give up here. How the hell is one supposed to learn about such very useful things by using standard Thunderbird documentation?

Oh, and a gripe. The importing of messages and/or settings from other Thunderbird profiles is still far beyond the realsm of normal expected user usage.

--
Paul Wilkins

Re:Difference between Firefox and Thunderbird?

[juglugs]

Yeah, Thunderbird allows you to get pop3 email...Firefox doesn't ;-)

Re:Difference between Firefox and Thunderbird?

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple of BIG differences.
Firefox lets you view webpages, thunderbird doesn't unless they are in a message.

Thunderbird lets your download, read, and send email, but Firefox doesn't let you do that.

Enjoy!

vs. Opera

[ogewo]

Being an Opera fanboy and having no experience with Mozilla, could somebody point out some advantages of one over the other?

Re:vs. Opera

[Punboy]

Opera, AFAIK, is not open-source. Firefox and Thunderbird are. Firefox and Thunderbird IMO are more stable and have more/easier to use features. Also, they look better. And in some cases are faster than Opera. Go try them out, they won't bite :-p

Re:vs. Opera

[ogewo]

...and as it relates to this topic, Thunderbird vs. M2

Re:vs. Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

could somebody point out some advantages of one over the other?

Yeah, one sucks the other doesn't.

Oh, sorry, I thought you were asking the difference between Mozilla and IE.

Re:vs. Opera

[Arial Sharon, 10pt.]

One releases binaries for FreeBSD, the other doesn't.

Re:vs. Opera

[rasz]

Operas M1 or M2 or how else it's called 'email client' crap .. well, its a crap. Dont know about Thunderbird, but The Bat works for me.

Re:vs. Opera

[HouseOfMisterE]

Sure. If this was Soviet Russia, one would be a form of entertainment, and one would browse you.

E.

Re:vs. Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

ok im not exactly a classical music fan, im more into the trance scene, just for the record. But cultured (and ussually old people) still benefit from the pleasures of watching opera everywhere. Not just in russia... im gonna put it as plain as i can think... and im thinking that was REALLY ignorant, so just be quiet next time, word of advise

Re:vs. Opera

[phreakv6]

I used opera till yesterday and i gave up because it didnot work with gmail !!! ...of course firefox fires gmail.

Re:vs. Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

Advice, advise is a verb.

I don't really think it was an ignorant comment, either, merely a joke lacking in a great deal of humour.

Re:vs. Opera

[Spytap]

Well, I used to be an Opera fanboy up until last week. I tried out Firefox, and it blew the shit out of Opera in terms of speed, page errors, and comptability. Firefox loads pages damn near instantly. Opera was fast, but firefox is demon-fast.
As far as Thunderbird, I don't know, I don;t use the built in Opera mail client, but from a former Opera user...Firefox is now my default....

Re:vs. Opera

[Rits]

I used opera till yesterday and i gave up because it didnot work with gmail !!! ...of course firefox fires gmail.

Which is related to the mail clients in which way... ?

Re:vs. Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

and in some cases they are really much fucking slower. firefox can take 10 minutes to come up from minimised on my (512mb ram) sytem with lots of tabs open.. opera takes seconds. known bug that they don't know to fix for 4 years, apparently.

Re:vs. Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't happen to me. Comes up instantly. I'm using 0.9 though, maybe this was a problem with an older version?

Re:vs. Opera

[Punboy]

This is most probably because Firefox and Thunderbird are compiled with debug, so things take a little longer, particular when rendering a page.

Re:vs. Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

For the parent asking the question, this comment is not exactly honest.

As always, whenever a new version of FF comes out, the fans sing its praises, and I buy into it. "Maybe this is the version that'll kill Opera", I think. So I try it.

It certainly doesn't blow the shit out of Opera. Opera loads faster, and the two render and switch at approximately the same speed ("bloody fast").
As for page errors... well, perhaps Spytap visits different websites to the ones I do, but FF has rendering errors on Slashdot. And not consistent ones either - some pages have a gap between the left hand panel and the title bar, and some don't, while Opera and IE both render the gap correctly every time. Just a minor thing, almost unnoticeable, except that I view Slashdot several times a day, and a small thing like bad page layout can really give you a bad impression of a browser when you know how the page is supposed to look. Slashdot is not a complicated site, so if it gets that wrong, what else will it render badly?

FF doesn't load Flash animations out of the box, and if I want to see Flash animations, I'd consider that a rendering error. Why go off and try to find/download/install Flash support when Opera has it by default in a smaller download? To be fair, Flash rendering is not always Opera's strong suit, but it is constantly improving, and even half-assed support is better than none at all.

If Opera crashes while you're using it (or even if you close it deliberately), it will load up again with all your previous pages. Firefox won't (by default it will warn you you're about to close 20 tabs, but you could disable this warning and you'd be screwed if you hit close window instead of close tab).

As for compatibility... well, you can't really take a comment like that at face value. I'd have to see some examples before I'd take Spytap's word for it. There are no pages I care to visit that Opera can't handle. It's been months since I've even seen a page that failed, and longer since the browser has actually crashed on me.

The end conclusion is - don't trust Slashdot users for opinions on which software is better. Most users here start with preconceived notions and shape their arguments to fit them (hell, including me - I'm actively pointing out Opera's strengths, not FF's); you're not going to get a fair answer.

I feel I have to post this, because Opera has a small user base, and doesn't get defended enough. Opera's still the smallest, most capable browser I've ever used, and while I have no doubt that one day FF may match or outdo it, this is not that day.

Re:vs. Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

"it's a crap"

So, someone who can't correctly form a simple phrase is going to be an expert on what separates a good mail client from a bad one? And someone who isn't even sure of the NAME of the mail client is likely to have a valid opinion on it? I'd wager you haven't even tried to use M2, much less read the introduction to it.

Re:Pardon the Ignorance...

[jark]

Firefox is a standalone browser whereas Thunderbird is a standalone email/news client.

So advanced...

[MSBob]

yet still without multipart MIME support in newsgroups. Sorry guys but if you want your news client to have any sort of market share better make sure it is more porn friendly!

Re:So advanced...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry guys but if you want your news client to have any sort of market share better make sure it is more porn friendly!

I'm a big fan of Thunderbird. It's lack of porn friendly features (yEnc anyone? Yeah, it's not really a true standard, but who cares when it comes to porn?) forced me outside to meet real women, and so now I don't need porn anymore.. so Thunderbird is now feature complete for me.

Re:So advanced...

[Anonymous Coward]

All that got you was a restraining order, so what now?

Re:So advanced...

[BinLadenMyHero]

I have sex regularly with my girldfriend, and I still enjoy masturbating with pr0n.

One is not a replacement for the other.

Re:Pardon the Ignorance...

[Anonymous Coward]

Name changes.

One always changes, the other occasionally stays the same.

Yeah!

[samisme]

I'll just stop using Sylpheed and move on to Thunderbird!

Really I mean it!

Re:Difference between Firefox and Thunderbird?

[Anonymous Coward]

The release notes are linked right out of the summary.

This is a new low. Not bothering to RTFA and instead asking for TFA to be posted in the comments when slashdotting isn't even a problem.

What's the word? Thunderbird!

[daeley]

17.5% alcohol by volume, baby!

Er, wait, you're talking about email, huh?

Never mind, then, carry on... [hic!]

Re:What's the word? Thunderbird!

[sootman]

What's the price? A dollar twice.

Re:What's the word? Thunderbird!

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget Thunderbird. Cisco's much better!

Mozilla

[Sandman1971]

My question is.... When will Firefox and Thunderbird be packaged together in a new full blown Mozilla release? Can't seem to find any info on the website regarding it.

Re:Mozilla

[neverkevin]

From the FireFox FAQ:

What's happening with the Firefox development?

Firefox will be used as the default browser in Mozilla. The current Mozilla suite will be replaced by stand-alone applications.

Link

Re:Mozilla

[jamatfu]

Doesn't that defeat the purpose? They split the Mozilla project and used various parts of the trunk to develop more streamlined stand-alone products. Now you want them to marry them [again]?

Re:Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, he asked WHEN, not what

Re:Mozilla

[beforewisdom]

Forget that I would be happy if the two could could work together in both directions firefox thunderbird.

That is the only reason why I still use mozilla at home.

I *LIKE* having my mailer and browser integrated....at least to the point when I click on a link in thunderbird I get firefox to come up.

Steve

Re:Mozilla

[neverkevin]

Well, it was a good thing I gave the link, because that was the next question in the FAQ :)

Re:Mozilla

[atrus]

Clicking on a link in Thunderbird gets Firefox started... It works differently on Windows (Firefox needs to be the default browser) vs. Linux

Re:Mozilla

[beforewisdom]

I was aware of the second point on windows( work ) where I have thunderbird and firefox installed.

Many apps for the longest time let you specify which browser/accessory apps you want to use for it.

I wish both thunderbird and firefox had such features built in.

The company I work has windoze for a reason.....IE is the main browser for our product. I would like the option of using firefox with thunderbird without having to make firefox my default browser.
It just wouldn't be "correct" to have firefox as my default browser at my job.

IMAP has regression bugs

[Schmucky The Cat]

I installed it this afternoon and it marked everything as read. *!*!&&! POS.

Geuss the lesson is don't install Release Candidates of OSS.

Re:IMAP has regression bugs

[GenSolo]

No, the lesson is don't install Release Candidates of anything in a production environment.

Re:IMAP has regression bugs

[cheekyboy]

That means all your spam was read ;-) whats the big deal (haha)

Still its better than the POS outlook in IMAP, which totally blows, I swear they assign the lasiest/crapass looser programmers for the IMAP component in outlook and the managers probably dont care or probly it was part of the spec, "IMAP - must be shit house, assign to our dead beat f0cker coders"

Re:IMAP has regression bugs

[Schmucky The Cat]

Yes, Outlook has absolute crap support of IMAP.

But marking all my messages as read prevents me from migrating from Outlook Express, which has reasonably good IMAP support.

Re:Warning: Release Candidate status still...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, if you go to page 9 of that thread you linked to, you'll notice that they're talking about the 0.7 final release today.

Sure thing

[billybob]

Here you go.

Hope that helps out.

Re:Sure thing

[ogewo]

Well I searched google and found the thunderbird information on other news sites and an opera/m2 comparison on other forums, so I guess I see your point. Google has made Slashdot obsolete! =O

NOT A Release Candidate!

[jark]

The correct thread by mscott, pointing out the 0.7 release is right here. This is not a release candidate but an actual point release.

Mozilla 1.7?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's Mozilla 1.7?

Re:Warning: Release Candidate status still...

[Jack Comics]

Totally incorrect. While the Release Candidate was released on Monday, which is what you linked to, the new 0.7 is the official release two days later as no major problems were found with the Release Candidate. For more information, see here.

Yes but. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it let me keep my kick ass theme.

I don't really care about the radical changes in how it lets me download my mail, as there can't be that many revolutionary things left to add.

Speed?

[skinfitz]

*slight* increase in speed? I saw that Firefox allegedly had a "3% increase" - Bollocks! - it's CRAP LOADS faster than the old version! If TBird has a similar speed increase I'm looking forward to it.

Re:Speed?

[CeleronXL]

The 3% speed incrase was just the result of one speed fix. There were also many other speed fixes/optimizations that took place, even though they only reported on one.

Re:Speed?

[alistair]

I made the same mistake, I saw the 3% figure for speed improvement and didn't waste time downloading it.

Had the release notes clearly stated "This new release is CRAP LOADS faster than release 0.x" then I would have downloaded it in a heartbeat.

Honestly, the quality of technical documentation these days....

They won't

[billybob]

The point of these apps is that they're SMALL and designed to do ONE THING ONLY (browse the web or check your email) so they're not bloated.

If you want firefox and thunderbird in one app, then use mozilla. :)

I like it this way.

Re:They won't

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problem is that they load two copies of gecko into memory, two copies of XUL, etc.

Some way of sharing memory between them would be nice. It doesn't matter if they use 40% less memory than Mozilla if there are two copies open.

Re:They won't

[cheekyboy]

They are supposed to LIBRARIFY mozilla as an independant ENGINE, which thunderbird could 'load' and use as its rendered/subsystem also.

We arent talking about a 18meg MONOLITH exe here which is 100% lame ass if you ask me (hello object orientation for gods sake).

Running both Thunder/Firefox together uses a lot of ram, 25/40meg each. Surely having a component based system that shared resources/code would be smaller and use less ram.

Still one has to admire using good ole Win-Pine in windows, its tiny, small , fast as shit, and works well and has proper windows menus. What we need is a text only version of thunderbird that uses 3-4meg max ram only. I guess only oldschool code hacks need apply for this easy challange (400 component IDE code jockies , your out of luck)

Linux URL handling.

[normal_guy]

Am I missing something critical about Mozilla's handling of multiple instances? It displays the profile prompt if the program is launched again. The other annoyance is Thunderbird/Firefox interaction. Unless I'm wrong, a custom script is required to have Thunderbird launch URLs in a new Firefox tab. Any suggestions?

Re:Linux URL handling.

[lucifer_666]

To open external links from any third party app in a new tab in Firefox, rather than a new window, try Single Window by Aaron Spuler, a Firefox extention which I only found and installed yesterday.

It has two tick boxes, one for enabling single window mode for all links, and another to enable opening external links in new tabs. I've got the first one off and the second one on. Works great!

Re:Linux URL handling.

[BorgHunter]

Right-click link > Copy link location Ctrl+T in Firefox > Ctrl+V > Enter

Re:Linux URL handling.

[normal_guy]

4 actions instead of one.

Re:Linux URL handling.

[BinLadenMyHero]

Just use this handy script.

Re:Linux URL handling.

[normal_guy]

Found a better one if you're interested. Thanks for the response, tho.

Not happy.

[Wig]

I wasnt overly happy with Thunderbird 0.7. I downloaded, installed, and found out that it doesn't seem to want to work for me. This is interesting, considering Last night I tried to get Thunderbird 0.6 and the .tar.gz was corrupted, it only showed the "components" folder (which is hardly enough to send mail.). So, I think I'll just stick to KMail and hope Thunderbird 0.8 is better.

Re:Not happy.

[antiknijn]

So, you're ditching the car because you don't know where to put the key?

Re:Not happy.

[Wig]

No, I ditched the car the first time because it didnt have an engine. Now it doesn't have a starter.

Re:Not happy.

[antiknijn]

Can't say I've noticed...

Re:Not happy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I did one better, after installing 0.7, whenever I tried to run it on my 98 box, it kept making the "starting program" noise, and every two seconds or so, it'd do it again and again and again. I eventually had to delete my thunderbird folder, start a new copy up(which, of course, created a new default mail folder under my profiles), then selectively copy my mail folders into the new default folder until I had my email back.

Re:Warning: Release Candidate status still...

[david_reese]

Sorry...

my bad. Apparently this is not the case. Please mod parent post down. Good work on the TBird team to get an RC into general release so quickly!

In atonement, I plan on spamming my family to upgrade from their current versions (0.3 on up) :-)

Talkback should help out the many eyes/shallow bugs situation, and apparently the extension/themes will be a bit more stable from now.

Re:Web browser overload!!

[jamatfu]

Don't be a doofus. Read the posts before you comment and you might notice that it's an email client.

Wait, is that your IE calling?

Love it

[CrypticSpawn]

Actually was having a hard time finding an IMAP client that worked well, until I found Thunderbird and now that is all I use.

Actually...

[Ender Ryan]

Actually, at my (admittedly small) company, we have already standardized on Mozilla Thunderbird for email. There _are_ some bugs, but they are easier to live with than the shortcomings of other, lesser email software.

We even use it on the Macs, which came with... Mail.app? iMail.app? whatever... We use it on the Macs, because it just does IMAP better. It still amazes me how poorly most email clients handle IMAP.

Thunderbird also supports TLS for all mail communications, which is very nice to have out of the box support for in free software.

YMMV.

Re:Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

what's wrong with mail.app's imap support?

Re:Actually...

[jdreed1024]

We even use it on the Macs, which came with... Mail.app? iMail.app? whatever... We use it on the Macs, because it just does IMAP better. It still amazes me how poorly most email clients handle IMAP.

You're kidding, right? At least for 0.5 and 0.6, Thunderbird had serious IMAP/SSL bugs, where it would just hang for no apparent reason. The release notes acknowledge this bug, even. This caused a problem not just with delays in INBOX operations, but also manifested itself as a problmem with sending. If you chose to save sent mail on the server, and clicked Send, and it sent the mail, and then hung trying to write it to the server, it would respond with "mail was not sent" when it clearly was, it just hadn't copied it. Even the old Netscape 4.x was able to say "Sending the mail was successful, but copying it to your Sent folder failed". I never understand why Mozilla/Thunderbird couldn't do that.

I haven't compared against 0.7 yet, but last I checked Mail.app was an exceptionally good IMAP client, and even pine was better than Thunderbird at IMAP/SSL.

Re:Actually...

[Ender Ryan]

Bullshit.

I'm not denying the existence of this bug, but we NEVER WITNESSED THIS BUG.

Mail.app has had exceptionally buggy IMAP support. Eg. it would hang when changing folders, often, similar to the Thunderbird bug you describe except we saw it all the time. The latest versions of Mail.app are finally pretty good.

Re:Web browser overload!!

[AnonymousCowheart]

Three? There's WAY more browsers than that! Check this out:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/

I've gotten a much higher quality of spam

[Anonymous Coward]

with the new Thunderbird client.

More seriously, I've used Thunderbird both at home and at work for quite a while and prefer it to the other mail programs. I just installed the new version even though I was happy with the previous one just because I wanted to see what new features are in it.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Proper MIME handling was quite the bane to my semi-dedicated small business support team. Firefox is a true heaven send!

Compared to web-based e-mails?

[line.at.infinity]

In the past I've used First Class Client, pine, and currently I'm satisfied with web-based e-mail. What's the benefit of using mail clients such as Thunderbird or Outlook over web-based e-mail? For my web-based e-mail I get

* no ads
* at least 1 GB per mail account
* spam filtering
* impossible to download infected attachments
* etc

I also edited the .forward file for my pine account so I can read those e-mails on my web mail account.

Re:Compared to web-based e-mails?

[cheekyboy]

SquirrelMail for linux is a good webbased email reader for your local machine.

And your email still is in your hardware, not in some data centre which could get nuked/flooded/bullets ripped thru after an IT staffer gets sacked.

Re:Compared to web-based e-mails?

[moosesocks]

Compared to FirstClass..... sure.

Having a sane net-admin is always nice. Honestly, when I saw the First Class client, I was somewhat impressed by it. That is, until I saw the mess that the server is. Anybody willing to use FirstClass is completely nuts. Why use it when you can choose between Exchange or simple open-source POP3?

Re:Compared to web-based e-mails?

[Yer Mom]

What's the benefit of using mail clients such as Thunderbird or Outlook over web-based e-mail?

I'd say the fact that your messages are safely on your box, rather than at the mercy of someone who could decide to shut up shop overnight, is a fairly major benefit...

Warning to Mac OS X users

[gwoodrow]

So, it could just be that I'm a moron, but I thought I'd share anyway.

Virtually every program I use in Mac OS X Panther allows me to overwrite an old program with the newer version without screwing up any of the settings. Thunderbird, however, screwed up big time. It copied perfectly, and opened smoothly, but it did NOT keep any of my settings. I'm having to go through and reconfigure all my email accounts and settings from scratch. I like thunderbird, but this little feature is a big enough pain in the ass that I may have to stick with Mail just so I don't have to worry about wasting time with this again. Proceed with caution, Mac users.

Re:Warning to Mac OS X users

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they decided to change the default location of account files. Breifly, you need to find ../Thunderbird/profiles.ini. Open it and either change the path to point to your old files (Profiles/defult/XXX.slt something like that), or copy the files in xxxx.slt into the new Thunderbird directory.

Head over to the Thunderbird Support forum on www.mozillazine.org for a better explanation.

Re:Warning to Mac OS X users

[mios]

That's strange .. that didn't happen to me. What IS interesting is that I thought it was supposed to "Import" the new stuff into ~/Library/Application Support/Thunderbird instead of just ~/Library/TBird It doesn't .. and the kicker is that I installed the RC literraly minutes before I found they released the .7 release, and the RC put the App data into the Application Support folder (where it should be!) Ain't that something ...

Re:Warning to Mac OS X users

[bunhed]

Me too, even though I did heed the warning about erasing first. It didn't nuke my settings though, it just ignored them a created new ones. Check out your ~/Library/Thunderbird/... directory for two defaults setups. Here's how I fixed it... *Grumble*/*snort*/*drag*/*trash*/*drop*. Much better now! :)

Re:Warning to Mac OS X users

[BobWeiner]

Same thing happened to me. The solution, while an easy fix, should have been elegantly handled by Thunderbird instead. Hopefully we can see this in place before v.0.8 is released.

Re:Warning to Mac OS X users

[gwoodrow]

(humor)(sarcasm) Wow your fix works great! The thunderbird mess-up disappeared and suddenly in its place was the default Mac Mail program! It works perfectly now ;) (/sarcasm)(/humor)

In all seriousness, this time around I have to grudgingly concede to Microsoft Entourage. Although Windows always crashed on me (that being the reason I switched to a mac in the first place), Entourage never gave me any of these kind of problems. I also agree with the poster who said that this thing should have been handled elegantly by Thunderbird.

Re:Warning to Mac OS X users

[cheekyboy]

i guess it was too hard for them to write an

if( no settings found )
Go_Get_oldsettings();

are programmers that lazy ass? or are they cruel?
Dont give OSS a bad name, do the obvious, even its just for your reputation, because if your app is shit and its on ur resume, you wont get hired.
Have some pride in your work, being free is no excuse.

Re:Warning to Mac OS X users

[YetAnotherName]

I guess I was one of the lucky ones. Here's what I got when I tried to download it:

The requested URL /pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/0.7/thunderb ird-0.7-macosx.dmg.gz was not found on this server.

Slashdotted? Or taken offline for repairs?

Re:Warning to Mac OS X users

[gwoodrow]

Thanks to all the great fellow slashdotters, I did manage to get the new version working with my old profile - it just takes some extra work. I'd still keep trying to download the new version if I were you - just be prepared to alter your profile.ini file to point to your old profile instead of the new empty one.

Re:Warning to Mac OS X users

[Millennium]

The exact same situation occurred in Firefox 0.9, which also failed to handle it gracefully. Frankly, it's things like this which make me wonder (with great fear) that the Mozilla team's commitment to the Mac may be faltering. These fixes would have been borderline-trivial to implement, at least in the settings import wizard if not automatically.

Re:Warning to Mac OS X users

[Anonymous Coward]

Rest assured that, at least in this case, it's cross-platform and non something Mac specific. Or is it that their commitment to Macs (to introduce bugs in parity to the other platforms) too great? ;)

Another question

[Anonymous Coward]

Along those same thoughts I have a similar question: When will Mozilla have an application bundle available for download containing the separate Firefox, Thunderbird, and Nvu applications?

Re:Another question

[mrchaotica]

Thanks, I'd never heard of Nvu until just now.

But to answer your question (with another question, don't you just hate that?), why would mozilla bundle Firefox and Thunderbird together, when a) lots of people only use Firefox, or only use Thunderbird, b) the total file size probably wouldn't be much smaller, and c) even if the total file size was smaller, the people for whom it matters most (dialup users) would still be better off with separate files?

Also, I don't see why mozilla.org would distribute Nvu at all, since they didn't make it (despite the fact that it uses Gecko). (Not that it wouldn't be nice if Mozilla made it; they're more interested in cross-platformness than Lindows, and I wouldn't mind having a version for Mac OS X)

Re:Another question

[mr_sas]

uhm, nvu is basically mozilla composer plus new features,it's made by daniel glazman, who's ex-mozilla and iirc still on the mozilla-composer team, he says he's gonna check in all the nvu stuff to mozilla cvs i think.

Re:Difference between Firefox and Thunderbird?

[evilmonkey_666]

Thunderbird lets your download, read, and send email, but Firefox doesn't let you do that.

Uh yes it does:
mail.yahoo.com
hotmail.com
gmail.com

app refuses to start ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sorry to rain on the parade and I will start my (anonymous) rant with kudos for the Mozilla developers.

Having said that, I just tried to upgrade my existing Thunderbird installation and I get an error that refuses to go away till I kill the fricking Thunderbird instance. Yes, clean profile, yadda,yadda,yadda.. I know all about it. The reality that the Mozilla developers steadfastly seem to deny is this.. (in bold text, since I am somewhat annoyed).

Though you say that your products are not release ready, people actually USE them as if they were .

Ask me how many times I've agonized and read forums and moaned and wrung my hands over Firefox ? Many, many hours. The move from 0.7 to 0.8 was traumatic and the move from 0.8 to 0.9 was less so, but still took several hours of time before things were back to normal. Yes, I understand the use of profiles, why it is important, why having the same profile from one version to another is a bad idea.. But face facts. We are now (in the case of Thunderbird) 3 point releases away from a 1.0 Is going from fully functioning mail client to something that won't even start even remotely acceptable ? My view is that it is not.

Add to that the attitude of some (again, I apologize for waving a very general tar brush in the direction of the hardworking and unrecognized Mozilla developers) responsible for core development and you wonder ... are you an open source project worthy of the name ? I personally would LOVE to help. But what's the point ? There has been public rejection or ignoring of my attempts to get involved. I know I am not alone in this plight. I will just mention in passing that some of the Mozilla developers come off as having a slight attitude problem and leave it at that. If you have had the misfortune at being on the receiving end of their tirades, you know what I mean here.

I like Mozilla, I like the idea of choice, I like the idea of an alternate mail client and browser. I am willing to help, as are so many others. But if we're delegated to the role of consumers and consumers alone, then at least listen. Your installer sucks in terms of migrating existing profiles and users. I am sorry, but it doesn't matter how many bells and whistles your application has.. if it doesn't start, it's all moot anyway. Maybe THIS post will get through to some person who is responsible for decision making in Mozilla. If not, thanks Slashdot. You let me vent and let off steam.

Re:app refuses to start ?

[Snoopy77]

Though you say that your products are not release ready, people actually USE them as if they were.

And who's fault is this? They tell you that their product is not release ready yet you use it as if it is. Are they suppose to magically make it release ready just because you use it as such?

Surely you knew what you were getting yourself into when you switched to a sub 1.0 program. It was a decision you made so don't blame the developers for your poorly thought out choice.

BTW you promised to start your rant with kudos for the Mozilla developers but I don't see you praising them at all.

Re:app refuses to start ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally would LOVE to help. But what's the point ? There has been public rejection or ignoring of my attempts to get involved. I know I am not alone in this plight.

If you want to help, read the documentation on what needs to be done, start hacking and come hang out in #mozilla on irc.mozilla.org Since you don't go into details of the rejection, I'll have to guess as to what happened, but I suspect you either 1) posted on mozillazine and your idea was rejected by the fanboys hanging out there, or 2) one of the three or four people working on the firewhatever front-end was typically rude and didn't consider himself to have the time to hold your hand.

If it was the first - that's basically the same as being offended at any random Anonymous Coward here at /. - those people might whine and moan an awful lot, but they have almost zero actual influence on what happens with mozilla. People who write code have influence. And people who write code don't have time to wade through all those threads. (That's not to say that there aren't a few highly dedicated coders who try to be communicative there, but they really get drowned out.)
If it's the second - yeah, they suck. Come work on the back-end instead and either hope for them to relax after 1.0, prove your worth so that they will pay attention to you, or do as most of us, and realize that the Suite really is the product for you anyway. (Firefox is the product designed for clueless IE-loving newbies; Mozilla-proper is for webdevelopers, power-users and programmers - and despite ongoing rumors as to its demise from the afore-mentioned fanboys, you can count on it being around for a very long time yet.)

Re:app refuses to start ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Different AC.

Whilst i'm sure that most of the people who read slashdot are capable of determining that it is indeed a sub 1.0 release, mum and dad don't give a crap, and just try explaining to them that yes it is better than other windows browsers even though it is not a full public release yet.

By the way thanks to Moz dev's. Awesome product irrespective of rants on here.

Re:app refuses to start ?

[juhaz]

I've updated both Thunderbird and Firefox quite a few times, and profiles have always followed in both without a hitch.

And in fact, those don't sound like profile problems at all. They sound like you're breaking this VERY clean and simple advice:

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.

I agree that they could and should automatically clean up old stuff from old directory now that they have an installer, but it doesn't take more than few seconds to delete the damn directory and it doesn't cost you any preferences so it can't be that hard. JUST DO IT manually until such time as it is automated.

Re:app refuses to start ?

[ManxStef]

Well, personally, my upgrade went completely smoothly, and this was with mail originally exported from multiple Mozilla suite profiles into one Thunderbird profile (by hex editing the %AppData%\Thunderbird\registry.dat file, and prefs.js inside the actual profile dir). No tweaking or manual hacking required AT ALL. With that said, here's a more in-depth upgrade guide, with profile troubleshooting hints:

You *must make sure* that Thunderbird, Firefox and Mozilla are *all not running* (for instance, when I just upgraded I noticed that the Thunderbird MapiProxy.dll was locked by Mozilla). Double-check in the Task Manager and kill as necessary.

Delete the contents of the Thunderbird application directory (or copy/backup, then delete). This is important! (And has been mentioned by others in this topic already.)

Install Thunderbird.

Start Thunderbird. Note that the first time it starts it does take an age (esp. if it's a fresh install and it's creating a new profile - 30 seconds or so for me on an old Athlon 800). Be patient.

From the looks of things they're now moved away from the binary %AppData%\Thunderbird\registry.dat file, which is a *very good* thing (no more hex editing!). If you look in %appdata%\Thunderbird (where %appdata% is typically "c:\documents and settings\your username\application data") you should find two files - registry.dat and profiles.ini
Rename registry.dat (to .old or something, it's no longer used). Open the profiles.ini file. Make sure that your profile path is correct; if it doesn't match with your files, fix it ;) In my case it's:

[Profile0]
Name=Stef
IsRelative=0
Path=C:\Doc uments and Settings\Stef\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\Stef
Default=1

Open up this path. If you are still having troubles starting with a profile (after deleting and reinstalling the entire app) then this is the place to start trimming. Make a backup of the entire dir first!! Then you can fairly safely delete:

[extensions]
[chrome]
compreg.dat
mailViews.d at
panacea.dat (get rid of this one, esp. if you've moved the profile from Mozilla)
persdict.dat (personal dictionary additions)
training.dat (spam training data)
xpti.dat
compatibility.ini
components.ini
XUL.mfl
mimeTypes.rdf
localstore.rdf

Gemal.dk has a good description of what most of these files do (though it's an out-dated list compared to Thunderbird):
http://gemal.dk/mozilla/files.html

The absolutely essential ones to keep are:
The entire "mail" and "imapmail" subdirectories
prefs.js (which contains all the account details and paths to their data files in the above dirs)
*.mab (your address books)

There are more porting and profile details here:
http://texturizer.net/thunderbird/faq.html# q2.2

Note that you have to fix any paths in prefs.js - think they may now allow relative paths, but they used to have to be absolute.

Hope that helps, at least a bit? Remember that it *is* still sub v1.0, but they're getting better with each release. It's still always been easier than dealing with Outlook Express:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.asp x?scid=kb; EN-US;q263837

Ouch! ;)
(you may need to need to trim Slashcode-inserted spaces from URLs)

Re:app refuses to start ?

[ManxStef]

Oh, I almost forgot another useful tip: the "-p" switch makes the Thunderbird profile manager appear:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" -p

Very handy ;)

Re:app refuses to start ?

[Snoopy77]

Why do you think that I have not yet tried to push it onto my less technical friends? I did likewise with OpenOffice, waited until it was 1.0 and then presented it to my friends.

Re:app refuses to start ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they can't clean up automatically - the Firefox installer tried that, resulting in some users getting C:\Program Files wiped out with all their other apps. Yeah, they actually installed Firefox without a subdirectory; I do consider that PEBKAC.

But I imagine that's why they don't dare try it now...

Threaded messaging

[brunes69]

Anyone who uses email frequently cannot live without threaded messaging once exposed to it. This and this alone will keep me off of webmail forever (sure, you *could* thread in webmail, but it would either result in many trips back / forth to the server to expand / collapse the threads, or it would need fancy JS and DHTML magic which I have never seen in a webmail app.).

I access my email solely through IMAP, and while I *do* occasionally use my webmail access while away from the desk, it is far from my first choice.

Other things client side email can give you
- Better spam filtering than webmail, since you can run your own and fine tune it
- Don't have to worry about your email account suddenly being terminated due to the whim of a company
- Privacy issues
- Infinite GB per email account (in theory)
- Better integration with your desktop calendar and addressbook
- Ability to easily sync with your PDA / Cell phone
- Ability to click "mailto:" in your web browser and have it work
etc...

Re:Threaded messaging

[Wild Bill TX]

Google's Gmail does this. The whole thing is run with incredibly fancy JavaScript/DHTML, which is why only a few browsers are currently supported (they're working on a plain HTML version, thankfully). The messages in "conversations" may be expanded and collapsed as desired. Perhaps you should buy an invite from somebody on eBay so that you can check it out yourself.

Re:Threaded messaging

[christopherfinke]

I've written a webmail client that does threading, as well as thread arcing. Check it out.

Re:Threaded messaging

[Malc]

You haven't used Exchange's web access (OWA???) have you? It's a pretty good interface in IE, but degrades somewhat in other browsers. Still not as good as running Outlook natively.

Re:Threaded messaging

[Crayon Kid]

Anyone who uses email frequently cannot live without threaded messaging once exposed to it. This and this alone will keep me off of webmail forever (sure, you *could* thread in webmail, but it would either result in many trips back / forth to the server to expand / collapse the threads, or it would need fancy JS and DHTML magic which I have never seen in a webmail app.).

You don't really need to make it complicated, it can be simple too. The latest IMP from Horde has a threaded display mode. All the threads are expanded all the time and you view N messages per page (with the N of your choice). It works pretty well for me as far as threaded views in webmail are concerned.

Re:Threaded messaging

[BenjyD]

Aren't most message threading displays broken by the idiots whose idea of an address book is to click reply on some email you sent them three years ago? I know that's what a lot of people I work with do.

Re:Threaded messaging

[Anonymous Coward]

http://hastymail.sourceforge.net/ threads. Pure HTML, blazingly fast.

Re:Threaded messaging

[duggy_92127]

(sure, you *could* thread in webmail, but it would either result in many trips back / forth to the server to expand / collapse the threads, or it would need fancy JS and DHTML magic which I have never seen in a webmail app.)

In short... enter Gmail. It displays mails as 'conversations', with the collapsing and expanding very much as you describe. Still in beta, but it's already very, very cool. Check it out.

Doug

wow

[tisme]

I just figured it out... it came to me so clearly and instinctively that it is frightning. Here is the revelation: MY PURPOSE IN LIFE WAS TO DOWNLOAD THIS VERSION OF FIREFOX!!! Anything from now on is icing on the cake... I am now complete. :P

Not from me....

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't even launch (WinXP). Back to 0.6. :(

Re:Not from me....

[Masami Eiri]

Delete your old install first, then install it. Or install to another folder. That should make it work.

Re:Not from me....

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Slashdot. Every problem with OSS is PEBKAC, and gets moderated into the stratosphere.

Sorry, renamed the old directory, it won't run.

Re:Not from me....

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Assume PEBKAC
2. ????
3. Profit! (Karma, anyways)

Re:Not from me....

[Nasarius]

It worked fine for me, upgrading from 0.6 to 0.7 on XP. Even my Enigmail settings survived.

Re:Not from me....

[Incoherent07]

There's a warning about instaling 0.6 and 0.7 in the same directory. (My 0.7 install didn't even default to that directory, anyway.) In other words, RTFA.

Re:Not from me....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well hey, if it worked for you, the person must have clicked the 'install' icon incorrectly, or used too much pressure on the mouse button. Thanks for sharing. Really.

Re:Not from me....

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't installed in the same directory as the old one. When you assume, you merely make an ass out of yourself, not me too.

RTFA indeed. Already did. Any more smug suggestions, smart ass?

Re:Not from me....

[BugZRevengE]

Some AC Said:
Well hey, if it worked for you, the person must have clicked the 'install' icon incorrectly, or used too much pressure on the mouse button. Thanks for sharing. Really.

I really hate it when I do that... clicking on the left hand side of the icon when the programmer meant the right... it makes a big difference, I'm sure thats why so many MS Windows systems crash, someone hit the wrong side of an icon, or better yet, pushed too hard on the keys/mouse...

I'm glad my Linux servers don't have those pressure sensitive mice and location dependent icons...
Is it because I use the cli, and only use the keyboard?

Seriously, it is good to know if the problem is common or not.

-=-=- Troll/Funny/Bait? The difference is you :-)

Question for OS X thunderbird users...

[Xyde]

I'm an OS 10.3 user and use Mail.app which comes with OS X.

I've used an older build of thunderbird before and it was okay but honestly I wasn't terribly impressed with it. I just use standard POP3 for all my accounts...is there any compelling reason why I should use it on OS X instead of Mail.app?

I can see how it would be preferable over Outlook on Windows with all the viruses going around and the general bloat/suckiness of MS crapware but does it do anything that Apple's Mail doesn't? I'm not trolling or anything, I really want to know. Mail.app used to get really sluggish in previous versions when you had a lot of messages, but that seems to be fixed nowadays.

Re:Question for OS X thunderbird users...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use OS 10.3, and thunderbird .6. Although I can't say much specifically about mail vs. thunderbird, I can say that thunderbird .5 rather blew, while .6 improved significantly. For example, when clicking on a mailto link in firefox (or whatever browser), thunderbird .5 would open and immediately crash. There were a handful of other serious bugs that I uncovered on the first day using it, and I decided it just wasn't worth the trouble. For windows, maybe, but the mac version just didn't seem to be there yet.

I've had pretty much no trouble since giving .6 a shot, though, and I'm sure .7 is only more stable. (We hope, anyway.) My point, ergo, is that it might just be worth giving thunderbird another shot... besides, the dock icon is pretty badass - much cooler than mail.app's.

Patrick

Re:Question for OS X thunderbird users...

[barfy]

The stupid drawer, and the fact that delete does not work correctly in the mail view.

I have used mail.app because there was nothing really better on osx, and the mail app is pretty good. But it has now been regulated away. I much prefer the three-pane view over the drawer view, which for mail seems just kinda clunky. Drawers are good, if they are not OPEN all the time.

Actually strike that, I think drawers are a bad UI concept.

And the fact that the list widget doesn't work properly just drives me crazy, and the fact that thunderbirds DOES work properly is enough!

Re:Question for OS X thunderbird users...

[Cameroon]

But a 3 pane view is essentially a drawer.... is it not? And no, I don't consider being "inside" the borders of the parent window a big enough difference to say that a 3-paned view is somehow different than Mail's 2 panes + drawer.

Of course, I don't use the "preview" pane in any mail application 'cause I find them more annoying than useful. Don't get me wrong, drawers do have a habit of being abused, but I don't think Mail is one of those locations.

List widget? Mailing list? Sorting list? Other list? I just don't know which you're talking about so I can figure out if I agree or not :)

The things that drove me nuts about Thunderbird (just tried it out) are mostly minor and "polish" related:
- Popup buttons don't behave quite right, sometimes they are funky sizes.
- Sheets/dialogs are often improperly sized.
- My scrollwheel works in some places but not others (for example, the Advanced portion of the prefs).
- It doesn't (yet) support importing of vCards and the half hour I tinkered with importing stuff from Address Book (via the Address Book Exporter application) was a waste of time (and really only a "second best" solution anyway, since it would be far nicer if it could actually just use Apple's Address Book API).
- The threaded view felt clunky, since "Sort by Threading" would be deselected if I clicked a column. Furthermore, if I order by date descending (newest on top) it will order the top level appropriately but "inside" the thread it will put the newest at the bottom of the list. Arrrghhh. I'm spoiled by Mail's threading which does it right. Thunderbird needs to be in Threaded/Non-threaded sort mode and let you click column names to change the sorting but STAY THREADED and it needs to sort the thread internally by the same criteria as at the top level.
- Essentially one has to go to multiple places to manage one's preferences (such as Preferences and Account Settings...). Apple got this mostly right, the configuration stuff is all accessed through one spot.

I can't comment on the Junk mail's strengths or weaknesses.

To its credit, those problems are mostly minor annoyances. It is pretty fast and its IMAP seems to be pretty good. However, it doesn't have anything to recommend it over Apple's Mail to me in terms of features, so those minor annoyances are deal breakers.

I'd love to see a client that is at least as good as Mail's current features but with better filtering and ways to act on email messages (I used to use BBEdit's MailSmith pre-OS X and it's filtering controls were great). For instance, neither Mail nor Thunderbird will let me build a rule that says match X and (match Y or Z).

Re:Question for OS X thunderbird users...

[barfy]

No a drawer is not the same. As the tool bars and window widgets are not in the correct place. They are relative to the main window and not the drawer. So if you close the drawer then the window is too far to the right, if the drawer is open then the the controls are too far to the right...

I have yet to see any application that is better suited to drawers than a multipaned representation.

I live in mail preview. So that works best for me..

As to the list view problem... Set your inbox so that last mail is on the top...

Now go three mails down and delete a message.

Do this in mail and do this in thunderbird.

The thunderbird method is correct, the behavior of what happens after delete, and which item gets focused should not change based on sort order of the list. This is true in all operating systems, and UI's but is different in mail. This makes mail extremely difficult for me to use.

But as you do not use preview, I do not use vcards. So I don't miss the feature, though I agree it needs to be fixed.

And configuration doesn't bother me, though I find it odd to have to wait until getting mail the first time to enter in my password rather than at account creation time.

Re:Question for OS X thunderbird users...

[Anonymous Coward]

The main reason for me to switch from Apple's Mail.app was that it fails to handle message boxes larger than 1000 items. Saddly, I've got several (already sorted and sectioned off) mail folders that have far greater than 1000 ... 15-20k more likely. Thunderbird handles these large folders with ease, whereas it got to the point of Mail.app taking 2-3min or so at 1500 messages just to click on the folder (this on a 1.25GHz PowerBook).

Mail.app is a great program for most users. Thunderbird still has some areas to be worked out, but nothing too terrible for me to use it. And Mail.app simply fails to meet my mail client needs.

Re:Question for OS X thunderbird users...

[juhaz]

Have you filed bugs and/or RFE's for these minor annoyances?

Nothing happens if you whine on /., but if you make it known to delelopers there's a problem, changes of it getting fixed improve 100% (can't fix something if you don't know its broken).

Re:Question for OS X thunderbird users...

[Cameroon]

Not yet, I played with Thunderbird last night after this story was posted, did laundry and went to bed :)

I'll file 'em if I get a chance tonight, though. Fully cognizant that nothing will be fixed if they aren't reported.

Mozilla is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

What a cool ass group of programmers.

You can be too!

p.s. open source forever.

Warning to Upgraders

[fupeg]

From the release notes:

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.

They have an installer and yet they have this problem? How amateur is this? If this is the case, then the installer should delete the old directory or better yet, delete the files that are not overwritten and cause problems. I love Thunderbird, but this is pretty weak.

Re:Warning to Upgraders

[bob_dinosaur]

Seen the version number? It's 0.7 for a reason. If this was a 1.0 -> 1.x release, that'd be a very valid complaint.

As it is though, I don't think we can really complain.

Re:Warning to Upgraders

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, I guess I should have read the release notes before trashing my existing copy :-)

Time to re-install.

Re:Warning to Upgraders

[aardvarkjoe]

Version numbers are meaningless outside of a particular project. Although many projects use the "0.x is beta" system, that's by no means universal.

More to the point, however, if they can't get upgrading to work right in the beta phase, why should we expect them to get it right later?

Re:Warning to Upgraders

[cheekyboy]

Yes we can, if its a problem that can be fixed in under 1 hr, we can!!!

stop smoking pot at work Tb coders.!

Re:Warning to Upgraders

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude... this is a 0.7 release. Calm down.

Re:Warning to Upgraders

[jE]

Downloaded Firefox and Thunderbird today. Firefox is awesome.
IE6 is now (almost) obsolete. Just like that.. Really.. I mean it. Ctrl mouseclick ! The web feels like 1999 again :)

But.. on my w2k installation Thunderbird 0.7 crashes Firefox 0.9.
And uninstalling Thunderbird will not fix the problem !

It's the old profile-screw-up issue with a twist.
Firefox (the standalone browser) gets borked by Thunderbird (the email client).
How ? They share data in the "c:/Documents and Settings/Administrator/Application Data" folder (hidden by default in w2k) and they both put up a lot of registry keys. This data is not cleaned out by a standard uninstall.

I fixed Firefox by uinstalling Thunderbird/Firefox , then deleting the Thunderbird/Firefox data found in "Application Data" pluss the registry keys, rebooted and installed Firefox again.

But I can't use Thunderbird as it is now. A shame, since it felt great.
I guess this is a Firefox issue. But lean browsing is more important to me than lean email.

Re:Warning to Upgraders

[Bloody Pulp]

Both Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7 and Mozilla Firefox 0.9 are considered "Technology Previews" as clearly indicated in their release notes and both state you should uninstall any previous versions before installing a new version. The Firefox 0.9 notes state that upgrading will be fixed in a future release. As well, installers for technology previews are generally considered unofficial preview installers since the upgrading issues involving the installer are not considered important until they have a stable release.

Re:Warning to Upgraders

[node 3]

More to the point, however, if they can't get upgrading to work right in the beta phase, why should we expect them to get it right later?

That doesn't make any sense. In fact, I'd say it's just the opposite: when there are problems in the beta, one expects them to fix it later. Why would you think they won't get it right later? This isn't some patent-laden problem, or an aspect that some see as a feature, and others as a bug. It's just a problem where they'll have to decide how they want to correct it, and go for it.

Re:Warning to Upgraders

[MagicFab]

Wrong. Firefox 0.9 is no longer in the "Technology Previews".

Re:Warning to Upgraders

[Bloody Pulp]

In my post, I stated that "Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7 and Mozilla Firefox 0.9 are considered Technology Previews as clearly indicated in their release notes". I was referring to release notes for each respective product and not if the Thunderbird 0.7 or Firefox 0.9 are displayed in the Technology Preview section of the main page for mozilla.org site (http://www.mozilla.org).

While Firebird 0.9 may not show up the "Technology Previews" section on the front page of the mozilla.org site, but if you read the release notes for Firefox 0.9 at:

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/releases/0 .9.html

The top of the release notes, specifically and plainly state that "Firebird 0.9 is a Technology Preview". In fact, the words "Technology Preview" are in bold in the release notes. From the release notes for Firebird 0.9:

"Release Notes - Firefox 0.9 (One Tree Hill)

Firefox is a speedy, full-featured browser that makes browsing more efficient than ever before. More information about Firefox is available.

Firefox 0.9 is a Technology Preview. While this software works well enough to be relied upon as your primary browser in most cases, we make no guarantees of its performance or stability. It is a pre-release product and should not be relied upon for mission-critical tasks. See the License Agreement for more information."

Re:Warning to Upgraders

[tunah]

Hmm, although it does still say it's a tech preview on the firefox page, it's listed as a main item (above mozilla) on the mozilla.org front page... I guess they're trying to push it as their "main browser" now.

Re:Warning to Upgraders

[smurf1974]

Guess they are thinking about people who do not use the compiled versions and compile and install it themselves, or use the compiled linux version (which is a tar ball).

All they are saying do not configure, make, make install without making sure you have cleaned out any previous install.

Re:Warning to Upgraders

[aardvarkjoe]

Why would you think they won't get it right later?

Because the beta phase is supposed to be the time where you identify problems and correct them. This isn't a new problem -- in fact, people have been complaining about the same issue for previous versions, and Firefox has the same problem.

re: Thunderbird

[bogie]

It seems to be progressing ok and I think for mom and dad it would work well in replacing that POS outlook express. I'd even go so far as to say that would probably hold true for any basic POP3 situation. But IMHO its still has a Long way to go to compete with Evolution of Linux and the Outlook on Windows. It also falls pretty far short as far as newsreaders go. But heh, its OSS and is only going to get better with time.

so is it better than Eudora from 1995 yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can Thunderbird finally display progress from separate mail accounts at the same time? Maybe something more than "Downloading 1 of 629" ? Something that indicates how much time is left?

Re:so is it better than Eudora from 1995 yet?

[cheekyboy]

Maybe they can do what macs do.

"About an hour left..."

"About 15 minutes leff..."

"Any day now...."

"Call me tommorow..."

Re:so is it better than Eudora from 1995 yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

so is it better than Eudora from 1995 yet?

I just switched my dad over recently. He was an early adopter of email, but can't handle change. He had made me install his copy of Eudora 3 (16bit win3.1 program) on his new machine a year ago. I thought that was nuts and now he is on Thunderbird and enjoying it.

Re:Difference between Firefox and Thunderbird?

[xenocytekron]

----unless its webmail (for firefox, since you're telling both sides of the story)

too late...

[UTRules]

If this had come out before I got my gmail account, I would have been interested, but now, what's the point?

gmail r000lz!!!11111oneone

Re:too late...

[mesach]

Actually T-bird was out before april 1, I get WAY MORE than 1gb of storage, I can have Multiple accounts without violating any TOS, I can Search Pretty easily through the mail, the Spam filter works pretty well for me too

and best of all... I didnt have to be some blog junkie to get access to this beta

Re:too late...

[pingurslapp]

But " The THUNDERBIRDS are a Go!!!"

Re:too late...

[Ba3r]

I definitely agree! Not only do i get a gig of storage, but the interface on gmail is miles ahead of all the clients in existence out there.

on a side note,curiously my yahoo account went from 4mb to 100mb this morning.. right after gmail rapidly increased their user base (they gave me over 10 invitations to distribute over the last week!).

Re:Web browser overload!!

[mrchaotica]

The funny thing is, they do have 3 browsers, even though Thunderbird isn't one of them!

(Mozilla, Firefox, and Camino, by the way - and they have 3 because they serve different purposes)

Multiple email addresses per identity yet?

[Mustang Matt]

The one feature that's kept me from switching is that it tries to create a new set of folders for every email address. I want all my addresses tied to one set of rules/folders.

Re:Multiple email addresses per identity yet?

[Mustang Matt]

Just a heads up... I installed it and it looks like they've worked this out quite well.

It's behavior in this regard is different that Outlook Express but not in a bad way. I'm still getting used to it, but I think I can make the switch!

Re:Multiple email addresses per identity yet?

[dalangalma]

What exactly is its behaviour now? I've been tracking the bug about allowing all accounts to share local folders, but as far as I knew it wasn't included in the main builds yet.

Another Answer

[BlackErtai]

They're still going to allow them to be downloaded seperatly, it's not like once they both hit 1.0 they're gone as seperate products or anything, it's more of a "hey let's replace our mainline browser with something developed for speed, along with a "new" mail client also developed for speed. After they do, the mozilla developers will work on making the two work closer together, while the firefox/thunderbird developers will do what they've been doing, bulding great apps!

Why is this better then Mozilla?

[aussie_a]

I always look at the latest version of Mozilla's release notes (whether it be Firefox, Thunderbird or Mozilla) and I always ask myself "why should I upgrade?" and I always answer "I dunno." So I ask slashdot, why should I upgrade? I have Mozilla 1.7. I use it for both e-mail and as my browser. What is new in Firefox and Thunderbird that would make me want to migrate to them instead of stick with my current browser? I know there's a new design (woop-dee-doo) and it's faster. But is there ANYTHING else?

Re:Why is this better then Mozilla?

[JazzXP]

Don't know about Thunderbird, but Firefox has customisable toolbars, which is something the is severely lacking in Mozilla. Also, as I'm a web developer, I'm opening and closing web browsers quite frequently (to make sure Java is totally out of memory), and I find the startup time on Firefox is quite a bit faster than Mozilla (it's almost as fast as opening IE which is pretty good as IE is intergrated into the system, thus always partially running).

Re:Why is this better then Mozilla?

[justinarthur]

These are points worth considering. Though the GUI is one of the few major differences, some of the new GUI enhancements are indeed nice. As far as the toolbars go, there are Mozilla bugs such as 47418 (would link but bugzilla rejects slashdot referrals) that requests more control over toolbars in the main Mozilla branch. If you feel its a feature you'd like added to Mozilla, you can vote for the bug. As far as startup time is concerned, Mozilla has been admittedly notorious for its slow startup times in the past but this has vastly improved in the current 1.7 tree, and if you're a windows user, there's always the Mozilla startup agent which allows Mozilla to behave in a somewhat similar fashion to Internet Explorer in the way that you describe.

Threading in Thunderbird sucked

[aussie_a]

Threading in Thunderbird simply did not work and stopped me from attempting it ever again. I just checked it out in Mozilla 1.7 and it works like a beauty :)

So does threading actually work in the latest Thunderbird? If not it will be why I don't migrate to it.

I don't want to see one comment from .....

[Anonymous Coward]

gentoo users. Every time there is announcement of a new application all the chumps from the gentoo camp talk about how all they have to do is `emerge ebuildname` and it just works. Being that this is a rather popular application, there still is not a stable ebuild for thunderbird 0.6. I guess not only do I have to wait forever to build the application, I will have to wait for the ebuild to be available.

thunderbird

**to be honest, every stable ebuild I have installed it has worked perfectly.

Exhange Server

[Phoinix]

Can I use it instead of outlook to connect to the Exchange server at work?

Re:Exhange Server

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I have been doing this for some time. Depends on the Exchange settings, but it works for me.

How do I clean emails from past versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thunderbird is awesome, and I've been using it for quite some time, but does anyone know how to clean up old thunderbird emails in the profile? They don't show, but they seem to be taking up space anyway..

As in, even with an emptied sent folder, it can still take up 8 mb och space in my profile.

Re:How do I clean emails from past versions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try the "File -> Compact Folders" menu.

Opera is still better

[Space_Soldier]

Opera's M2 is still better than Thunderbird.

Caution with themes!

[Trillan]

I don't know if it is a general problem or not, but when I've tried to download Thunderbird themes Firefox has attempted to use them, instead of passing them to Thunderbird.

Not passing them to Thunderbird isn't that big a deal, really. Trying to use them in Firefox is. Installing a Thunderbird theme into Firefox will cause all of Firefox's controls to disappear.

A little caution is in order.

It's not.

[justinarthur]

Actually, running Mozilla is faster than running both Firefox and Thunderbird at the same time, because the mail/news and navigator components of Mozilla use the same instance of the Gecko Rendering Engine without wasting system resources. There is NO reason that I can possibly think of for switching from Mozilla [SeaMonkey] to Firefox+Thunderbird until Firefox+Thunderbird can utilize the same instance of the GRE. Moreover, if you want standalone, you can always select the specific components you want installed during the graphical installation or during compile.

Re:It's not.

[mikefoley]

Which makes me wonder why so much effort is being put into confusing potential users.

I love Mozilla. I switch alot of people to Mozilla. Why not put alot of the nice look and feel of Firefox and Thunderchicken into the Mozilla suite?

Confuse less of your "customers" and satisfy the rest.

Re:It's not.

[ManxStef]

There is NO reason that I can possibly think of for switching from Mozilla [SeaMonkey] to Firefox+Thunderbird

When you're halfway through writing an e-mail and the browser decides to hang, or vice versa? (Which used to happen a bit to me if I was tunnelling mail accounts through SSH and the connection died: Moz mail would hang everything.)

I've been using Mozilla fulltime since v1.0 and I've recently moved all the mail from my Moz profile to Thunderbird, and I have to say it's a good thing - it feels more responsive, and the separation alone just makes dealing with mail seem better and easier.

In general most people want isolated apps, they do not want a massive, bloated monolith that does everything (including stuff they never need); and they don't care, or even notice, that more system resources are used. Don't get me wrong, I still love the Mozilla suite, but I agree with some of Scott Collins's comments in his recent arsTechnica interview: namely that the Mozilla team should've used native controls long ago, and by inferrence that it also should've been split into more nimble, singular applications like Firefox and Thunderbird long ago, too. Now that it has, I feel a lot more confident deploying them on standard home user machines (parents, family friends, etc.) - not only 'cause they're more polished, but because people *want* one app for "the internet" (web) and one app for mail.

Ouch.

[Trillan]

Actually, it seems as though the only theme on the site at the moment (my favorite, Mostly Crystal) is listed as compatible but isn't. So I guess problems with switching themes aren't so bad when there's nothing to switch TO...

Re:No solaris build

[Anonymous Coward]

skirt, get the fucking source code and do it yourself.

"geeks" like you make me sick. really. just go back to using windows.

Problems with PDF attachments

[very]

I'm having problem with downloading PDF attachments. For some reason, the PDF files are corrupted when downloaded using ThunderBird 0.7 Anybody else have similar problem?

Re:Problems with PDF attachments

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a common problem, and there is a very simple work-around.
I've emailed you a pdf containing step-by-step instructions....

try it and make up your own mind

[Anonymous Coward]

N/T

That's helpful

[aussie_a]

In the past I've tried both, and I have seen absolutely no difference between either. Yet every release they always tout "brand new features" but I have yet to experience any that Mozilla itself doesn't have so I have stopped trying every new release, because I never see any difference between it and a previous version.

Importing Outlook 2003?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know if importing of Outlook 2003 email works better? I have a few ten thousand emails in Outlook (don't ask, it's my work email), and TB 0.6 always dies about halfway through importing.

Charamel for both!

[ShadeARG]

Charamel is pretty nice. It's a dual theme for both Firefox and Thunderbird. I've been using it for the last couple of days, and it supports the new extensions for Firefox 0.9 and Thunderbird 0.7. It's definately worth checking out!

Re:Charamel for both!

[Trillan]

Hey, I like that. It's warm and fuzzy. It tempts me to switch Windows to using the same color...

Re:Charamel for both!

[ShadeARG]

I didn't know if I'd like it at first, but it's really grown on me. I've also been tempted to change my system color scheme to match it...

How do you get the profile manager??

[RobertLTux]

# Other New Features... New user interface for viewing vCards. New Profile Manager which also supports running from a USB device..... -- Okay folks for a new feature it seems to be very well hidden (and the profile seems to have full paths in it) hints or ideas?? the firefox version works quite well

Re:How do you get the profile manager??

[Anonymous Coward]

use thunderbird -ProfileManager :)

Not sure about 0.7.

[dancingmad]

I've been using Firewhatever since .6 or so (maybe earlier) and I jumped on Thunderbird when it came out. But at school last semester I used webmail. When I came home I reinstalled Thunderbird, .6 and the .7 prerelease and they both stutter on the Inbox screen. I haven't found anymore info on it and it's only in the mail 3 pane view (when viewing an invidiual message it doesn't happen). Anyone know what the deal is?

Re:Difference between Firefox and Thunderbird?

[Disevidence]

One's made of fire and likes eating bunny rabbits. The other is very loud and normally hunts fish.

what the grandparent wants is already implemented

[vena]

the dropdown the grandparent wants exists in outlook 2003 already. it's right next to the "options" dropdown. it's a list box with HTML, Rich Text, and Plain Text options.

as for your request, are you asking to be able to have only a portion of an email be html or do you want to be able to turn a while email into html in the middle of typing it? this dropdown will do the latter.

Link it up...

[DA_MAN_DA_MYTH]

And here's that link!

Yeah I almost flipped a lid that I lost my mail and didn't bother to back up Thunderbird. Then I realized I'm an idiot, and the application doesn't store my user info.

Thunderbird Rocks..again

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried Thunderbird and never went back..It's awesome. Some of the old extensions are now included in the normal package! That's like..teh w00tness!

--Anonymous Coward (Coolnat2004)

Is there a tutorial on transitioning from Outlook?

[Vermifax]

I would like to save my inbox and various folders.

Threading Question Limitations

[aussie_a]

In Mozilla 1.7 I can't find the option to sort threads based on the last post in the thread. Is it possible to do this in either Mozilla 1.7 or Thunderbird?

My favorite e-mail client!

[partiallynothing]

I am very glad the Mozilla team decided to upgrade their e-mail client. It had been, for quite some time, my first choice because of it's OS flexability (Linux, MacOSX, Windows). I also think that the layout is intuative and works well. I am very much looking forward to the final releases of Firefox and Thinderbird as they should, and are already, causing many people to migrate from Internet Explorer and Outlook, respectively. Keep it up Mozilla! Continue creating nicely-coded applications. Make sure to keep Microsoft on their heels; they can continue to swim on their code mess of programs!

Re:Difference between Firefox and Thunderbird?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank-you Captain Obvious.

Re:Is there a tutorial on transitioning from Outlo

[christowang]

Open up Thunderbird and go to File and Import.

You can select Outlook, and import your contacts and all of your email over with no problems.

toolbar icons, headers

[phrasebook]

Is it possible to reduce the size of the toolbar icons, and remove the text under the icons?

Is it possible to toggle full headers view on/off as you can in eg. PINE or mutt?

Re:toolbar icons, headers

[Trillan]

Is it possible to reduce the size of the toolbar icons, and remove the text under the icons?

Sure. Right click on an empty spot in the tool bar and choose Customize. Or, if you prefer, click View->Toolbars->Customize.

Is it possible to toggle full headers view on/off as you can in eg. PINE or mutt?

Haven't used PINE or mutt, but it sounds like you want View->Headers->All or View->Headers->Normal.

Re:toolbar icons, headers

[phrasebook]

Thanks dude, the toolbar one was obvious enough...

Actually what I meant by toggle headers was whether there is a key mapping for that. I found the menu item, but in pine/mutt you can just press 'h' when viewing a message to toggle headers on/off.

Re:toolbar icons, headers

[fluxrad]

ctrl+u should do the trick. well, it isn't as nice as PINE but you can view the headers real quick and then just close the window. That's what I use to view my spamassassin markup when I need to.

Re:toolbar icons, headers

[Trillan]

Oh. Heh. If you can find where the extension developers hang out, you can probably just ask.

Re:toolbar icons, headers

[phrasebook]

Thanks, I guess that'd do. The whole app feels a bit awkward though. And it appears you can't force plain-text everywhere, ie. turn off HTML completely. I should give it a longer shot but I reckon I'll keep using good old pine for now.

Re:toolbar icons, headers

[Anonymous Coward]

View -> Message Body as -> Plain Text

Re:toolbar icons, headers

[Anonymous Coward]

>it appears you can't force plain-text everywhere, ie. turn off HTML completely.

It's per account, not global, and it would make more sense if the option was in the same place where you set up plaintext/html domains, but the option is available here: account settings > composition and addressing > [checkbox] compose messages in html format

Re:Difference between Firefox and Thunderbird?

[Anonymous Coward]

And thank-you, Captain Living In The Past.

some of Mozilla products are good, but others suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Who else wants to use Thunderbird for newsgroup?
It is a piece of crap like MS Outlook.
But Newsbin Pro is the best for using newsgroup.

Plain text? Local/system accounts?

[Lord Bitman]

I installed thunderbird yesterday and couldnt find any way to completely disable HTML (that is, when HTML is sent to me, display the raw tags, by default, and offer/send no "markup" when composing messages), nor could I find a way to check my local/system mail. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right place, but from google it seems that no one else has ever considered doing this before.

Re:Plain text? Local/system accounts?

[zonix]

The first part about using plaintext composing (also for replies to HTML mails), is possible with the good ol' Mozilla Mail. It's an option in the "account settings" somewhere. I'm sure the feature will show up in Thunderbird at some point - perhaps it's already in there but not available via the UI yet?

Fetching local/system (mbox) mail would be nice actually. I know evolution supports this. Maybe there are workarounds to make this possible?

z

Mark for deletion?

[grotgrot]

One thing I like about Outlook Express is that you can mark emails for deletion. The mails are shown with a line through them (strike through). This is useful for how I keep my place in my emails. For example if 10 emails come in, they are all in bold until I read them. Then as I delete some, they are marked for deletion but I can see where my place is in those 10.

For some reason, Mozilla/Thunderbird do not appear to offer any way of doing the same thing. All my email is on an IMAP server which has specific flags for doing this. It really bugs me that an email disappears when I delete it! (I do however understand there are people who feel the other way round).

It bugs me enough that I stick to Outlook Express. (Evolution doesn't offer it either.)

Re:Mark for deletion?

[juhaz]

For some reason, Mozilla/Thunderbird do not appear to offer any way of doing the same thing. All my email is on an IMAP server which has specific flags for doing this. It really bugs me that an email disappears when I delete it!

You're not looking very hard...

account settings -> server settings -> when I delete a message: mark it as deleted.

If you don't check the 'clean up ("expunge") inbox on exit' button, expunge happens when you right click on folder and select "compact this folder".

Re:Mark for deletion?

[grotgrot]

I really did look everywhere. Admittedly I didn't drop down every combobox to see all the settings (only the ones that seemed likely). Thanks for pointing it out :-)

I can also confirm that both Mozilla and Thunderbird to play nice with IMAP (ie if another client on another marks the message for deletion they pick it up). The expunge behaviour is seriously annoying. The messages for mailing lists I am on get delivered to other folders. Having to manually expunge is highly annoying. I do like the OE behaviour (expunge when leaving folder) since once I look at another folder I don't need to keep track of what was going on in the folder I am leaving.

Color quoting for quoted message parts.

[newhoggy]

I just checked it out.

I think Thunderbird should be renamed Rainbowbird.

Exchange supports POP3, IMAP4, SMTP

[billstewart]

Exchange can support POP3, IMAP4, and SMTP, if your sysadmins at work configure it to do so. You'll have to ask them if they've done so. Thunderbird can support POP3 and IMAP4.

If your sysadmins support both, then you'll have to make a choice, depending on your work style and environment. Are you on a desktop machine that's always connected, with your Outlook mailboxes living on the server? Are you on a laptop that's usually disconnected, and you want to keep all your mail on it for when you're offline? Do your sysadmins make you keep your mail on your PC where space administration is your problem, not the server's? Do you have shared folders that you regularly access?

Re:Exchange supports POP3, IMAP4, SMTP

[Phoinix]

The support people said "We only support outlook." and after explaining that I do not want my PC to be infected like the other ones and that I have been using the webinterface all the time said "I will only give you the name of the exchange server"!! There is no "offline" mode since the desktop is always connected to the network and from what I can tell, the email stays on the server. Thru the web interface, I can access many "public folders".

Re:Exchange supports POP3, IMAP4, SMTP

[Anonymous Coward]

Find a new place to work then.

Re:Exchange supports POP3, IMAP4, SMTP

[billstewart]

Sounds like they haven't enabled POP3 or IMAP then. You could try to telnet to the ports for those protocols on the Exchange server's IP address just for fun, but it's probably a lost cause.

HTML email sucks

[BinLadenMyHero]

Parent is not trolling, HTML email is indeed bad etiquette. Just a matter of KISS. Anyway, why HTML email? Email is meant to send text messages. Attachments are fine if you want to transmit something else (like you can do in regular mail), but deliver the text as text (preferably 7-bit ASCII) so it's easier to read for everyone in any device.

OO != modularization

[BinLadenMyHero]

Your're 90% right, but a system doesn't need to be object orientated to be modular. That could be archived with regular C code as well.

Maybe you just don't know what OO is, but that's perfectly normal for non-programmers.

Re:OO != modularization

[Anonymous Coward]

OO is not about languages. It is a design philosophy. You can perfectly design an OO system and code it using C. It will be a bit harder to visualize and maintain things, though (relative to, say, Java)...

Mozilla vs. thunderbird for email.

[Koatdus]

Greetings.

I use Mozilla at work on WinXP and at home on FC1 for IMAP email. Other then being smaller and faster to start (not an issue as I have fast computers in both places) what features does thunderbird offer that Mozilla does not. Or what is better about it that I should switch?

Re:Mozilla vs. thunderbird for email.

[Anonymous Coward]

Taken from Mozilla.org's FAQ...

What's the difference between Thunderbird and the Mozilla Mail client?

Mozilla is a complete suite of web related applications, such as a browser, a mail/news client, a chat client and much more. Thunderbird is just a mail client, which makes it a better choice if you already have a browser like Firefox for example.

Note, though, that Thunderbird is not just the standalone Mozilla mail client. The user interface in Thunderbird differs from Mozilla in many ways, such as the customizable toolbars, a brushed up theme and cleaner appearance. Also, since Thunderbird is smaller than the whole Mozilla suite, it's also faster and easier to use.


-Ares

Re:Web browser overload!!

[BinLadenMyHero]

Wouldn't that be:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/distros.html

question

[dbc001]

is it possible to use thunderbird / firefox and have them share a single set of config files? is there a tutorial anywhere showing how to do this?

Re:question

[juhaz]

What config files would those be? Email app and web browser don't seem to have too many things in common to share.

Re:question

[dbc001]

Oops. What I meant to say was, is it possible to have firefox or thunderbird use a single set of config files on a dual-boot system? I would think a couple of symlinks might do the trick. It sucks to have to reboot just to send an email!

ack!

[professorhojo]

*still* no way to centralize all my email accounts into one set of folders. or am i missing something obvious?

Re:ack! <--solution

[tvh2k]

Tools->Account Settings->Server Settings
Set "Local Directory" to the same for all accounts

Re:Evolution can display deleted messages

[TheDancer]

Evolution does... View->Hide Deleted Messages. Make sure it's unchecked. Evolution 1.4.6

I haven't used Thunderbird so I can't comment

Re:Difference between Firefox and Thunderbird?

[phreakv6]

The latest version of Firefox got released day before yesterday but Thunderbird's latest version got released today. howz that for a difference?

Quite many reasons ...

[zonix]

What is new in Firefox and Thunderbird that would make me want to migrate to them instead of stick with my current browser? I know there's a new design (woop-dee-doo) and it's faster. But is there ANYTHING else?

There are some really nice features to Firefox that you might not notice at first, but when you do, you'll never want to turn back to Mozilla SeaMonkey again. Believe me!

Built-in features:

• Customizable search field: Firefox has a built-in search field which uses Google by default. You can add engines to this field for all sorts of things. I use IMDB search and DHL tracking as well as some documentation searches.
• Keyword bookmarks: Not just bookmarks! Associate keywords and parameters with certain bookmarks so you can create URLs dynamically (more info here). Some default examples are "dict some_word" for dictionary lookups, "goto some_search" for Google I'm Feeling Lucky searches. I've add my own keyword bookmarks for Netcraft, RFC docs and train time tables.
• Disable plug-ins: If you want you can enable/disable each of your plug-ins dynamically from within Firefox.

There are lots of very handy extensions for Firefox, namely:

• AdBlock: This one alone should be enough reason to switch! Complete ad-blocking for all your needs. It's based on URL globbing, so you can finally block ad elements that are stored locally on the websites (not possible with Mozilla's default "block images from this server"). It has handy options for right-clicking and blocking iframes (very cool!), images and removing imagemaps. Also, for your chance visits to sites you probably won't visit again - "overlay flash". Just hit ctrl+shift+f and have flash and java applets blocked out for the duration of your single visit.
• Web Developer: Very handy extension! Numerous features such as live editing of CSS, easy HTML/CSS validation, element outlining, form/cookie information, etc.

Give it try! You'll be glad you did. :-)

z

Re:Quite many reasons ...

[juhaz]

Three out of five of those "reasons to switch away from seamonkey" features are in Seamonkey.

Those being keyword bookmarks, adblock and webdev extensions. IMHO search field is negated by keywords (faster to type few letters than "scroll" down to right search engine), so I guess that leaves disabling plugins ...

There are bugs with Livejournal

[Billly Gates]

If you are a member of the livejournal community it will crash whenever you try to respomd to a comment via email.

Its been quite discussed already.

Re:There are bugs with Livejournal

[tehcyder]

the livejournal community...Its been quite discussed already.

No shit.

Re:There are bugs with Livejournal

[Misch]

Yes, because instead of passing a URL off to your webbrowser, it would have to pass the full contents of the POST.

Re:Evolution can display deleted messages

[grotgrot]

Thanks, that worked for me. However I can't see how to expunge a folder. I couldn't even get it to be expunged on exiting Evolution. (In OE I have it set to expunge whenever I change folders).

I couldn't find anything comparable in Thunderbird or Mozilla.

(Still waiting for when the VNC variants will do seamless/local window manager windows so I could leave an Evolution session running on the Linux server and display it anywhere as though it was a local app).

not according to the release notes

[Trepidity]

The release notes indicate that's not necessary.

So either the release notes are wrong, or the installer is broken, or both.

it's still pretty amateur

[Trepidity]

Well, it is...

err, never mind

[Trepidity]

Apparently the release notes do mention that. Oops.

It's still kind of irritating. How hard is it to have the installer delete the files itself?

Importing email.

[68K]

I'd like to use Thunderbird as my email client at home. I currently use Eudora and would like to move to a superior product that is free. Thunderbird seemed to be just the product.

I tried out version 0.8 last week I think. When importing my mail from Eudora, it seemed to go well. Then I realise that it hasn't imported any attachments, and any email that was stored in HTML format doesn't render - it appears as the HTML source in plaintext. When I received HTML-encoded email a minute or two later, that was fine.

Obviously it's not mature enough a product to import email saved with Eudora yet, and therefore I cannot switch to it. Shame. If it has an 'import from Eudora' function, I would expect it to work, or at least be told before the import happened that it wouldn't be able to bring in the attachments or HTML-encoded email.

Re:Importing email.

[Misch]

That's one of the oldest bugs in the system. Bug 3157 is what you're looking for. If you go to Bugzilla and do a search, there's a script you can run that will do some pre-conversion on a Eudora mailbox.

The real problem is that Eudora strips out MIME information from its e-mails and replaces it with some different HTML or XML tags to indicate an HTML mail.

Eudora attachment imports are Bugs 205796 and 95613.

The real work is in Bug 242948.

Re:Importing email.

[68K]

Many thanks for the information. Good to know that both issues are being looked into.

A moan…

[shic]

I like thunderbird 0.6 and 0.7 looks set to extend my good experiences with 0.6 - however (don't laugh) I'm not ready to give up Outlook just yet. As far as I'm concerned Thunderbird is a better mail client than Outlook in all but one respect.

I use email as a productivity tool - I send many emails to many people, on many topics - data entry speed is very important to me - and the clarity of my messages is very important to my recipients. I believe I can spell, and that my grammar is good - but this only means I can be sure my message 'hangs-together' when I've proof-read it a couple of times. When I use Word as my editor it corrects my silly typographic errors on the fly and detects and alerts me about many malformed sentences with its famous "wobbly green line" - which I find invaluable. I realise that as a grammar checker Word's is wanting, and that Thunderbird has a spelling checker... but I, for one, find these differences make using Thunderbird less productive than using Outlook.

Are there any plans to wire in a grammar/style checker?
Will we ever see an "autocorrect" feature like Word's?

As silly as these two might sound, IMHO, they are the single biggest barriers to adoption of open source productivity tools.

Re:A moan…

[babbage]

As silly as these two might sound, IMHO, they are the single biggest barriers to adoption of open source productivity tools.

Nah, deploring the state of math education because kids today all use calculators, that's silly. Human minds aren't good at any kind of math beyond basic arithmatic, and using an electronic tool to increase speed & accuracy can be a very valuable thing for anyone. Complaining about something so obviously beneficial is silly.

But depending on Microsoft Word to enforce good grammar? Now that's just absurd. Just as humans are bad at math while computers can do it with ease, we're all naturally talented with language while computers are crude at best. While computers can help people be better at arithmatic, I can't see how they can do anything to improve one's language abilities.

Where did you pick up this habit? How do you function this way?

Maybe instead of adding such features to Firebird, you should pick up copies of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style and Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots & Leaves. And read them. And get rid of that crutch!

Just trying to be helpful... :-)

Re:A moan…

[BenjyD]

Unless there has been an order of magnitude improvement in Word's grammar checker since Office 2000, which was the last version I used, I wouldn't trust its corrections for anything more important than a Slashdot post. I've found that its suggestions are at best unhelpful and at worst seriously incorrect.
I don't think that computer grammar checking is going to be an effective replacment for the human skill of actually being able to write for a long time yet. Wasting open source development time trying to squidge a checker into Thunderbird would be madness.

Re:A moan…

[shic]

I agree with BenjyD and babbage that it would be absurd to assume Word could ensure anyone could write grammatically correct documents if they were unable to do so unaided. Conversely, as I had hoped I'd made clear, I don't want it to "help me out with subtle grammatical/stylistic problems" but I still find the (very low quality) grammar checker in Word a useful first-pass proofing tool.

It is obvious to anyone who uses Word extensively that it is trivial to write pathetic drivel that Word thinks is OK - and sometimes (though far less frequently) to write something that is clearly valid about which Word complains. While this severely limits the usefulness of Word's grammar checker to reliably verify grammar, the fact remains that it is of significant net benefit when identifying some forms of obvious structural problem in prose.

Rather than make unhelpful remarks that I should learn to write English properly (which I assume were intended humorous) I would welcome constructive discussion about a better tool. There are dozens of improvements I can think of - here are a few:

• Check consistency of spelling (particularly useful for Brits) where, for example, "initialized" and "initialised" are both valid but only one should be used in a related group of documents.
  
• Check consistency of "grammatical person" to avoid awkward association of second-person and third-person sentences.
  
• Cliche identification.
  
• Identification of potential verbiage - for example "policymaking process"; "weather conditions"; "this time around"; "top priority" et. etc.
  
• Identify (inappropriate use of) passive voice - e.g. "a hit b" not "a was hit by b"
  

While it would be a laudable goal to aim for a tool which would accurately identify correct and incorrect grammar, I agree, this is overly ambitious. Conversely, the grammar checker in Word adequately serves as proof-of-concept that significant benefit can be derived even from a simple system which identifies some structural problems in prose.

Re:A moan…

[babbage]

But I did suggest a better tool!

Maybe instead of adding such features to Firebird, you should pick up copies of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style and Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots & Leaves. And read them. And get rid of that crutch!

When software can't do a good job -- and in this case, it can't -- then the best tool you have available is your brain. Use it! And the best tool for enriching your brain is a good book. Read them!

I'll admit I was being sarcastic, but I was also trying to be constructive. "Elements of Style" is a wonderful book, and a superb substitute for any software crutch you will find. "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" is also wonderful, and while it is a bit Anglo-centric (I'm not sure all the rules given are valid for generally accepted American usage), she does a much better job at getting the reader to think about and internalize proper punctuation style than any software could ever do.

Also, speaking of books, throw away your thesaurus. It's one thing to use an obscure word that packs a lot of meaning into a succinct phrase; it's quite another to say a simple thing with flowery, obfuscating language that adds little. Evey grade school English teacher knows the difference, and any good teacher will penalize students that writes to "impress" when they should really be writing to "express" -- a subtle, but crucial, distinction.

A software thesaurus is the worst kind of software writing tool, because it lets stumbling writers puff up flimsy writing in the most transparent way imaginable. Don't get caught! :-)

Re:A moan…

[shic]

I do not consider a text-book a tool - just one good source of information. Your suggested texts are valid, however, just as software tools are no substitute for education, your text books are no substitute for a quality toolset. Incidentally, as an online reference, I was fairly impressed by the The Economist Style Guide.

I find it strange that you don't distinguish between two distinct scenarios. It is ludicrous to hope an automated checking tool will be an effective alternative to education. It is remarkably small-minded to assume that the educated are no more productive using appropriate automated tools.

I admit that, just as a thesaurus can be misused, so could a grammar checker. I've never argued that these tools alone will improve the quality of prose, but rather that, in the appropriate context, the availability of good quality software tools can improve productivity.

Re:A moan…

[babbage]

I do not consider a text-book a tool

Well then, there's your problem.

If you internalize the example set by good books (or similar reference material -- you could do much worse than by trying to follow The Economist's house style), you don't need software tools.

How do you think Shakespeare & Dickens and all the other authors pre-20th century managed not to sound like gibbering idiots? Special typewriter assistants? Magical quills?

You're right, I don't consider a software grammar checker a tool; I consider it a crutch, and something to be carefully avoided. I am drawing a distinction: for grammar, books and other existing writing are superb teaching tools, while software frameworks are crude, blunt instruments that at best homogenize writing styles and at worse reduce users to a kind of lowest common denominator of crude, inexpressive, generic nonsense.

But hey, some people seem to be in to that sort of thing, so go right ahead... :-)

Re:A moan…

[shic]

How do you think Shakespeare & Dickens and all the other authors pre-20th century managed not to sound like gibbering idiots? Special typewriter assistants? Magical quills?

Slowly? During a lifetime of painstaking dedication? I suspect famous pre-20th century authors didn't write much email and, as such, remain poor examples in this context. Misuse of tools is more likely responsible for the poor results you have experienced than the concept of automated proofing per se.

Wouldn't you have found it helpful to be shown that "...other authors pre-20th century managed..." might be better expressed: "...other pre-20th century authors managed..."? I'd welcome such a suggestion from future software proofing tools. The inconsistent use of "&" with "and" could be flagged too - not to mention that the former could be safely replaced by a comma. Maybe even a suggestion to replace "...managed not to sound..." with "...avoid sounding..."? :-)

Re:A moan…

[babbage]

Slowly? During a lifetime of painstaking dedication? I suspect famous pre-20th century authors didn't write much email and, as such, remain poor examples in this context. Misuse of tools is more likely responsible for the poor results you have experienced than the concept of automated proofing per se.

Ahh, I see, so modern writers are blazing new trails into some kind of mechanized cyborg reality, where we just don't think like our predecessors did. Is that it? And like any self-respecting cyborg, we know our limits and know when we need software support for those times when the keybord is willing but the CPU is weak. That's it, yes?

Wouldn't you have found it helpful to be shown that [....]

No. One of us -- I won't name names, but it's not me -- doesn't want to sound like a robot. I know there are quirks in my writing style, and if I was writing anything more serious than a Slashdot post then sure I'd appreciate input from a good, harsh editor. But hell, this is just Slashdot -- I'm okay with relaxing a little bit.

Besides, the points you raise are all stylistic rather than grammatical. I'm not being inconsistent with my use of ampersands and the word "and", for example: when I'm expressing things that are being somehow paired, I tend to use ampersands, while when I'm merely conjoining words or phrases and I'm trying to express a kind of conceptual bridge from one part of the sentence to another, I'll tend to use the word "and". I'm using different notation because I'm using them in different ways; this is, I suspect, a subtle point that software may not cope well with.

See?

When we get to the point that software can generate text -- or at least, that it can massively assist the preparation of text by a human author -- on the order of a Hemingway or a Vonnegut, then I'll start to take software grammar checkers seriously. But that day is a long, long way off, and until then, the crude software tools we have to work with are a dreadful substitute for learning your own damn way around your own damn language :-) :-)

Re:A moan…

[shic]

The original topic was email clients. I do think this email requires a new perspective on traditional approaches to written communication. In the past interactions, particularly about technical or otherwise complicated matters, would be extensively verified by both parties before exchange - at least partly because physical documents travel more slowly. Email accelerates the pace and several exchanges are possible each day, hence, formulating replies can be time critical. Under these circumstances mistakes are made even by the most adept. It is important to avoid sending garbled or confusing text - automated proofing can quickly identify potential problems and hence prove beneficial.

Maybe I was unclear that I really want structural proofing tools - not just a grammar checker. I think we agree that the grammar checker in Word stinks - and I understand that you feel the checker is of little benefit yourself. I find the poor grammar checker more useful than none - particularly when there is scant time to review a message before it is sent.

Don't be put-out that I questioned your style. I re-read a few times before I even noticed the oddities of construction - I was not suggesting serious flaws. Conversely, comparing the two sentences:

1. "How do you think Shakespeare & Dickens and all the other authors pre-20th century managed not to sound like gibbering idiots?"
   
2. "How do you think Shakespeare, Dickens and all the other pre-20th century authors avoided sounding like gibbering idiots?"
   

I prefer the second - I find it clearer. Obviously, this level of attention to detail is problematic when we hope to respond unaided in "real-time" - though, IMHO, this is no reason not to aim for perfection while it doesn't affect deadlines. This is a strong argument for the inclusion of grammar/style verification tools in email suites (and Slashdot! :-)

My own emails rarely resemble the works of Hemmingway or Vonnegut (why you picked this particular author is unclear) - this may be why I find proofing tools extremely valuable? Each to their own, I suppose.

Re:A moan…

[babbage]

I understand that you feel the checker is of little benefit yourself

No, that's not what I'm saying! Something that makes your writing only a little bit better is "of little benefit"; something that makes it worse, as contemporary software does, is a detriment. That's why I think it matters!

I prefer the second - I find it clearer

I suppose, but the meaning changes. Maybe for the better, but in any case you're making a list of three -- "Shakespeare, Dickens, all the others" -- while I was trying to list two of the biggies, and throw in everyone else while I was at it "Shakespeare and Dickens, and everyone else too".

Maybe I was being too subtle. In any case, this is exactly the kind of shaded meaning that a human editor can cut through easily, but software falls apart completely with. Maybe your rephrased version, to my ears, radically changed the meaning of the sentence -- what then? In a conversation with you, we could hash out what was meant and come up with a better phrasing, but you can't do anything like that with contemporary software.

Natural language processing is a Hard Problem for computers, and until the state of AI systems gets considerably better, I'm inclined to distrust nearly all of them. Grammar checkers, in this context, are just one facet of the primitive state of the art in this field.

Hemmingway or Vonnegut (why you picked this particular author is unclear)

This was mostly random: he's contemporary, and he has a nice, simple writing style that Strunk & White would probably approve of.

But this paragraph of yours sums up my side of things: you've got four phrases, the second of which is sandwiched in parentheses between the first (an independent clause, and a simple declarative statement) and the third (another independent clause, but interrogative instead of declarative). Sentence structure like this doesn't really work: it's perfectly okay to split a sentence in half with some kind of parenthetical remark, but of the pre-split half is a declaration and the post-split half is a question, the reader is thrown off balance, and the writer is perceived as being a cruel and sneaky bastard.

You're not a cruel, sneaky bastard are you? Of course you're not.

Yet again, this is a situation where clear understanding of grammatical structure will make finding an appropriate expression easy, and software can do nothing but make vague suggestions that may or may not get to the heart of what you're trying to say. If your personal understanding of the foundations is weak, then the software can seem helpful, but it's useless if you can't decide whether to take what it suggests exactly as given or come up with some other phrasing; on the other hand, if you have a firm grasp on the foundations, then the software can't tell you anything you didn't already know, and when you're trying to express yourself at any kind of advanced level, it can do nothing but try to hammer you back into simpler & less interesting constructs.

But maybe we should just agree to disagree... :-)

Re:A moan…

[shic]

You picked my least lucid rambling - though I still feel the style was reasonably appropriate for the context in which it was used. If I had an automated tool which alerted me while writing, I may have chosen an alternative.

I'm not convinced that software will be able to make helpful non-trivial suggestions any time soon. Conversely, there is no reason software can't highlight potential problems where the structure of the entered text matches known "anti-patterns". I readily accept your argument that grammar checkers are likely inadequate "when you're trying to express yourself at any kind of advanced level." Conversely, in many circumstances, it is not appropriate to express concepts in an advanced fashion. For many purposes, including the majority of my emails, it is preferable to write in a restrained and boring style as this is more likely to accurately convey the necessary information.

Making positive use of contemporary grammar/style tools is not straightforward -there will always be a conflict between artistic licence and strict adherence to rules. The best compromise I can see is to leave the author in full control but to alert him to constructs which do not conform to a chosen stylistic profile. I believe it is possible to write software which would be extremely effective - until this is available to me I choose the poor substitutes I already have over nothing.

Re:A moan…

[babbage]

We're never going to agree on this, but at least the conversation was interesting.

Suffice to say that I recognize that writing a grammar checker that's worth a damn is a Hard problem, and probably one that would take a lot of work by a team of talented programmers, linguists (maybe), editors, etc.

If they do any less than a stellar job, they'll end up with something that makes Word's grammar checker look good -- which isn't to say that Word's grammar checker is good (obviously, I wouldn't say that by now :-), but rather that they've been throwing talented resources at it for over a decade and people still don't think it's up to the task.

It would be, in other words, a big, expensive gamble.

For an open source project with limited resources, I'm glad they're focusing their attention on more tractable problems.

If some third party wanted to offer an optional Mozilla plugin that provides grammar checking services for Gecko based software, that may be worth considering. But the core developers, for whatever reason, have not decided to do this on their own, and I for one think they've made the right decision.

And there, as I said before, can we agree to disagree? :-)

Re:A moan…

[shic]

I think we can agree to disagree - even if I now disagree by agreeing with your last post.

Writing a good grammar/style checker is nothing short of a devilishly difficult problem - this is probably why we don't have one at the moment. I also agree that it would be foolish for the great Mozilla folks to divert their attention to writing a grammar checker at the expense of their other projects. Maybe the compromise would be to establish a standard API for the integration of 3rd-party style checkers? I'd be impressed if this was done in collaboration with the Open Office folks so any style checker developed would be available to the maximum number of users and attract the widest developer interest.

A few years ago I considered the idea of writing such a tool but abandoned the idea of a solo project for several reasons:

1. I would need to classify words. I don't have the patience to consider the 60,000+ word vocabulary which would be ultimately required to make the project useful.
2. The research required in order to encode patterns/anti-patterns is daunting and it is unlikely that everyone would agree with my subjective decisions. Establishing rules would require some form of consensus.
3. Even if I were to develop a successful tool, it is not clear if this tool could be integrated into the applications I want to use.

While these concerns pose a substantial barrier to just-one-man, it seems to me that a distributed open-source approach may fare better. Given an API for integration into an end-product I'd expect a flurry of pattern/anti-pattern matching engines to be developed to this API, and the emergence of a variety of rule-sets for the engines. I expect at least one successful engine to emerge and for the rule-sets to evolve over time under the influence of feedback from interested parties until - in several years time - we would have a tool which would highlight potentially inappropriate style or grammar with acceptable accuracy.

Re:Evolution can display deleted messages

[Anonymous Coward]

Expunge is in the 'actions' menu, somewhere at the bottom.

This is great but...

[browman]

now I've got 2GB of space on Yahoo, I don't think I'll ever need to use a mail client at home again...

Re:suck a cock J^raxis

[Anonymous Coward]

incivism is DEAD, you idiot. LYE clubbed him to death and ate his BRAINS. And that J^raxis guy? He's over on DALnet right now RAPING A 12-YEAR-OLD GIRL.

HTH.

Many email addresses, one inbox, how?

[Assaulted_Peanut]

From the 'What's New' Thunderbird info page:

Thunderbird now supports a user interface for creating multiple identities per e-mail account. This makes it easy to have several e-mail addresses which end up going into the same account.

Has anyone found any documentation on how to achieve this?

If I import my Outlook Express (OE) accounts I get a veritable shed load of multiple accounts each with their own inbox. As I have a lot of email accounts I prefer OEs many-to-one behaviour - many email accounts piped to one inbox with a column in the message index pane indicating the account each message came from.

If I create one Thunderbird 'account' and add multiple identities (each with its own email address) then Thunderbird doesn't seem to have a means to query the mail server for each additional identities address, it never queries the mailboxes of those aliases.

So has anyone managed to get Thunderbird to work with a single account/inbox that pulls in mail from multiple mail servers like OE does? It's the one thing that stops me from migrating from malware OE.

Re:Many email addresses, one inbox, how?

[aok]

I think the new multiple identities feature is not the same thing as what your thinking.

I think there is only one Thunderbird-based account per server-based account. So if you have multiple accounts on different servers (or even multiple accounts on the same server) they will have to be separate Thunderbird accounts. You may be able to get around it by creating filtering rules that move the mail for all other Thunderbird accounts into a single TB account though.

The multiple identities is just aliases for a single account. Basically a convenience feature as opposed to going into the Account Settings to alter your Email Address field everytime you want to change the From: field. Like if you create an alias for every mailing list you subscribe to, and wish to change to that identity before sending out your e-mail when sending e-mail to the mailing list (or else the list may reject you).

However, I could be completely mistaken since I haven't downloaded TB 0.7 yet.

Re:Many email addresses, one inbox, how?

[r.jimenezz]

After many months using Firefox instead of IE, I know want to try out Thunderbird, but am running into the same issue as the parent poster.

Some more problems to see if any fellow /.'er can help me out:

- How do I specify time between checks for new mail?
- How could I do some sort of "Send/receive all" Ctrl+Shift+T (which apparently has no menu/button equivalent?) only seems to work for IMAP accounts
- Can I specify a different column order for mail than for news?

I've been playing with 0.6 for two days, just installed 0.7 and can't tell any differences as far as these issues are concerned. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

PS I'm not interested in migrating my messages yet, and I think that'd be straightforward.

Re:Many email addresses, one inbox, how?

[Assaulted_Peanut]

Thanks for the reply aok, I was worried that that was going to be explanation :-(

AFAICR there were quite a few requests for the many-to-one behaviour on an official TB feature request list a while back, so there's a chance it might get implemented in the future.

No probs with Tbird, but as for Firefox 0.9...

[zoney_ie]

Well, it's Windows. So I went with uninstalling it. Admittedly, in Win2K/XP world I am slightly less cynical, I didn't reboot after uninstall or install.

Voila, it seems to work! Much nicer than the Firefox install - yes, muck around with the profile directories, install the Old Extension viewer Extension. Extensions generally seem a bit tricky, but this new mangler (sorry, manager) will hopefully solve problems.

Here's something that bugs me though, I used Eudora for a long while - I have many old mails saved. Importing them into Thunderbird hasn't been a roaring success. The attachments for one thing won't transfer (Eudora keeps them in a seperate directory). I'm sort of nervous about where Tbird keeps the attachments, if I export the mail / import into another app if Tbird proj goes TU, will I still have everything. OK, I guess just like Eudora, I keep an old version of the App, but still - how easy is it to import Tbird mail, attachments and all.

Re:No probs with Tbird, but as for Firefox 0.9...

[juhaz]

I'm sort of nervous about where Tbird keeps the attachments, if I export the mail / import into another app if Tbird proj goes TU, will I still have everything.

Thunderbird keeps mails as they come - attachments are included inline instead of stripped and saved separately.

And the whole thing is saved in "mbox" format which is so common and simple (basically just message after message in plain text file) that everything should be able to read or import it.

Re:No probs with Tbird, but as for Firefox 0.9...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Windows - where virtually every other app I've installed works the first time. The last one that didn't work was Firebird(fox, whatever it was 6-8 months ago) - see a problem? Yeah, it's WINDOWS' fault.

After several reinstalls, it finally works. Firefox is great, once it's installed, too. I don't know if the installer app sucks or what.

Re:No probs with Tbird, but as for Firefox 0.9...

[FictionPimp]

There's your problem. Dont use the installer app, just use the compiled zips. Delete old folder, replace with new folder.

Re:No probs with Tbird, but as for Firefox 0.9...

[Anonymous Coward]

don't you have to run the installer? it is windows he was running, right?

jbanana@ncstage.ca

Re:No probs with Tbird, but as for Firefox 0.9...

[FictionPimp]

no, the compiled win32 zip works just fine.

Re:No probs with Tbird, but as for Firefox 0.9...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why make that damned installer that doesn't work most of the time?

Not MY problem. It's the Mozilla Foundation's problem.

Re:No probs with Tbird, but as for Firefox 0.9...

[BugZRevengE]

Bloody Eudora...It is one app i cannot understand!
storing attachents seperatly in a folder instead of with the message, encoded. This makes it almost impossible to export message, or import them from most applications.
My boss keeps going on about how good Eudora is, because you can "drag and drop" the install directory around, he keeps users on the network drive, so we can blow away machines... but it is a horible program to use/manage - once you start using Eudora, you can never migrate!
,br> TBird, easy to export/import with... hey you can even read the mailboxes in pine, or using imap if you move them to the server - whats wrong with that?
why cannot most programs use the standard mbox format? It may be a bit slower then some proprietry (sp?) system, but who cares - its not that much

Just my rant for the year - Eudora is a pet hate :-)

Re:No probs with Tbird, but as for Firefox 0.9...

[boisepunk]

crap post
praise allah
glorious jihad
we will strike the infidels

amen

Re:Difference between Firefox and Thunderbird?

[sehryan]

Firefox is a bad ass jet that was developed during the Cold War. Luckly, Clint Eastwood stole it, and destroyed the second working prototype.

Thunderbird(s) is an elite rescue squad of puppets, though I have heard that they have upgraded to humans this year. Hopefully that won't degrade their performance.

I really want to like Thunderbird

[PeteDotNu]

...apart from the fact that its presence on my hard drive makes my computer freeze and reset sporadically. It could be just coincidence, but I did a total reinstall of Windows two weeks ago, and everything was running fine until I reinstalled Thunderbird two nights ago. Now it's back to it's usual ways. Surely it must be a coincidence? Does Thunderbird alter any highly important system files when you install it?

Re:I really want to like Thunderbird

[BenjyD]

I doubt it very much. Just to make sure, why not try installing using the Zip file - just extract it to a directory and run it, without using an installer.

Re:I really want to like Thunderbird

[PeteDotNu]

Good idea, but I suspect that I may have had this problem when I was running 0.5, which didn't have an installer. In which case my original question is bobbins anyway.

Laugh at me if you want...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but I'm a Windows user and unused to choice. Can anyone explain to me the difference between Firefox, Thunderbird, and Mozilla? Why would I choose one over the other? Features? Aren't they all basically the same thing?

Re:Laugh at me if you want...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Can anyone explain to me the difference between Firefox, Thunderbird, and Mozilla?"

Read carefully Mozilla home page:
http://www.mozilla.org/

TMI

[sharkey]

Too Much Information!

USB drive support!

[Some Bitch]

Just what I was waiting for, an easy way to throw Thunderbird on a USB drive. I'm so glad it made it into this release.

Re:"Screen" for xwindows

[TheDancer]

I have been wanting this also. I often run applications on my home machine and redirect the display through an SSH tunnetl to my xwindows server on my work machine. However I'd like to be able to pass a running application between the two displays. Sort of like 'screen' will do for a shell.

Re:Evolution can display deleted messages

[Anonymous Coward]

>However I can't see how to expunge a folder. I couldn't even get it to be expunged on exiting Evolution. (In OE I have it set to expunge whenever I change folders).

There's an extension for this that adds an expunge button to the toolbar. I think the extension is called "expunge button."

Re:"Screen" for xwindows

[grotgrot]

You can move an application display around by using xmove. It has to be pointed at X servers. I already use TightVNC as my X server but it does the whole session as one big rectangular window to the VNC client. I want the individual apps to be displayed by VNC without the single big rectangle.

In theory I could do it by having an X server present on every client and using xmove, but I really don't want to have to install X everywhere, and it doesn't solve bandwidth issues like VNC does.

Thunderbird vs Evolution

[nexus987]

I like the fact that Thunderbird has spam filtering built in. However I have multiple e-mail accounts and it seems like there's no way to have all new messages go into a single folder (like Evolution)? Bummer that Evolution doesn't have built-in spam filtering, and doesn't run on windows...

Re:Is there a tutorial on transitioning from Outlo

[Dr. Trevorkian]

We'll see how it goes when I install the new version tonight, but Thunderbird 0.6 refused to import any file attachments from my mail stored via Outlook.

IMAP folders

[syusuf]

There has been just one thing stopping me from using Thunderbird as my main email client.

I use IMAP, and my server automatically sorts my incoming emails into different folders.

Unfortunately, for some reason the Thunderbird folder view doesn't accurately reflect the number of unread email's I have in any folders besides the Inbox, until I actually click on that folder. Which means you have to manually click through every folder to see if you have any new emails in them - most annoying (and in my case with a large number of folders across multiple accounts - unworkable).

If anyone has a solution for this it would be appreciated, and Thunderbird will take pride of place as my main email client.

New behavior

[Mustang Matt]

Well they've almost got it.

Now it looks like after you setup your account you can add an additional identity to that account which is name and email address basically. This works for me since all of my addresses are on the same server, same account (aliases) just different domain names, etc.

But if you had addresses that needed their own account info it's still not ready.

Thunderbird in Commercial Settings

[Bananas]

I've been pushing Thunderbird since 0.4!

We've deployed 30+ clients. Like most new software deployments, some people like it, some people don't care, and there's that 1-2% that can't stand it at all. LDAP support of our Active Directory domain has been decent (not super-fine-dandy, but usable for email addresses), and we now integrate each new deployment with LDAP address book support. TLS support has been good enough that I connect from home to our email system, no problems there either.