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Mozilla Releases Mozilla Sunbird 0.2
Gentu writes "Along with the new Mozilla-Japan initiative and the release of Mozilla 1.8a3 today, the Mozilla team released the first 'official' beta release of Mozilla Sunbird, version 0.2, a stand-alone calendaring application (similar to Apple's iCal). There are two flavors of this project, one that works as a ~700 KB plugin to Firefox/Thunderbird/Mozilla (titled Mozilla Calendar) and the ~8 MB stand-alone calendaring application, Mozilla Sunbird (rate the apps over at GnomeFiles.org). These builds are the first to feature a new default theme, a new logo and the customizable toolbar functionality. Note that Sunbird is still an experimental technology preview that contain bugs, but it is pretty stable."
Do they intend to totally confuse everyone?
For fun, calculate how much DDT would be lethal for you!
Thunder ... Fire ... Sun .. all hot, loud, destructive things. I guess there's no cuddly hippie people at Mozilla.
When is the first name change scheduled?
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
As far as I know anyways. I'd love to use them, if they're as good as Firefox is, but I need Outlook for my PocketPC.
I'm confused. If the plugin is ~700K, and the Firefox installer for Windows is ~4.6M, then how in the hell can the standalone Sunbird be ~8M, more over 3 megabytes more than the browser and plugin combined?
That whole mozilla suite project just seems to be generating a lot of really good software... There's firegoat, thunderbird, mozilla, alotofotherthingsidontknowaboutfox, and mozilla.
:0 Thanks for all the great work!
I mean wow, those are some productive developers... Kudos.
(though I keep on worrying that they'll slip out a kernel one of these days just to complete the operating environment... kernelzilla? mozillOS? Thunderbarf?)
Just kidding
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
I'm *STILL* hacked off about the fact that while all the other builds and platforms got cool cars, the mac users got stuck with a sawed-off station wagon.
;)
Alas, at least we have since gotten a native build of firefox.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Most of these mozilla applications will never be taken seriously with these ridiculous names.
The names need to be somewhat related, descriptive, or have an explanation.
This isn't a car. It's a calendar application.
The logos are adorable.
I'd be pleased if they bothered to make to-dos which respawn actually do so after you've checked one off as completed.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
From their web site:
This is great news, and should help to promote both applications.
- Birdfire
- Sunfried
- Friedbird
- Furredbread
- Bunfriar
- Sunblurred
- Slurredbird
- Blurbird
- Boredslurred
- Slartibird
- Currybird
This will go a loooong way to convincing people to switch from silly and confusing Microsoft products! Er...I've been using the Mozilla Calendar for the last few days (strangely conincidental one might think) and I'm definately liking it. I'm using it for tracking a lot of business activities, so it's especially nice how it issues email notices and allows you to repeat things even "once a year".
.mbx/mailbox files and move to something like what Sylpheed uses (1 file per email).
While there's nothing spectacular about the calendar tool it does do the job and so far it has been running without issue the last 5 days without requiring a restart.
I'm further delighted about this because it means I don't have to walk down the path of Evolution just to get a calendar. One last thing though - when (if ever) will Mozilla mail change away from using
PLD.
Isn't Mozilla just a bit to close to Godzilla for the Japanese market?
Prepare for a name change. I'm thinking "Pikascape" or "Mozachu"
In Soviet Russia, all our base are belong to you!
Sunbird could very well be one of the more important open source projects out there! At least, important for the corporate adoption of Linux. While Linux remains awesome in the server/development arena (after all, it's all I use to write code at work), it still lacks in the "Management" desktop area. Before I get lots of flames about this one, I know about openoffice.org but still, if you look at the dominiance and reliance on Outlook in the corporate environment, you will see why Linux needs a good, integrate calendar application. ;) ).
One CEO even mentioned this to me. He loves Linux from what he has been shown/played with but finds it hard to lose the integrated calendar feature of Outlook. For him, that's what is holding back the adoption of Linux. Believe it or not, he hates the quality of Outlook. The only reason he is tied to it is because it is the only viable solution with the proper features.
The more we look at what our targeted users are using, the better off we will be. This is what Microsoft often does well. They look at who makes the decision to deploy their product, like any good company does, and tailor their product around that user.
I simply cannot believe that we, as an open source community, have not yet duplicated the todo/email/calendar application that managers so love (with good reason too, their jobs often involve quite a few meetings/action items/communications).
Hopefully this will fill the void of an integrated calendar/scheduling application (though there could be something already out there... I just don't know about it
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> Its not done till I can install it in a way that won't screw up my system later on down the track.
> Mozilla makes great software, but never finishes it - that's for the distro packagers to do.
And you didn't really finish your comment. What specific qualms do you have? Please clarify. And even better, please make sure a bug is filed at bugzilla.mozilla.org
> If Dag and the Debian guy (and whoever else for whatever other distro) could hook up with the Moz people, you'd have a much better experience.
Red Hat, IBM, Sun, and a few other distributors have people in touch with the Moz guys. In fact, all of those companies employ people to specifically work on Mozilla.
If, like me, you need to use a proxy server in Sunbird, but found that it doesn't allow you to set one up, you have two choices:
Use the thunderbird/firefox calendar plugin instead
OR
Copy the network.proxy parts of your thunderbird/firefox prefs.js file into your sunbird prefs.js file.
When I first read the article name I thought Mozilla had once again changed Firefox's name.
I'm not sure that this would help. It doesn't have the same level of integration as outlook at all, and the single most important thing about outlook is really exchange - the central server thingy that makes group calendaring work.
. png
But wait! what's that over there, in the forested depths of germany?! It's KDE 3.3 Kolab! Marvel! (and slap forehead in horror at stupid "K" theme name).
http://kolab.org/images/shot-kde-client-calendar1
Ford Thunderbird
Pontiac Firebird
Pontiac Sunbird
The Sunbird was an even crappier car than the Firebird. Think Cavalier+nasty plastic decorations.
(though there could be something already out there... I just don't know about it ;) ).
Ximian Evolution is the Managerial, Outlook-esque product for Linux that you seem to be missing.
I don't particulary enjoy all-in-one products like Mozilla. If I wanted to browse the web, I launched Firefox. If I wanted to read my mail I used Thunderbird. If I wanted to view my calendar I... was forced to open one of the other programs even if I didn't want to check my mail or browse the web and use the calendar add in.
Aethera and Outlook also forced me to do this. But now, perhaps I can have the calendar app open without having it reminding me every 15 minutes that I wasn't connected to the internet.
Once again, I thank the mozilla group.
Cheers,
Adolfo
PS. Now, If I could just convince the Opera team to unbundle their chat and mail apps from their browser...
I think the UK tabloid newspaper, The Sun might object to borrowing the "Sun Bird", especially when it reaches version 0.3 ;)
Huh?
Apple's using KHTML, pal. Nothing to do with Moz.
Linux+Moz, maybe.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Well what can you expect when the entire project is apparently named after a giant, fire breathing lizard?
Intarweb folk history has it that the word Mozilla is a contraction of Mosaic-Killer (with a nod to Godzilla, of course).
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Obviously old people who never saw Power Rangers as a kid modded this down. This might not be funny, but it's hardly off-topic. I mean, c'mon! They might as well rename the Mozilla Suite "Megazord," seeing as how it's what you get when you combine Firefox, Thunderbird, and Sunbird!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Slightly OT: We have a standard mail format, standard calendar format... is there a standard phonebook/contact list format?
On topic, good job to the Sunbird team... While I have to live in a multi-OS world, it's nice to have both windows and linux versions of these apps, makes syncing a realistic thing.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Thunderbird is older, dates to 55 (it was a competitor to the then brand new Corvette) I think, and it's heydey as a cruiser really was the 50's. Had a revival when the SuperCoupe came out - that thing was a work of art - but it was bloated and eventually was canned for the retro-Cruiser Thunderbird, also canned.
Firebird is from the 60s, came out when the Camaro did, as a competitor the the original Mustang, so porbably 63-65 range.
Sunbird came out originally as the J2000 in the mid-80's, I forget when the rename was.
I think it more shows that there are no good names left. Either you reuse something for the billionth time, or you make up stupid shit like Achieva.
Nah... I believe that's gonna be the eventual name for the Mozilla Suite.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Hierarchal task list. I really think that this is a superior way of keeping track of tasks with multiple steps.
Agenda-At-Once is the only calendar program that I've seen so far with this. Undoubtedly there are others, but I think at this stage they should ALL have that feature.
I think they need to use different animals for each program though.
O'Reilly already patented that idea.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
See requirements here
and the tracker bug here. At the tracker bug, you can add your email to the CC, and put in a comment to let the developer's know that it is important to you!
In order for this
Great program, but why no freaking ISO date standard (2004-08-31) ? What is this American/British crap where you can't tell if it's DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY? grr...
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
Have a look at the kde pim - pim.kde.org it's already very good as of 3.2.1.
I find the calendar klunky.
sPh
Spreadsheets have cells. ExCEL.
And a calendar has a cell for each time the sun rises. SUNbird.
Well of course the window has to be open. Unless you wrote a small little plugin that checks sunbird for alarms to notify you of, that's really a nonissue. I mean seriously, do you expect a closed program to give you messages? That doesn't make any sense at all.
But it's similar to those programs that check gmail for you. A small little system tray app that periodically checks gmail and notifies you of new emails. Simple. I'm sure it wouldn't be too complex to have Sunbird (I'm lovin that btw) communicate with a ~700kb program or something. Of course, IANAP.
-Dizzle
"I most likely AM so interested in myself."
There is a great little helper application named Suntray. That lets you minimize Sunbird to your system tray (windows obviously.) Once I got I was amazed that I ever ran Suntray without it.
http://users.dart.net.au/~srgeorg/
I totally agree.
I had to set up a system for a new secretary and gave her Sunbird instead of Outlook. She was eager to give it a shot, but after a few days she told me it just didn't have the features and flexability of Outlook, which it doesn't. Maybe soon.
I would use it if it could sync with my Tungsten.
According to the FAQ, Sunbird gets the date format from your OS. To use the ISO format, go to the Windows Start Menu, then Settings > Control Panel > Regional Options (not Date/time) > Date tab.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Why must every Mozilla app either be part of a "suite" or a "plugin" or a "standalone" app, complete with every Mozilla-specific library?
Why, for instance, do Firefox and Thunderbird each need their own Gecko? (Or don't they?)
Why is Sunbird a 700k plugin or an 8 meg (!) download?
Couldn't they install system-wide libraries? Wouldn't that make everything smaller, neater, even faster (less to cache when running firefox/thunderbird simultaniously)?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
> Do you think this has a chance of being addressed if I did file a bug? As opposed to the no chance you'd get without filing one? Yes. For what it's worth, it was tried at one point (you can find .spec files in older sources I think). I'm unsure as to why it still isn't the case.
A minimize to tray extension is in the works that would help this problem out to a degree.
Minimize To Tray Extension
The extension works pretty well for Firefox and Thunderbird, and if/when Sunbird allows extensions, it will be extended to work with that too. This of course means Sunbird/Calendar would always be running, able to send out alarms, but not taking up lots of room on the taskbar. At the moment, the minimize to tray extension is only for Windows, and it's not a perfect fix, but it may help out some people who just want any solution for this issue.
Or as this person pointed out in this comment, there's a windows application that hides Sunbird into the tray when Sunbird's minimized.
NVU.com
photosMy Photostream
Getting it to connnect to an exchange callendar thingo would be nice
Shouldn't be too hard to do, why not make Sunbird do a 'at' command for every alarm, calling itself with some command-line option? 'at' exists on Windows as well, I think, or at least something with similar functionality. Don't know about Mac OS X :)
Just installed Sunbird plug-in to my mozilla 1.7.2 on XP. In Mozilla, I go to window in the menu bar and I can click on Navigator, Email, etc. There're also 'short cut keys' listed in that menu.
Navigator --------- CTRL-1
Mail & Newsgroups - CTRL-2
Composer ---------- CTRL-4
Addres Book  -- CTRL-5
Calander ---------- CTRL-8
divider
IRC Chat ---------- CTRL-6
Question is: what're slots 3 and 7 set aside for? What's "out there" still?
Senior NCO in the fight against entropy. I've seen things, man. Things no one should have to see.....
I imagine it won't do very well, as it's named after a beast that FRICKIN' DESTROYED TOKYO.
I did the same and I didn't realize it would delete my calendars.
The demo of this program was able to "undelete" them from my ntfs partition.
http://www.bitmart.net/r2k.shtml
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Fireraccoon pops up a nice install window warning me not to install unsigned extensions, and an 'official' (albeit beta) extension from the Mozilla project themselves isn't signed?
And people wonder why Open Source isn't taken seriously. I've touched on this topic before, and while this isn't a security update, it would really show that the Mozilla Team were showing a little professionalism...
Mark "Karma to Burn" Hood
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Call me crazy if you want, but to me the next logical step would be to release some sort of virtual machine.
Sunbird, Firefox and Thunderbird run using a lot of code in common. Because of that they were originaly available in the Mozilla Application Suite.
Wouldn't it be easier, and more efective to release a common runtime environment, and then be able to release much smaller apps to run in it?
Cheers,
Adolfo
I downloaded and used this calendar as a Firefox plugin. It's definitely rough around the edges, but it does provide Linux and Windows users a way to create calendars in the .ics format. And it allows you to easily publish that .ics file to a web server. What's so great about that? Well, you can view multiple calendars via a web browser with this wonderful PHP, RSS Enabled, GPL calendar parser. Plus... you can dump the .ics file into the "calendars" folder on your ipod and carry your calendar with you.
How can we get this goodness in every piece of software on the planet?