Less is More: Thunderbird 0.7 Review

comforteagle writes "In part two of our look at Mozilla's less is more approach to thunderbird and firebird, Gareth Russell has finished the examination with a look at the newly released Thunderbird 0.7. Part one dealt with firefox and was discussed here on slashdot as well."

Comments

Few teething problems, but good overall

[XeRXeS-TCN]

I've been using both Firefox (since 0.7) and Thunderbird (since 0.4) for a while now, and I've recently upgraded. I seem to have hit a bit of a bug with having too many FireFox extensions installed, but beyond that slight problem, FireFox and Thunderbird seem to be going from strength to strength these days.

Anyone who is still on OE or IE should seriously consider a switch, because they include things which you should really have by default in your software. Firefox has tabbed browsing and integrated popup blocking, and Thunderbird has built in encryption, supports PGP extensions, and has integrated "smart" spam filtering.

What more could you ask?

Re:Few teething problems, but good overall

[NanoGator]

"What more could you ask?"

If you use Opera for a bit, you'll find lots of neat little UI additions that would suit FireFox well. In particular, the notes tab. That's pretty slick. I can highlight your post, right click, and say "copy to note". Then, in the notes tab, I'll see the first sentence of your post. If I single click it, the entire section I copy/pasted will appear. If I double click it, it'll show me the page it came from. I've been using that for cell phone hunting. It's a LOT easier than trying to come up with good names bookmarks.

Re:Few teething problems, but good overall

[the unbeliever]

There is an extension called "QuickNotes" for thunderbird and firefox. Configured properly, it crosses over.

getting real slow

[Anonymous Coward]

It took a long time to load, so here is a mirror:

by Gareth Russell

Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7 is the new lightweight email and newsgroup client from the Mozilla Foundation; it's a new take on the email client and has been built almost from the ground up, with the proven Gecko rendering engine. As with Mozilla Firefox its main aim is to try and satisfy the average user's requirements, with a minimum amount of fuss. Email clients over the years have tended to suffer from "feature creep" and "bloat", Thunderbird removes the clutter such as Intstant Messaging integration which you may never use. Thunderbird has all of the basic features you'd expect to find in any email client, with IMAP and Pop3 support, email filters and the ability to manage multiple accounts. Thunderbird also contains many other non-standard features such as built in junk mail filtering, S/MIME, digital signing, message encryption, spell checking and a flexible user interface. On top of this, Thunderbird is possibly the most extendible browser available with its excellent extension system, allowing you to create an email client that suits you.

Thunderbird 0.7's changes, include: a smaller download size for Windows, speed improvements in Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, new themes and extensions managers, as well as a talkback program for the unlikely event that Thunderbird crashes. A number of bugs have been squashed for the release, helping to iron out any rough edges which existed in the previous editions. The most important change in 0.7 is the overhaul of the extension system with new extensions controls allowing for easier management of extensions and which, now make it possible to update your extensions to the latest versions without having to go and manually download them.

The Interface
As with Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird features a stripped down interface, which is more thought out than previous editions of Mozilla Messenger. The default graphical interface features a three-pane setup much like Microsoft Outlook Express or the original Mozilla Messenger. On top of this; however, Thunderbird provides three other default settings including an interesting three pane vertical arrangement, which manages to use more of the display area to display your emails than the standard setting. Most importantly though, Thunderbird does not try to restrain you by its interface and its easy to customise the layout by adding new buttons to the toolbars or to add new window panes for content to get it exactly how you want it.

Junk Mail
One of the most attractive features of Thunderbird is the advanced Junk Mail filters included my default in Mozilla Thunderbird. The Junk Mail is adaptive by using a system of Bayesian filtering, this learns what is junk mail and what is not by you indicating to Thunderbird whether it is or is not junk. Junk can be defined by simply checking a junk mail icon next to the subject of the email. When a similar email appears in your inbox, Thunderbird will indicate that it believes the message is junk with the option to correct it if it is wrong. It's surprising how short a period of time it takes, before Thunderbird catches all of your junk mail with no mistakes. It only took a couple of days, before my inbox was junk mail free, with only a couple of false positives. Thunderbird can also be told to move the junk immediately to a temporary folder or to delete it straight off. This really sets it apart from programs such as Outlook Express which don't have built in junk mail controls, as you'll no longer to be forced to wade through a load of junk mail just to read you emails. No more time wasted moving all those offensive pornography emails which you receive to your work email address, no more time wasted deleting those university diploma emails and in particular no more being caught out by those emails with the viruses attached. Thunderbird really is revolutionary as an email client, when it comes to dealing with junk mail.

Security
Thunderbird includes S/MINE email support, which is a

Re:Had to go back to 0.6

[Gr8Apes]

I've had this problem with multiple POP3 mailboxes, in 0.5 and Mozilla 1,7rc2 and 1.8a1. Mozilla 1.6 seems to work fine. It seems that shutting down the mail window and restarting the app solves the problem with Mozilla 1.8a1, but I believe Thunderbird 0.5 just couldn't read one of the new messages in one of the mboxes, and that was that. Really strange, it'd read the rest.

No, I have not yet reported this, as I don't have a clue how to reproduce it.

Re:Extensions

[fresh27]

Show Old Extensions 0.1.3 makes old extensions visible and usable in Firefox 0.9. I've only tried two old extensions using this, but they've both worked.

Re:What standards does it support?

[respite]

I am quite sure it supports all of those. Here is a page that talks about printing css2 and css1. Here is a fun little png demo.

You should have expected that.

[jared_hanson]

Seriously, it's written all over the Firefox and Thunderbird pages that these are prerelease versions (in case the 0.* version numbers didn't clue you in). You shouldn't expect them to keep your data clean on upgrades.

Part of the development process is settling in on a format you want to use to store data in, and this format changes regularly in the approach to a 1.0 release. It would be far too much effort for them to support formats that they don't consider to be final. After 1.0 hits they will have to maintain compatiblity.

Long story short, if you are looking for something to handle your data well, use an already stable app. Then, if you want Mozilla apps, switch to them once they release 1.0.

It's your fault you lost data, not theirs.

Re:Multiple IMAP

[otisg]

It works well for me.
What is more, and this may be good to point out to other Thunderbird users, this release finally fixed a bug with accessing IMAP over SSL. Before, Thunderbird would start to hang after a few (e.g. 10-ish) minutes of inactivity, and the only solution would be to quit and re-start. This version fixed that issued.

Another issue (with all previous releases - I used them all) was with saving outgoing mail to the 'Sent' folder. It worked only half the time or less. This version sends email faster and always saves to Sent folder successfully.

To those using 0.6 or older, suggestion - upgrade.

Try NVU

[WD]

NVU is a stand-alone composer, based on Mozilla.

Re:Had to go back to 0.6

[frodo from middle ea]

Use the .zip instead of the installer for Firefox 0.9

I had problems with the installer version, mostly unstable and slow and none of the extensions would install. And I was doing a clean install so no issue of migrating from 0.8 or anything.

Anyway long story short, after tring install/uninstall (delete profile folder) for about 2 hours, I just got the zip and unzipped in C:\, and it works like charm. All my favourite extensions are back on.

Re:I am very concerned

[jsebrech]

Mozilla's crucial mistake early on was deciding it needed to be a platform. If this had just meant developing a cross-platform gui and tools, or just developing a whole application suite, it might not have been a problem. But they decided to do both. It cost them, and it continues to cost them.

That mozilla IS a platform is the very reason that development on firefox and thunderbird went this fast. Firefox and thunderbird share all of their backend code with the full suite. Only the actual UI is not shared. That kind of freedom allows quickly creating entirely new applications on top of the mozilla framework. It also means that development on the backend benefits all mozilla project apps.

I'd like you to show quotes from an actual mozilla developer (and not one who quit before mozilla really got going, like jwz) who agrees with your point of view. Creating the platform is what saved the mozilla project.

Besides, the only way to compete effectively with microsoft is to offer an alternative vision to developers. The platform is key in that. Mozilla, without becoming a platform, would be like opera: forever irrelevant.

But continuing to devote resources to Seamonkey is just a bad idea. Not only is it a distraction from making the small, focused apps better; but keeping around Mozilla as an Emacs-style do-everything suite does IMHO damage to the brand name.

The seamonkey suite is not a distraction, because like I explained, most of the code is shared among all the mozilla projects. The only thing the suite has for itself is the UI, and that is only getting maintenance development. It's really not true that firefox and thunderbird compete for developer resources with the app suite.

Now, I will agree that it does some damage to the brand to have so many products. But on the other hand, the suite still has a lot of users who find things of use in there they don't find in the separate apps. Cutting them off would not be nice, and would make corporate users less likely to ever use a mozilla product again.

Re:Had to go back to 0.6

[the unbeliever]

Tab browser extensions is compatible, if you get the latest version from the author's site. Link for the lazy

Mozilla Sunbird

[Master Of Ninja]

Just to point out for people needing a calendar, there is the Sunbird project which aims to build a standalone PIM application. While it is fairly good at the moment, it still needs a lot of work. Plus it needs a few more developers. If you have the time go help out. If they ever get round to integrating Thunderbird and Sunbird, we'll have one kickass Outlook killing application!! (don't mention Evolution - it really isn't cross-platform as such).

Re:URLs still don't work

[normal_guy]

Here's a very good link for both this and mailto: links in Firefox. I agree that this is a MAJOR design flaw in Firefox and Thunderbird.

Re:0.7 buggy ?

[CritterNYC]

I found that 0.7 is much more buggy than 0.5 ... at least on win32, the new mail notification in the taskbar is broken (no icon), enigmail does not work anymore, cross imap server moving of email did stop working ...

At least for me a huge step backwards from 0.5 :(

You need to do a completely fresh install of 0.7. Lots of stuff changed. The entire extension system is different, so you need to install the updated enigmail. Cross-IMAP server moves work fine (just did one). And the tray icon for mail notificatiions is sitting in my systray right now.

The installation instructions should really be followed for the latest version!