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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."
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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
Is that the stupid address autocollect feature would lowercase everything before checking if the cotact exists.
I'm tired of having multiple:
Fred.Mertz@Lucy.Com
Fred.Mertz@lucy.com
fred.mertz@lucy.com
etc...
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Hi, I'm Fred Mertz, please stop emailing me. You've already killed lucy.com, and charliebrown.com is mad, there isnt anyone there to pull the football out from infront of the webserver. Thank you.
Fred.mertz@lucy.com
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.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
You know, if they make a separate callendar, chat client, etc. I'm getting this bad vision of some sort of Voltron episode where Firefox, Thunderbird, Snowcat, and Crazyweasel all merge to become the Ultra-Netasour: Mozilla.