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Mass Migration/Bughunt For Thunderbird Tuesday
maggeth writes "mozillaZine is spreading the word of a plan to have a mass migration of users from other email clients on this coming Tuesday in order to find any remaining bugs in the migration process. 'Bring your Outlook, Eudora, Mozilla, Outlook Express, and Communicator e-mail clients with you and join us on IRC for a day of testing the Thunderbird migration features. The goal is to get as many testing migrations performed on as many clients and as many operating systems as possible and to discuss and record all the problems in Bugzilla.' Read the full article for more details and for the IRC location."
to import folders with a '/' in the name.
To lazy to jump through the hoops of bugzilla.
Sort of like Bug-Stock. A day-long festival of software, testing, and resolution.
Sort of like Woodstock, except without all the kick-ass music, sex, drugs and alcohol. Hmm...never mind.
Continual thought process in Doom3: "Where is the bad-guy going to pop up next? bullets be damned, I'm running out of clean shorts!"
I've been hunting for a win32 email client that doesn't suck a bag of cocks. Anyone got any suggestions? I'd appreciate it a lot.
There you go.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So I should switch from a fully functional, secure, fast, and stable email client (Outlook) to some pile of shit just because you are having a special day for it?
.exe attachment? Thank you.
While we test our pile of shit, could you please ask the maker of your fully functional secure fast and stable email client to disable the feature that sends me spam each time some script kiddy mails you an
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I tried Thunderbird, but as a newsreader it sucked. Didn't handle multipart messages very well at all and had no support for YEncode (I don't care that it's not an official standard--it's a defacto standard which is extremely widely used and that's what counts). Without YEnc support, it's basically useless to me as a newsreader. It was also just too damned slow.
I love Firefox, though! Great browser. Small, fast, etc., etc. Thunderbird just needs some more work before it's really there, IMO.
Rumor is that Thunderbird and Firefox are hidden away somewhere on the soon to be released version of TheOpenCD. This special edition (1.4.1) will be handed out to an unsuspecting public at 17 different locations around the world (and counting) on Software Freedom Day, August 28th along with a custom version of Knoppix. About 10.000 copies are being produced. The new edition might even be out by Tuesday ...
"I've been hunting for a win32 email client that doesn't suck a bag of cocks."
Whoah.. I didn't know Outlook could fit an entire bag of chickens in its mouth. How do I demo this?
"Derp de derp."
"While we test our pile of shit, could you please ask the maker of your fully functional secure fast and stable email client to disable the feature that sends me spam each time some script kiddy mails you an .exe attachment? Thank you."
.EXE.
;))
Sorry to suck the fun out of your witty comment here, but please don't confuse Outlook for Outlook Express. OL still has the occasional exploit, but it is nowhere near as bad as OLE. In all seriousness, with OLXP (released in 02 I think) you have to hack the registry to even get it to download an
(For the record, I did have a chuckle at this comment.
"Derp de derp."
I'm actually interested in reading the same e-mails on my dual-boot machine (windows + linux). It's very time consuming to have to switch to linux to find some important e-mail, because you have it in your linux e-mail client.
As mozilla is a cross platform application, it should be able to work with the same offline e-mails.. lets say stored in a fat32 partition, so we could write to it from linux as from windows.
Any suggestions how to do this?
First I wanted to be a chef. Then I wanted to be Napoleon. My ambitions have continued to grow ever since.
Get it here and PGP/GPG all your messages, at the very least start signing them.
I recently upgraded my computer from 98 to 2000 on another hard drive. Took me forever to figure out how to get my old email into Thunderbird on the new hard drive. Shouldn't this be just slightly easier?
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
For anyone seriously needing to migrate from a webmail provider, there are various Perl tools such as yahoo mail downloader.
If your favourite web-based data source doesn't already have a tool to access it using Perl, there are also web-scraper modules (and LWP) which make it easy to build your own. Remember to put it on CPAN if you create something new.
put your mbox file into /var/mail/USERNAME
then set mozilla up to fetch from localhost
If only it could sync with Palm and/or PocketPC. I could get a lot more people to switch to it.
Thanks, asshat. Try "example.com" next time. That's what it's for.
- Monkey
AsdFgBe, Inc.
why do you think it takes so long to load?
Today's example comes from /. regular Kenshin with the mighty, mighty low ID of 43036! Here he tries to compare a volunteer software bug hunt with yet another deeply flawed automotive analogy. So let's get started and bring in some contestants from our studio audience to play....
FIND! THE! FALLACY!!!! <cue to commercial>
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Talk about preaching to the converted! And how is this going to work???
Geek - "Get rid of crappy Outlook. Come join us in a mass migration to Thunderbird!"
Marketing Droid - "Err, OK, what do I do?"
Geek - "Just join us on IRC channel #mozmigration on smug.geek.com"
Marketing Droid - "Err, yeah, right"
Talk about Oxymoronic. Of course, I can't RTFA coz it's slashdotted, so ignore the above if I'm missing something.
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
I'd migrate to Thunderbird in a second and take a lot of colleagues with me if only it would finally not crash when trying to import nontrivial amounts of email from Outlook (not Outlook Express). Thunderbird is fine up to a few thousand messages, but anyting larger gets you a never ending onslaught of error messages.
Just finished moving my mom to Thunderbird... from Mozilla mail. Some of the folders came from Kmail (standard unix mailbox format imported into Kmail from Outlook, it's a long story), and I used a CD to move them, meaning they had the read-only bit set without me realizing it (I forgot, sue me). Still, for reasons I cannot fathom, Mozilla Mail stopped displaying mail in about half the folders, even after clearing the read-only bit. The messages where there (I could see them in Thunderbird), they just didn't show up in Mozilla. I got everything working under Thunderbird, and tried copying over the Mail folder, no dice. Heck, on one of the folders I can see one message and nothing else. It's a real mess. At the momemt I've got her mail shortcut launching Thunderbird instead of Mozilla mail, but it really bugs me, since don't know if the mail is gonna stop working.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
As I write this, there are 653 gmail auctions underway. It looks like people have gotten bored selling one-offs so they're creating vanity ids & selling those; e.g., "BillAndHillaryClinton@gmail.com".
n.b. I have nothing to gain from all of this, I'm just handing out information.
How about Thunderbird Windows to Thunderbird Linux?
.tgz. Leave out the "profile bits" like theme.
Why is there not a way to import Thunderbird mailboxes? You can try moving the profile by hand, and in doing so get a completely unusable email client.
I would like to "Export to archive", and giving the options for archive email folders [option to skip junk], address book, pop/smtp settings, Signatures, all to a *single*
This file should be importanble cross platofrm by all Thunderbird clients.
All it would take would be a single xml file to "describe" the contents of the tar file, where you have most [cross platform bits] of your profile directory.
Until there are options to turn off this text markup and show me the email as it was received in plain ascii, it isn't worth my time. (And no, clicking "view as source" every time doesn't count.)
Pity, because otherwise it seems like a great email client. However it dropped the ball on the important "show the email" function and went straight to the bells and whistles that some of us don't want...
"spam armoring is more trouble than it's worth, now how the hell am i supposed to figureout your email address if it's "digtemail@@@email...com" WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? is it digtemail@email.com ?"
Um, yes. It's digtemail@email.com. Is that THAT hard to figure out? I mean, really. How much effort does it take? It's not like you're ever gonna get it wrong.
I am a big fan of Mozilla Firebird, and I am starting to play with Thunderbird. HOWEVER, what makes me hesitate using Thunderbird is that once you go to Thunderbird and if you don't like it you can't go back to your old program. Why? Because there is no export ability of your messages and address book, nor do any other major programs import these two items from Thunderbird. Please correct me if I am wrong as I would love to give Thunderbird a serious try.
Good idea, but I'd like to take it a step further and make a "Browse to Profile" button so when I have a dual boot machine I can mount the Windows partition and use the same profile for both installs.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I tried that on my laptop. Found I set Thunderbird to the default email client, and it needed Outlook as the default email client in order to migrate.
The Outlook Calendar, Tasks, and Notes apparently did not migrate. I do not think that Thunderbird has support for those yet. Which leaves me stuck between using Thunderbird and Outlook.
Also missing in Thunderbird is the virus vault feature of AVG Antivirus, which works with Outlook, but has no support for Thunderbird.
Also missing was the Intergration or synching with my Cell Phone, PalmOS device, and iPaq, I fond Thunderbird was missing these as well.
Also missing was integration with my Timex Datalink watch, no support for that either.
Thunderbird was not able to migrate accounts I use in Hotmail with Outlook XP(2002). I heard there may be an external program for that to convert Hotmail into POP3, but from what I read of it, it was still in beta and not properly tested.
GPG using Engimail or whatever it was called, did not work properly. I am not sure what went wrong, but I am unable to encrypt and decrypt messages. I cannot get GPG working with Outlook either, and I have to fall back to PGP. I have the latest version of GPG, but it says it cannot find my private keys, despite me loading them, and creating a new one just in case, it still reports they are missing. Fbog! I think this is more of a GPG problem than a Thunderbird one.
Should I ever decide to read/write a MS-Exchange account, will Thunderbird ever support that?
Thunderbird junk mail treats each account seperately. I use Spambayes with Outlook which learns from all the email accounts and can filter spam on account B by learning from account A.
Also the email rules only work on one email account, I have to create duplicate rules for each email account (I have four POP3/SMTP accounts) to filter mail just right. Also I am confused as to what SMTP server it uses to send mail. I am not yet sure how to pick one, it seems to use the same SMTP server for each account, this may be seen as possible Spam by Spam filters, until I can figure it out.
So I am stuck with Outlook until Thunderbird can properly address these issues.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Well to start with it appears that there no way to move several years of Pegasus data into Thunderbird. In terms of features, it seems to have less than Pegasus, as well as lacking some things that I would really like - such as an integrated hot-syncable calendar and easy filter setup. (which I admit Eudora does pretty well).
My guess is that Thunderbird will eventually approach the feature set that is available elsewhere, and I may move over to a Firefox/Thunderbird combo, but it'll be a while yet.
Three Squirrels
In order for Thunderbird to be something it is going to have to do something very well that no other mail client does.
I suggest full, complete, and amazing integration with GPG/PGP. In such a way that *every* user can make use of it. I'm talking "as a part of the intro wizard"-easy.
"If you plan to participate in this. Please remember to back up your email in case something goes wrong."
Wow, that is a great way to get a +3 informative.
Let me try:
Before you try to check for new messages, make sure that you are connected to the internet.
I can't migrate my users from Outlook to Tbird because (among other things) Outlook can tell you who you replied or forwarded the email to and when; Tbird/IMAP can only say "replied". Duh yeah, good audit trail.
Not quite ready for prime time business use yet.
And of course you import the mail and leave behind the calendar (linked to the mail), the notes (linked to the mail), the diary (linked to the mail)... hmm, I don't think they'll go for it.
I use it myself & love it, don't get me wrong. But for business use, it's not quite there yet.
-- ST
TNEF encoded emails won't even open in Outlook Express, because Microsoft wants you to have another incentive to buy Office. Anyone sending them should immediately stop for the sake of their own reputation. They probably send out emails all the time and wonder why they don't get replies, or why people tell them all they got was garbage. Sometimes all that gets through is a blank email, with the attachments stripped. It's very easy to configure Outlook to send standard emails, and to not do so looks unprofessional to anyone recieving the email who doesn't have Outlook.
It's not a trivial "bug" to fix, as intended by Microsoft. It will at minimum require embedding a TNEF decoder and an RTF to HTML converter. But few of either exist that are considered mature or secure enough for such a widely used program like Mozilla, and are license compatible.
The Mozilla team is known for trying to avoid anything they consider to be proprietary. Any requests falling under this category are classified as "tech evangelism".
Patents are a bit of a concern. It's hard to tell what is and isn't patented nowadays, but with most standards comes the assurance that you are safe from patent claims by the submitter of the standard. Which may partly explain Mozilla's reluctance to support anything proprietary.
I use Firefox for browsing of course, and I keep checking and trying the various Mozilla.org mail/news client releases, but so far nothing touches Mulberry for ease of use and functionality with my IMAP mail stores.