Batch-o-Moz: Firefox, Thunderbird, Suite Released

bluephone writes "Today Mozilla.org has unleashed a triple threat; Firefox 1.0PR, Thunderbird 0.8, and Mozilla Suite 1.7.3. Wow. Lots of news in all three fronts. so, for your release notes, sys-requirements, what's new, and download links, here you go. Firefox, Thunderbird, and Mozilla Suite. Enjoy."

Comments

your mission, should you choose to accept it ...

[spiny]

is to convert an I.E. / outlook user to Mozilla / Thunderbird today ...

go on, you know it makes sense - if anything it'll make the internet faster without all the outlook generated spam flying around.

Firefox 1.0 - Yay !!

[Gopal.V]

Now I can finally say "It's 1.0" :)

Seriously it's a hard job convincing people that it's stable when the developers are still putting Zero Point releases , especially at work. 1.1 Sounds a LOT more stable than 9.0 ... to some people at least.

Take back the Web ! ("Rediscover the web" sucks...)

Installed easily enough

[cs02rm0]

It said my adblock version was out of date, asked if I wanted it to go and update it for me... yes please :)

WebDeveloper toolbar seems fine.

Triple threat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should this not read "triple treat"?

Re:your mission, should you choose to accept it ..

[madfgurtbn]

Pop-up blocking, annoyance killing is *the* selling point of firefox.

Be sure to show newbies how to use tabs and find-as-you-type! IE will soon be blocking popups.

Re:Might this spell an end...

[edremy]

I have to admit I find it ironic that the premier "Open Source rules, MS drools!" site works perfectly in IE and needs 2-3 refreshes to even manage to render poorly in Firefox. Black on black text and margin errors and blank screens, oh my.

There's nothing like being unable to read the latest IE bashing thread because Firefox can't render the /. page.

Yes, PLEASE FIX THIS

[Anonymous Coward]

I open everything in new windows and usually close them using the keyboard. That does not work if the focus is wrong, etc. Mouse-centric folk won't notice this much but it is a killer for me.

Agreed, I run across it all the time myself. I use tabs, and other tabs are always stealing the focus as I'm typing. This can be a serious security issue because this will often happen as I'm typing in username/passwords and I'll realize that I've typed my password into some other tab and submitted it when I pressed [return].

Still no MSI package

[upside]

For my computer at home I prefer a straight binary with no installer crap, but for corporate deployment a multiuser-friendly MSI package is a must. It's the only thing I miss in FireFox. The point is to deploy FF from a server and have it working for low privilege users without them having to do any work.

There are some hacks about but I haven't managed to get it working in a satisfactory manner. I'd deploy it across the entire organisation (100 or so PCs) at the drop of a hat if I had a working MSI package. It's a school, too, so many accounts and users per machine.

Re:your mission, should you choose to accept it ..

[Haydn Fenton]

While I would have agreed with you several months back about Outlook having better features and whatnot, Outlook, for no apparent reason (good ol' MS software), started having a mysterious problem with passwords which meant I couldn't access any of my emails on any of my accounts. Having used Thunderbird in it's early releases, I wasn't too keen about swapping back to it, but I had no other choice (well, apart from webmail, but then I can't tell whenever I recieve emails, which is always a pain).
After swapping back, I had realised that Thunderbird had improved greatly and I'm very glad that Outlook b0rked up, otherwise I'd probably still be using it now.

Thunderbird probably does have a lot of features that Outlook doesn't have (or at least didn't appear to have), but I'm perfectly happy with the features Thunderbird does have and I don't require anything extra from it. It's interface looks much better than Outlooks boring GUI and it's junk mail filter is also extremely accurate, IMO - having marked around 98% of my junk emails as junk emails, with only 1 or 2 false positives in the whole time I've used it.

Anyway, you mustn't forget that features shouldn't be the only reason to swap over.. Outlook does have severe security issues that need to be addressed (anyone have a link to that bug where people aren't supposed to start emails with a certain word, because it makes Outlook think the rest of the email is actually a file? HAH!). Yeah, Thunderbird might have security issues too, but I seel much safer with TB than OL.

My 2c.

Odd Firefox behavior

[Schwartzboy]

I've never has the problem you describe on either of my Win98 machines , but then I haven't been home yet to install RC1 on them either. I have, however, gotten the follwing message and some variants after closing some tabs after opening several at once:

"TypeError: arrViewNodes[j].contentWindow has no properties"

I can consistently reproduce it by opening a new tab that's blank & then closing after a few seconds or a few minutes without loading anything into it. This is on a WinXP Pro machine (no SP2, thank you very much) with an RC1 install that's less than an hour old.

one feature I would have liked

[mshultz]

Does anybody know how to make Thunderbird only display messages on an IMAP server that have not been marked as deleted?

I use Thunderbird on my laptop and Outlook on my desktop (have to use it there), and frequently I end up with quite a few messages in my inbox (most of which are deleted) by the time I check my mail again using Thunderbird. There has to be a better solution besides purging all my deleted messages before using Thunderbird every time-- since sometimes I screw up and need to recover deleted messages...

I've looked in the View-Messages-Customize menu option, but there doesn't seem to be a field for the message's IMAP deletion status- any ideas?

Re:one feature I would have liked

[forsythe450]

I switched from OE to Thunderbird a few months ago and it handles IMAP accounts much better.

The best solution I can think of for your problem is to move messages into a Trash folder rather than deleting them in Outlook. Thunderbird does this automatically when you delete a message if you set it up under server settings. I believe you'll have to do it manually with Outlook, but it should accomplish what you're looking for.

Re:your mission, should you choose to accept it ..

[Chess_the_cat]

IE will soon be blocking popups.

It already does. SP2 added that capability. Of course, the Google toolbar had been blocking them too. I was running Norton Internet Security which also had a popup blocker. Now I run Admuncher which blows Adblock away. The point is, popup/ad blocking isn't the selling point you may think it is. It's all about the tabs. But you can install the Avant browser which adds tabs to IE so tabs aren't that big a deal either really. I guess the smaller size might be a selling point to people with really old systems.

Favicons?

[TrentL]

I know this is a minor point, but will they ever get favicons working correctly? These are the icons that appear next to your bookmarks. They're very useful when they actually work.

Too many moving parts

[Anonymous Coward]

So, let's see, you need a service pack, three proglets and a third-party browser modification, all of which you have to keep updated, all of which you must be concerned over for future compatibility with future Windows and IE mods OR you can download Firefox/Mozilla and have none of those concerns? Seems like an easy answer to me: my time should be spent using my computer not fighting to update it.

Re:your mission, should you choose to accept it ..

[carlos_benj]

I'd actually recommend turning off tabs, just because the newbies will probably be less likely to use Firefox if they have to deal with tabs since it's something different than they're used to.

So far, everyone I've shown tabs to was at least intrigued if not downright ecstatic.

mickey mouse.

[vena]

first, i love firefox, it's a wonderful product.

but i still have to uninstall before upgrading on many of the machines here, and it's ridiculous now to call this a 1.0PR with that problem still around.

also, from the release notes:

It should not be necessary to create a new profile when you upgrade from a previous version of Firefox providing you do disable all extensions from the prior version before upgrading. To do this, open the old version and open Tools > Options and click the Extensions panel. Click on each of the extensions listed and choose Disable Extension. Click OK to close the Options window. Now it is safe to install Firefox.

if you know this is the case, mister firefox, why the hell does your installer not do it for me?

you want mass adoption, but you continue with this mickey mouse crap of not being able to handle upgrades in any sort of efficient manor. i'm sorry, but you won't see mass adoption like that, and i'm afraid you've already gained the reputation.

Re:your mission, should you choose to accept it ..

[werwerf]

I did this summer. Have "evangelized" (do you say it that way) all my family with great results.

I started to do it to avoid all the "son, what's that window that appears on my PC?" calls from my mom, but the side effects are just great: faster navigation, more secure PC, less hanging... And for free! :)

---
there was a SIG here.
it is gone now.

Sunbird has a new Build

[spin2cool]

The calendar project (aka Sunbird) got a new build the other day too. It's still in 2.0, but is very stable in my experience, and features are being added rapidly. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/

Re:Slashdot rendering warrants "MAJOR BUG" status(

[Mustang Matt]

The larger problem is that so many sites are still in the stone ages of html 3.2.

Ouch.

PR on the main page?

[HungSquirrel]

Am I the only one who is bothered by the fact that Mozilla has placed a potentially unstable preview release on their main page, and made people have to search around to get the stable older release? You don't win converts by feeding them potentially buggy software and giving them a bad impression of it when it crashes.

Wouldn't it be nice if...

[heffrey]

Quoting from the Thunderbird release notes:

Important: if the account already has messages in the Inbox or other folders, you should copy or move these messages into Local Folders before setting the account to use the Global Inbox. If you don't copy or move the messages into Local Folders and you set the account to use the Global Inbox, the account will no longer be displayed in the folders pane and you will not be able to access those messages unless you go back and undo the Global Inbox setting. Also, if you have set up any filters that filter mail into this account, you should disable/delete them or change the destination folder.

Why doesn't the program do this for you automatically? That's the sort of attention to detail and user experience that would really help.

I know these are pre-release versions so maybe such features will be added for version 1.0.

Re:your mission, should you choose to accept it ..

[ChaosDiscord]

I showed one of my relatives Firefox too, but he wasn't too interested - even though he had reformatted his HDD twice or thrice cuz of spyware and scum coming in thru IE.

That's the key. "I warned you that your system turned to crap because you were using IE. I suggested you use Firefox. You declined. Now your system has turned to crap again. I can't justify coming over every six months to rescue you from IE. I understand that LocalBusinessName has technicians available at reasonable rates. Call me when you're willing to switch."

Either way you spend less time repairing computers for free; you win either way.

Re:your mission, should you choose to accept it ..

[Brandybuck]

I'd like to hear from fellow slashdotters if they've faced similar problems in converting people to firefox.

Maybe you should stop trying to convert them. They treat you this way because you're more annoying than the neighbor trying to get them to join Amway. This isn't a religion, so stop trying to peddle Firefox like it's the Watchtower or something...

Thunderbird adoption problem

[Trogre]

One problem with migration to Thunderbird from Outlook, apart from calendaring, is the ability to download Hotmail, MSN, AOL, or Yahoo! web mail. Mozilla doesn't do this.

Not that I think it's a necessarily useful or even sensible feature, but the point is that a lot of other people do.

On more than one occasion I have tried to encourage someone to switch to a less bug-ridden mail client only to be met with "But how do I check my hotmail?"

Therefore, I'd like to see this feature introduced, not for functionality, but as a migration incentive.

Re:Still no MSI package - other Enterprise issues

[Zirnike]

"Example, you can easily change the home page of every user by simply creating a policy object and applying it to an Active Directory User"

Solution: Don't Do That.

Sheesh... The only reasonable reason for setting everyone's home page to the same thing (eliminating the point of a home page) is to prevent the browser from being hijacked and pointing to a porn site... And you might notice that's not a problem with Firefox.

General rule: If it doesn't cause you any grief, and it makes the lives of the people who are trying to work with the program harder, and there's no legitimate reason to do it, don't do it. I can see locking down certain aspects of a computer. Some things that should never be locked down are instalation of utilities (WinZIP or equivilent, for example, or calculators, or unit converters) (if you're running on XP, this changes from merely bad practice to downright evil... Just lock down the system directory to prevent overwrites, but with XP, you can roll back even that), user preferances (desktop, font colors, and other things that people rely on changing for usability), time setting (this used to be a problem for me. The computer lost hours per day, and I didn't have access to set the time or load a utility that would allow automatic time syncronization), etc. All these make a computer less useful as a tool, reducing efficiency.

(yes, this is a big pet peeve of mine. I had to spend 3 months trying to get permission to install software I needed)

Re:MacOS X Keyboard Navigation?

[mactari]

This is great news. Firefox is now, finally, after years of searching, *the* killer-browser it is on other platforms. It's almost enough I wish I'd kept up with /. after I dropped programming for a living -- to have the points to mod this up.

There are now really only two and a half places Firefox loses to any other OS X browser:
1.) Speed. Safari still kicks arse there, and on a 500 MHz G3 iBook, that makes a difference.
2.) Spell-check in textboxes like Omniweb, though I'm betting that's plug-in fixable if it hasn't been done already
2.5.) Omniweb has very nice thumbnails for each tab that shows the tab's page looks like. That's really more useful than I ever thought it could be.

That said, this makes Firefox my daily browser now on my G4 iMac. Was playing with Camino a bit, as it allowed tabbing to select drop-downs, but now we've got it all, minus what's above, in one place. Phew!