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

well

[no-arg constructor]

this is all good and i certainly use firefox at home, but while there will be many posts praising tabbed browsing, extensions, etc, sadly, i think we'll be preaching to the choir more than anything else. most p eople who even know firefox exists probably have tried it and like it, the other 95% will still be on ie. maybe i'm pessimistic, but i just don't see a massive migration happening just through word of mouth.

Can we hide local folders yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there an option to hide local folders yet? I would reccommend Thunderbird to unsophisticated users except that I don't want to explain what these are for (which is nothing for most users - most email users use pop, not imap).

I am very concerned

[Tarantolato]

...about the official Mozilla project's continued split focus between Firefox/Thunderbird and the full Seamonkey suite, which is now apparently going to continue even after the standalones reach 1.0.

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.

IBM's Eclipse project is a good example of how to do a platform. Start small with one app: in Eclipse's case, an IDE. Then build the rest of the stuff around the skeleton: IBM's new Workplace package is basically built from Eclipse plugins.

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. I for one have nothing but bad memories of Netscape, because of the ungodly bloat of Communicator. Any project that continues to officially perpetuate that mistake loses respect in my mind, and I would guess in many others' as well.

Re:One wish..

[boomgopher]

Oh and, before anyone fusses, I've grabbed source and looked into making the change myself, but frankly I couldn't even figure out how to even build the darn thing.
The build is not exactly staightforward, IMO.

Thunderbird Wishlist

[JBMcB]

1. Integration with GnuPG and/or PGP. Yes I know of engimail, I think it's essential enough it should be built-in.

2. Integration with Jabber. IM + Email would be cool. I like how Windows Messenger does this, but with Thunderbird it would actually be secure :)

3. Better LDAP integration. Current LDAP implementation is kludgy, I wish they would make it smoother.

4. Fix the calendar app. It's nice, but could be a whole lot nicer. The original Netscape calendar app wasn't bad, I much prefer it over Outlook.

5. Import/Export filters. There are third party filters already, it would be nice if they were built in. Import .mbox, maildirs, Outlook PST, Outlook Express directories, Eudora, MacOS Mail.app, etc...

6. How about a text mode interface for uberhackers? It could be really lightweight, just ctrl- to go back and forth, ctrl-r to reply, etc...

That's it. It shouldn't add too much bloat, the basic Jabber protocol is small and GnuPG integration should be cake. Any other ideas?

Re:Thunderbird Wishlist

[cK-Gunslinger]

I'd love to use Thunderbird instead of OE (for NG reading mainly, email is rather trivial for me), but a few things keep holding me back. Mainly, it's the whole message-threading model of TB that bothers me. Maybe I'm just use to Outlook Express, but I *really* like the ability to collapse sub-threads. If I'm reading an interesting NG topic, but this one sub-thread starts going *way* off-topic, in OE I can just click on the little collapse button that's on every message with children. With TB, only the top-most message has a collapse button, so I just have to scroll past the potentially hundreds of message until I get out of the sub-thread and back on topic.

Also, if I have "Hide read messages" or "Only show unread messages" enabled, OE will at least wait for a refresh/reload to hide those messages I've already read. In TB, if I read a message, collapse the thread, then try to get back to that message.. it's too late. I'd have to change my view to all messages to see it again. Agaion, just a little PitA for the way I read.

It's the little things like that that keep me on OE. I've never had any of these *rampant* viruses or trojan problems that everyone bashes it for. And there's probably little hope in getting TB fixed, as it's more of a personal preference than a true bug, so *shrug*. OTOH, I *AM* a rabid Firebird fanboy. I love this damn browser like I've loved no other piece of software not written by me. *hugs his monitor*

Re:Thunderbird Wishlist

[pilkul]

But everyone should be using GPG. It's a scandal that we have strong, fast encrytion available today, but nobody is using it because none of the email client makers are bothering to properly integrate it in their clients. The average user doesn't know how easy it is to read his mail, and will often email passwords and such in plaintext. It's up to the developers to make the transition; due to widespread ignorance of the risks, there will never be user demand.

I'm a fan... BUT...

[gwoodrow]

Am I the only person who thinks that Mozilla's bang-bang-bang 3 releases in a row of their most notable software seems kind of like a premature orgasm? Are they blowing their load too quickly? Should they have released more gradually and carefully? With the bugs I enountered with Thunderbird, I certainly think so. Firefox seems okay despite the rush... except for the fact that whenever I apply a new skin in Mac OS X - the scroll bar is missing. That's a bizarre bug that you'd think would've been caught.