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Thunderbird 0.9 Released

Simon (S2) writes "Thunderbird 0.9 is now available for download! New features include Saved Search Folders (aka Virtual Folders) which allow you to display messages based on previously set search criteria across multiple folders. Message Grouping allows you to organize e-mail in a folder by grouping them based on various attributes like Date, Sender, Label, etc. Thunderbird 0.9 also includes numerous bug fixes and other improvements. For more information, see the release notes. Builds can be found on the mozilla.org FTP server or in the release notes above."

373 comments

  1. Fantastic job! by daveschroeder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Mozilla Foundation has been really doing a fantastic job with thinks like Mozilla, Firefox (and Camino!), Thunderbird, and the new multiplatform Sunbird calendaring client.

    Kudos to the team both at the Foundation and in the open source community for turning out this first rate software!

    1. Re:Fantastic job! by Flying+Purple+Wombat · · Score: 1

      I passed on Thunderbird because calendaring wasn't integrated. Wasn't aware of Sunbird, I'll have to check it out. Does it integrate with Thunderbird?

      Currently, I'm using Evolution as an Outlook replacement.

      Firefox rocks!

      --
      If God had meant for man to see the sunrise, He would have scheduled it later in the day.
    2. Re:Fantastic job! by gordgekko · · Score: 2, Informative
      Does it integrate with Thunderbird?

      I can't speak for others but I have never gotten Thunderbird to work properly with Sunbird. I have tried with the past few versions and the avialable extensions and it never goes. Pity.

      --
      You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
    3. Re:Fantastic job! by DAtkins · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sunbird works as a standalone and as an extension for Thunderbird and FireFox...

      Still, it needs a few more revisions before it's really ready.

    4. Re:Fantastic job! by RangerRick98 · · Score: 1

      I tried Thunderbird briefly, but ended up sticking with Evolution because of its ability to sync contact list and calendar with my Palm. Otherwise it seemed like a high-quality product, though.

      --
      "You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."
    5. Re:Fantastic job! by keuleJ · · Score: 1

      I was never happy with Sunbird. It didn't synchronize correctly mit my remote calendar.

    6. Re:Fantastic job! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Sunbird doesn't integrate with Thunderbird, since it is a standalone-solution. However, there is a calendar extension (based on the Sunbird code) for Thunderbird and this extension integrates fairly well with Thunderbird.

      Check it out at mozilla.org.

  2. GREAT! by macaulay805 · · Score: 0, Informative

    Great, the FIRST time I was able to download something BEFORE it gets /.ed ! You'd better hurry, the WIN32 Installer is about 5megs (I'd post a mirror, but I know my site CAN NOT handle the /.)

    1. Re:GREAT! by macaulay805 · · Score: 0

      I've just finished upgrading and it appears to work properly, no suprises! Also, the blog/RSS extension works perfect with my website!

    2. Re:GREAT! by Mr+Guy · · Score: 1

      Or you could just wait until tomorrow. If you didn't know the release was imminent, do you REALLY need those features RIGHT NOW?

    3. Re:GREAT! by afidel · · Score: 5, Informative

      Uh, they served over 1 million copies of the Firefox preview in under 100 hours, I don't think Slashdot is really that big of a worry for them.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  3. Tiger Features? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A lot of the new features sound like they are implementations of those described in the version of Apple's Mail.app that is due to ship with Tiger. I wonder if this kind of thing will dissuade companies like Apple from announcing new features so far before they are ready for release.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    1. Re:Tiger Features? by simcop2387 · · Score: 5, Informative

      This has existed already in Evolution, and i wouldn't be surprised if in other mail clients also.

    2. Re:Tiger Features? by samael · · Score: 4, Informative

      They're also available in other products. The Bat! has had Saved Searches for a while.

    3. Re:Tiger Features? by afd8856 · · Score: 1

      Just to add another one to the list of the previous posters(The Bat, Evolution): Opera Mail (M2), integrated in the Opera Browser.

      --
      I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
    4. Re:Tiger Features? by the+quick+brown+fox · · Score: 3, Informative

      Microsoft Outlook 2003 offers them as well.

    5. Re:Tiger Features? by Mr+Guy · · Score: 4, Funny

      No no you silly person. If Apple has it, Apple was first. It's just the way it is, and the sooner we can all accept that, the happier we all will be. It's like Microsoft being evil, Linux being secure, and the government trying to exploit the masses. Other possible explanations are really just a waste of time once you acknowledge the truth.

    6. Re:Tiger Features? by jest3r · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately ever since Thunderbird .8 (for OS X) there has been compatibility issues between Thunderbird and the CodeTek virtual desktop for OSX. Codetek doesn't seem to want to get involved to fix the problem .. and the Thunderbird dev team doesn't seem to hold incompatibilities with commercial software as a high priority ...

    7. Re:Tiger Features? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25446 3 Go vote and mention that TB is affected as well.

    8. Re:Tiger Features? by MadChicken · · Score: 1

      I remember using this (saved searches) feature in MR/2, an old OS/2 mail reader (not Internet mail, it was a QWK/SOUP packet reader -- some of you might have to look that up) It was *fabulously* useful.

      Someone looking for new features for applications like this don't necessarily need to look at press releases, but sometimes at ancient sunsite CDs.

      --
      SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
    9. Re:Tiger Features? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No. There were virtual folders in Kennyc's Postmaster under BEOS in 2000 at least (how I weep for that OS) - see http://www.kennyc.com/postmaster/

      Postmaster also had 'virtual groups'! This used BEOS's internal 'queryable' (sorry - I doubt that is a word) file system to generate the virtual folders on the fly. Fantastic.

      I think that trumps Tiger - I'm sure there are others.

    10. Re:Tiger Features? by labratuk · · Score: 1

      Kmail has also done this (vfolders) for over a year.

      --
      Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
    11. Re:Tiger Features? by pyite · · Score: 1
      --

      "Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman

    12. Re:Tiger Features? by wamatt · · Score: 1

      The Bat! is a greater hacker email tool. Unfortunately its IMAP support is just so bad it completely unusable.

      I cant wait until thunderbird has half the functionality of The Bat! with a nicer interface and *full* IMAP support.

  4. So, have the devs been listening? by Dragoon412 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of the most requested features I see is the ability to minimize to the system tray. Have the devs even mentioned this being a consideration?

    I use Thunderbird, and I like it, but it drives me nuts having one more thing cluttering my taskbar when all I want it open for is to let me know when mail arrives.

    1. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by TheBurningDog · · Score: 0

      This plugin is supposed to work well, but I've never used it personally
      http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/10/3/3/10-3-3- 395.shtml

    2. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is a 3rd party utility which does exactly this. I used it on TB 0.7 with no problems. Have not tested it on 0.8 or this latest 0.9 though.

      Check out http://sniperbeamer. de/tbtray/

    3. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by eyv · · Score: 0

      Thundertray does this quite nicely.

    4. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by Capt.+Zapp · · Score: 3, Informative

      Agreed! In the mean-time, I've been using Thundertray to launch and minimize Thunderbird from the Windows system tray. http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/1063659252/1

    5. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by MindStalker · · Score: 1

      Personally I'm waiting for a tray for calendar, arg the though of having to keep it open to get my reminders!!!!

      (Not that I actually use it or have reminders, but you get my point :)

    6. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by Kitsuneymg · · Score: 1

      I remember reading about how they were NOT going to implement minimize to tray becuase not all of the platforms thunderbird runs on have a system tray.
      But hey that's what extensions are for

    7. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by Refrag · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Don't you really want the Taskbar to be fixed? Why don't you complain to Microsoft instead of Mozilla? Something like Apple's Dock is way better than the Windows Taskbar.

      --
      I have a website. It's about Macs.
    8. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by filenabber · · Score: 1

      TrayWizard for Windows allows you to send ANY app to the tray. It's a free app - google it.

      --
      Are you a Candy Addict?
    9. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by orion024 · · Score: 1
    10. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by ajr_trm · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I am/was waiting for ability to encrypt stored passwords with master password.

      Is this feature present in 0.9?

    11. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      this is a stupid reason. they already build for various platforms. what about #ifdef WIN32 ?

    12. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by normal_guy · · Score: 1

      I prefer the KDE-style mixture of Dock and Taskbar. Really an excellent layout.

      --

      Linux: Free if your time is worthless.
    13. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by NRP128 · · Score: 1

      Depends on how you use it. Personally i like the taskbar's...idea, and it's potential, i just don't think M$ has realized it yet. Dock has it's place too, but tends to annoy me as much or more than Taskbar's faults. Also, saved searches = smart playlists? I know they weren't the first, but why is this the first 'mainstream' app, or at least the first one with so much pull, to implement so many features? It's like the China article earlier, there are so many things that are like: "DUH! Why didn't we do this the first time!" Some were limited by the technology avilable (whcih is where China has us beat, they didn't START to modernize until the tech was available, whereas we have to adapt new ways to old ideas/tech...not always good. See: Republicans...) some were just forgotten. Personally i think M$ has a lot right, but a lot more wrong. Same with Apple. I swear, a hybrid machine would work wonders. Or at least the ability to buy mac 'approved' hardware and then buy the OS. In order to be mac approved the manufacturer has to share a profit margin with Apple, and personally speaking, i'd be willing to pay a lot more for OSX than i would WinXP. Paying $200 for OSX, when it includes damned near every app i use on a daily basis in a stable, sleek work enviroment would be a no-comparision to paying a ton for WinXP only to be shot in the foot by all the monopoly lawsuits because features that *should* be integrated and *should* be streamlined into the OS as many Apple apps are, are cut out because third parties were losing their share since they couldn't provide a competive product. But this is America! If you can't beat'em, SUE'EM!

    14. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So why don't you download ObjectDock? It's a free OSX-ish dock for Windows.

      I used it for a bit, but in the end I prefered the lower-overhead of the standard Windows shell.

    15. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Well, you're slightly off-topic since the concern was about the System Tray, however I couldn't resist the urge to point out the slight flaw in your analogy.

      The Task Bar in Windows and the Dock in OS X do not have a one-to-one functionality map. The best you could say is that the combination of the Task Bar and Quick Launch Bar in Windows have an analogous function to the combination of the Dock and Expose in OS X.

      Even that is a bit of a stretch, but that's what comes from comparing apples to ummm.... I'm struggling for the right fruit here... I'm thinking something that is maybe not as sweet as an apple... a different color, perhaps yellow... no, not a banana... that other yellow one...

    16. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by DeeKayWon · · Score: 1

      Powermenu is another app that enables minimizing any window to the tray, as well as Always On Top, Process Priority and Window Transparency settings for all windows.

    17. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by OmniVector · · Score: 1

      um. how is kde's taskbar ANY different than the windows one? it has a "start button", it has "quick launch" buttons, it has a "task bar" and it has an "applet/system tray". the kde and gnome implementations are similar enough and pretty much copy microsoft's to the dot. yes, they are more powerful, but if you've used the apple dock it's not nearly as nice in comparison.

      --
      - tristan
    18. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by glebfrank · · Score: 1

      I see plenty of options listed in replies to your questions, but they all seem to be either Windows-only, or generic application-docking mechanisms... Is there no extension for Thunderbird that docks it into KDE/Gnome tray and also provides mail notification?

    19. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Both you and Refrag seem to think that your opinions are the only ones that matter. I have a Mac and I much prefer the Windows/KDE/GNOME style taskbar. There's nothing categorically right or wrong about either approach; they both have their benefits and drawbacks. Saying something like "you are wrong for wanting [x] when Mac does [y]" is just immature zealotry.

    20. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by OmniVector · · Score: 1

      um.. you are wrong. i've used both extensively. the mac dock is more efficient from a usability standpoint.

      --
      - tristan
    21. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by Refrag · · Score: 1

      Windows puts every fucking window and every fucking application into the Taskbar. The Dock does not. I realize this is a little better in WinXP but I still prefer the Dock over the Taskbar. The Taskbar was one of the things I hated about Windows before switching to the Mac in 2001.

      --
      I have a website. It's about Macs.
    22. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by Refrag · · Score: 1

      Because I use the real thing. ;)

      --
      I have a website. It's about Macs.
    23. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      if you using it on linux, use can use kdocker
      http://kdocker.sourceforge.net

      as simple as, kdocker thunderbird

    24. Re:So, have the devs been listening? by Kethinov · · Score: 1

      KDE has the option to use a spatial type taskbar known as the KasBar which is in many ways similar to Mac's dock.

      KDE can be made very similar to Mac with enough tweaking. Far moreso than GNOME. I like to think of KDE as wad of clay to be moded and GNOME as a usable Windows out of the box.

      --
      You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
  5. Torrents? by Gentoo+Fan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd hate to assist in the clobbering of an FTP server -- I'm suprised such a popular software project (particularly one with not-so-small files) isn't using Bittorrent yet.

    1. Re:Torrents? by leon.gandalf · · Score: 0

      Then host the file on P2P... Thats what I use P2P for,

    2. Re:Torrents? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The devs consider ~5 MB files to be small.

    3. Re:Torrents? by mikefe · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because they want to be able to track how many downloads there are of the software.

      These numbers are tracked very closely by the Mozilla community to measure penetration.

      Yes, I (and they) know it's not a perfect source of information, but it is a source.

      --
      There: Something at a specific location.
      Their: Owned by someone.
      Please make sure your english compiles.
    4. Re:Torrents? by thegrommit · · Score: 1

      I'd hate to assist in the clobbering of an FTP server

      You won't. ftp.mozilla.org looks to be a front-end for some sort of round-robin server farm.

  6. MSI package... by Aliencow · · Score: 1

    I will probably make an MSI package of it today... Anybody has a public tracker (Legal stuff only) on which I could share it ?

    1. Re:MSI package... by advocate_one · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Not to be too curmudgeonly towards your kind offer, but I would much rather that the Thunderbird team themselves provided an "official" MSI package for download from their site along with md5 sums and a signature to check it against.

      --
      Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
    2. Re:MSI package... by Aliencow · · Score: 1

      Makes sense, but isn't there a way you could see the files inside of the MSI and compare with the MD5 of the files inside of setup.exe? In any case, I'll do it for me, and I'll provide it to people not as paranoid as you (Still agree with you though!)

  7. Saved Searches sounds good but... by samael · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'd like to be able to tag messages with meta-data (like "To Do" or "Mum's Birthday" or "Project 257") and then be able to produce searches based on that.

    1. Re:Saved Searches sounds good but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Put them in a folder? Or are you the kind of person who wants tags for tags also..?

    2. Re:Saved Searches sounds good but... by laurens · · Score: 1

      There are five labels you can attach to the selected messages by pressing [1]-[5] on your keyboard.

      By default, they are named "Important" (Red), etc., but you can edit them to read "Mum's birthday" if you want.

      The limit of 5 is probably a bit low, though, and it does not sync back to my IMAP server, so it could be more useful. Anyway, HTH.

    3. Re:Saved Searches sounds good but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that mail may belong to more than one such category. And really, isn't that what these Virtual Folders and searching are supposed to do? Find and manage mail that (supposedly) has a specified "purpose"?

      Personally, I'd implement it by allowing users to add user-defined mail headers, say a "X-Keywords" header or something. But I won't, since I'd need 6 months to find my way around the code, first...

    4. Re:Saved Searches sounds good but... by Red+Alastor · · Score: 4, Informative

      You already can, they call that labels.

      --
      Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
    5. Re:Saved Searches sounds good but... by shawb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think what the graandparent wants is the ability to put multiple tags on an individual email. Oftentimes emails can cross over to many different topics.

      --
      I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
    6. Re:Saved Searches sounds good but... by jd142 · · Score: 1

      Is there a reason Labels won't work? There look to be only 5 labels available, but you can customize their meaning. In contrast, Outlook has Categories which appear to be expandable to an arbitrary number of categories and Eudora has 7 customizable labels.

    7. Re:Saved Searches sounds good but... by EvlG · · Score: 1

      This is basically what Gmail does, and I agree it would be nice to see that in Thunderbird. It removes the need to categorize a message into a single folder only, since you can just put as many tags on it as you want.

    8. Re:Saved Searches sounds good but... by jd142 · · Score: 1

      Ah, if you want multiple categories or labels on one message, you want Outlook.

    9. Re:Saved Searches sounds good but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think this requires support on the server side (at least if you are using IMAP). Maybe that's why it's not implemented.

    10. Re:Saved Searches sounds good but... by shawb · · Score: 1

      Gmail also has this function...

      --
      I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
    11. Re:Saved Searches sounds good but... by tepples · · Score: 1

      So is there an e-mail program with multiple categories on one message that also has 1. local mail storage (useful for dial-up users), 2. availability to all (no in-group membership needed), and 3. reduced susceptibility to Windows e-mail viruses (lookOut!)?

    12. Re:Saved Searches sounds good but... by Eunuchswear · · Score: 1
      Are you sure it doesn't sync to your IMAP server?


      It does to mine.


      (Cyrus).

      --
      Watch this Heartland Institute video
    13. Re:Saved Searches sounds good but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Opera's M2 mail fits your criterias. Having recently moved from using Opera to Firefox ... the hardest part was to stop using M2 mail.

      Of course it seems silly to use Opera only as a mail client!

    14. Re:Saved Searches sounds good but... by Repugnant_Shit · · Score: 2, Informative

      I believe labels are simply coloring a message one color or another. The problem with this is that there's a limited amount of labels to choose from, and last I checked you couldn't create more (you can only change the presets).

    15. Re:Saved Searches sounds good but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      VM does.

      You can add and filter on any number of arbitrary tags. Compatible with several different local mail storage formats and runs on many platforms.

  8. Don't worry by daveschroeder · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think Mozilla's servers can handle it just fine (they always have).

    1. Re:Don't worry by flatface · · Score: 0

      How come they block Bugzilla links from Slashdot, then?

    2. Re:Don't worry by Rakshasa+Taisab · · Score: 5, Informative

      Bugzilla requests requires alot more processing than simple ftp. Doing db queries and generating a webpage compared to pushing a memory mapped file through the network card.

      --
      - These characters were randomly selected.
    3. Re:Don't worry by Kingpin · · Score: 3, Funny

      Because Bugzilla is a clunky piece of Perl turd and the FTP/HTTP servers are not? :-)

      --
      Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
      Geocrawler error message.
  9. What about performance and memory usage? by kbahey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is not to disparage Thunderbird or anything. Thunderbird is one of two mail user agents (MUA) I use regularly, the other being plain old mutt when I am connected to the home server using ssh.

    The issue with Thunderbird is not functionality, but rather bloat. It takes up a lot of memory and is slow. Compared to for example, FireFox, on the same machine.

    1. Re:What about performance and memory usage? by the+quick+brown+fox · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I don't think it's necessarily fair to compare Thunderbird to a web browser. TB has a lot more data to juggle than Firefox, in general. FF just has to deal with a couple of webpages at a time, while TB has to keep giant lists of messages at the ready. Also, just in terms of raw amounts of data, your average mbox has a lot more data than your average HTML page.

      I've found TB to compare favorably, performance-wise, to other clients I've tried, such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Evolution. (Although it's been a long time since I've tried Evolution.)

    2. Re:What about performance and memory usage? by Threni · · Score: 1

      Is it just me, or do other people have problems with Usenet reading? Sometimes it seems to stop reading new articles, as if no-one has posted to the group for a few days? And sometimes I find a thread consists of the same n articles repeated over and over, as if someone has replied to their own post about 5 times?

    3. Re:What about performance and memory usage? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have those same problems with the previous version (0.8?). I downloaded 0.9, but I don't have time to try it out until later... hopefully all will be well

    4. Re:What about performance and memory usage? by Argon · · Score: 1

      It definitely is much worse than other mail clients in my experience. 200MB+ to manage two IMAP accounts? I have now switched back to Kmail even though feature wise I like Thunderbird better. But kmail stays below a (relatively) reasonable 60MB.

    5. Re:What about performance and memory usage? by Rufus211 · · Score: 2, Informative
      I've been wondering the same thing but haven't had the time to debug it at all. Here's a line from top:
      PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
      31929 rufus 16 0 668m 359m 169m S 0.0 36.0 3:08.69 mozilla-thunder
      Yes, that is 350mb of ram it is using. True I have ~100 imap folders in my default view, a few of which have >100,000 messages, but I don't see the need to have the entire structure of each folder loaded persistently in ram.
    6. Re:What about performance and memory usage? by armitage_23 · · Score: 1
      It doesn't look that far off of Firefox's memory usage. Well, actually it's about 1/2 of FF's.
      PID COMMAND %CPU TIME #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT RSHRD RSIZE VSIZE
      16287 thunderbir 0.0% 0:39.97 8 128 353 30.8M 38.5M 64.7M 286M
      16101 firefox-bi 0.8% 0:47.09 12 203 381 39.4M 42.9M+ 64.8M 460M
      This is on a 2.0GHz G5 with 4GB of memory. Your mileage may vary...
      PhysMem: 210M wired, 279M active, 1.97G inactive, 2.45G used, 1.55G free
    7. Re:What about performance and memory usage? by zurab · · Score: 1

      No, you have to consider that Thunderbird is at version 0.9. When Firefox was at 0.9, it was not being compiled with optimizations. Unless you compile your own version of Thunderbird with optimizations enabled it's likely that they are disabled by default. I noticed a significant performance increase with Firefox from 0.9 to 1.0PR, for example.

    8. Re:What about performance and memory usage? by labratuk · · Score: 2, Informative

      I take it you're getting that by running top on linux. If so, that's a horrible way to measure memory usage. It includes in that number a LOT of things which are shared or just caches.

      --
      Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
  10. It figures... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I just upgraded my Gentoo system to 0.8 last night. It would make sense that 0.9 comes out so I have to upgrade again. ;)

  11. Privledged by kc0re · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I know, I felt so overwhelmingly happy that I beat Slashdot to it. On a whim. On a serious note though, I believe that Mozilla is beautiful, and if they can figure out how to get Thunderbird to interface with Exchange. All of us slaves to Outlook will be free!!

    1. Re:Privledged by samael · · Score: 1

      Exchange has an IMAP connector, which will allow any IMAP client (like Thunderbird) to connect to it.

      You'll need to get your Sysadmin to enable it though...

    2. Re:Privledged by cmad_x · · Score: 0

      Hell yeah! All I'm waiting for is Exchange support so I can persuade the netadmin to switch all Outlook clients to Thunderbird.

    3. Re:Privledged by Pxtl · · Score: 1

      Does Thunderbird's IMAP work properly yet? I have an older build, and the problem is this: when you move or delete a file (unless using traditional IMAP "mark as deleted"), it looks deleted - its gone from the list, and in the trashcan or target folder. Now you empty the trash - seems to be completely gone.

      So I log in through Pine or my web-based email system and guess what I see? None of the files are actually gone - they're just "marked as deleted" and taking up friggin' space. Considering that they may have been copied to other folders, that means I have redundant crap lying around in my mail folder. That's dumb as all hell when it's been moved to the "deleted items" folder. The only way that seems to get around this is to run in "marked as deleted" mode and use the Purge Button plugin - which defeats the whole nice copy/move UI.

    4. Re:Privledged by nolife · · Score: 1

      That does work for MAIL part of Exchange but not for the contacts, tasks, calender and journal (does anyone actually use the journal in Outlook). There are partial work arounds for some of them but no where near a one application solution.

      --
      Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
    5. Re:Privledged by samael · · Score: 1

      There's an option to "purge" on exit, which does that.

      No, I have no idea why it doesn't do that automatically...

    6. Re:Privledged by jbeiter · · Score: 1

      At least Outlook has hooks.. The true exiles are on Lotus Notes.

    7. Re:Privledged by nolife · · Score: 1

      I have been using Thunderbird for quite some time as my mail client at home connecting via IMAP. I have not seen what you are describing.

      --
      Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
    8. Re:Privledged by dominux · · Score: 1

      err, you can use thunderbird with a domino server and you can use notes client with any pop3/IMAP server. What hooks do you think Notes doesn't have?

    9. Re:Privledged by marcjw · · Score: 1

      File -> Compact Folders

      --
      . Ergo sum cogito - Yoda
    10. Re:Privledged by tepples · · Score: 1

      You'll need to get your Sysadmin to enable it though

      Know of any good ways to convince a sysadmin to allow this? Quitting doesn't count in this period of labor immobility.

    11. Re:Privledged by mattyrobinson69 · · Score: 1

      if your running linux (maybe other os's, not sure) there's ximian connector which works with ximian evolution.

  12. Bayesian Folders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I want a folder that can learn what sort of thing I want in it. Like the spam filtering, but not just junk. So I could drag credit card notices to my Bills folder a couple times and then have it just happen. When somebody smarter than me implements this, then I'll be a Thunderbird supporter.

    1. Re:Bayesian Folders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Great idea! Mod up, please!

    2. Re:Bayesian Folders by Man+of+E · · Score: 2, Informative

      Popfile does this, I believe. Haven't used it myself (because it only works with POP3), but some people swear by it.

      --
      Ceci n'est pas une sig
    3. Re:Bayesian Folders by mikeboone · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yeah, this is what's keeping me off Thunderbird. I am still using Outlook, but with the cool extension Outclass which is an Outlook front-end for POPFile. It works really well. I know I could use POPFile's web interface, but it's so much nicer when it's integrated into the mail app. If Thunderbird can use Bayes for spam, open it up for other uses!

    4. Re:Bayesian Folders by SizL · · Score: 2, Informative

      Popfile indead does this, and very well in my case. And I don't know when you last checked, but it speaks IMAP and NNTP too now. I use it on my own mailserver and get 95% accuracy in classifying my mail into some 20+ categories. I tried Thunderbird, but I don't like the way it handles IMAP accounts.

    5. Re:Bayesian Folders by Al+Al+Cool+J · · Score: 1
      Bayesian folders is on my wishlist too. However...
      So I could drag credit card notices to my Bills folder
      What I really want is a streamlined interface whose focus is classifying emails, without without having to drag and drop, and scroll and click through a list of nested folders. Every GUI email client I've seen follows this same retarted paradigm. If I have to perform and action hundreds and thousands of times, then it should be as quick and simple as possible.

      I mean if I can reply to an email with a single click, the why can't I classify it as work/misc in two clicks? Every email needs to be classified, but they don't all need to be replied to.

      It would also be nice if you could set emails to expire in a week/month/3months/year. I think there may be some clients that can already do this.

    6. Re:Bayesian Folders by dabraham · · Score: 3, Informative

      There's actually an enhancement request for that with a bounty. There's even a patch submitted (check out bugzilla bug # 181866 (no link, bugzilla rejects links from /.)).

      It seems to be stalled at the moment, but there is motivation, money, and work there. Voting for the bug raises the odds that it will get attention. Not by a whole lot, but some.

    7. Re:Bayesian Folders by abischof · · Score: 1

      I tried Thunderbird, but I don't like the way it handles IMAP accounts.

      You don't like the way Thunderbird handles IMAP accounts or you don't like the way Popfile handles IMAP accounts?
      --

      Alex Bischoff
      HTML/CSS coder for hire

    8. Re:Bayesian Folders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think the Opera mail reader, l2 or whatever it's called, already does this.
      Use Thunderbird myself, though. Not sure why, but think the Opera usenet interface weirded me out a little compared to t-birds. It is the best browser, though.

    9. Re:Bayesian Folders by lakeland · · Score: 1

      This exists. For outlook you can integrate popfile. For other things we're still a way off (perhaps 3 months?).

      Here are some steps if you are too impatient :)

      Download and install monkeyplexer.
      Configure it to scan your mail dirs etc.
      Write a cron job that calls it to scan your mail dirs every hour.

      Otherwise, wait 3-6 months :)

    10. Re:Bayesian Folders by kulpinator · · Score: 1

      why can't I classify it as work/misc in two clicks

      gmail

      --
      Karma: Positive (mostly due to rash moderations)
    11. Re:Bayesian Folders by mikefe · · Score: 1

      How does it handle imap accounts that you don't like?

      I have used it against different imap servers and each has different behaviour.

      Be sure to post the thunderbird version and the name and version of the imap server software.

      --
      There: Something at a specific location.
      Their: Owned by someone.
      Please make sure your english compiles.
    12. Re:Bayesian Folders by galaga79 · · Score: 1

      In theory this could easily be done by someone just writing an Thunderbird extension that interfaced with POPFile or replicated its functionality.

    13. Re:Bayesian Folders by SizL · · Score: 1

      Well... -Popfile automatically sorts incoming messages into subfolders. Hence, my inbox is always empty. But TB doesn't indicate new messages in subfolders, so that makes it hard to see when new mail has come in. -I read my mail from various locations. When I use OE, it synchronizes the local archive with the contents of the mailserver and I can read all mail instantly. TB had to be specifically instructed to do this. -I want to be able to decide whether deleted messages should be displayed or not, and manually purging folders combined with a purge-on-exit-folder option is perfectly acceptable for me. my mailserver runs UW-Imap rev1 2004.352 I tried TB ver 0.8..has IMAP functionality improved in 0.9?

    14. Re:Bayesian Folders by mikefe · · Score: 1

      I have created a new bug report:
      https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi ?id=26802 0

      If you are interested, please add your email to the CC list.

      --
      There: Something at a specific location.
      Their: Owned by someone.
      Please make sure your english compiles.
  13. buggy? by jstave · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm always a little uneasy about software that is in the pre-1.0 state. Can anyone speak to its reliablility?

    1. Re:buggy? by mkoenecke · · Score: 4, Informative

      No worries; I've been using it for a couple of years now (I'm an attorney who uses it for both business and personal e-mail). I have not had even one problem with reliability or stability.

      Remember, it's a fork off of the Mozilla project, which has been past 1.0 for quite some time.

      --
      TANSTAAFL
    2. Re:buggy? by PeteDotNu · · Score: 1

      It's got a few bugs, but it's reasonably solid. I've been using it since 0.6, and the only bugs that I've discovered have been niggles rather than complete turn-offs. The worst one was in 0.8, where deleted messages wouldn't always get moved to the Trash. It didn't really bother me though, as I'm not the sort of person who deletes stuff that they may then later want to retrieve.

      The usual comments about it being more solid than Outlook Express apply, of course.

      --
      My other processor is big-endian.
    3. Re:buggy? by Kingpin · · Score: 1

      T-Bird is as rock steady as they get. It may stand in the shadow of Firefox, but just between you and me, I consider Thunderbird a better and more complete product (but that's mainly because it only needs to deal with standardized protocols and not an MS bastardized Web).

      --
      Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
      Geocrawler error message.
    4. Re:buggy? by afd8856 · · Score: 1

      I've been using it since 0.5 with POP and IMAP accounts and never had a problem. Though one time, one of my clients where I've installed TB 0.7 for Windows lost its accounts settings.

      I think what happened was that they had it as a dead process and just started again and it created a new profile or something like that. Any way, I've been able to recover everything.

      --
      I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
    5. Re:buggy? by lawpoop · · Score: 1

      I've been using .6 since its release with no issues whatsoever. I even upgrading from .5 without uninstalling, which was not recommended in the documentation!

      --
      Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
      -- Pablo Picasso
    6. Re:buggy? by dan+dan+the+dna+man · · Score: 1

      Having used Firefox and Thunderbird extensively.. the latter has been FAR more stable than the former!

      Firefox has frustrated me no end, but Thunderbird never did. However Evolution2 is the way forward for those of us working in a GroupWise environment...

      --
      I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
    7. Re:buggy? by the+quick+brown+fox · · Score: 1
      (Warning: Wild tangent follows...)

      See, you would think e-mail would be a world of nice, standardized protocols and perfectly compliant mailers and transport servers. The sad reality is that SMTP, RFC822 headers, and MIME are abused or incorrectly implemented all over the place, often in more subtle and insidious ways than HTML. (To be fair, some of the standards are pretty hard to write a 100% compliant parser for.) This is not too surprising when you think about how many e-mails probably get generated by sloppily coded CGI scripts and spam engines.

      Thunderbird does a pretty good job with the standards, from what I've seen, but it's not perfect (unless they've made changes for 0.9). For example, it doesn't always provide the correct representation of e-mail addresses, specifically those that use quotes in the name. From what I remember, it also does not do as good a job of parsing illegal MIME as Outlook Express does.

      But those are very small niggles, interesting only to someone who is implementing his own e-mail/MIME parser (for example). In real-world usage, it would be pretty unlikely to run into legitimate messages that TBird couldn't parse.

    8. Re:buggy? by jrumney · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'm always a little uneasy about software that is in the pre-1.0 state. If it makes you feel better, it is released under the Mozilla Public License, which is up to 1.1 already. 1.1 + 0.9 = 2.0, so I think it averages out.

    9. Re:buggy? by Wolfger · · Score: 1

      I've been using 0.8 for awhile, and the mail portion is good and stable. I have had a lot of problems with using Thunderbird to subscribe to RSS feeds, though.

    10. Re:buggy? by Zerbey · · Score: 1

      Stopped having any kind of major crashes around the 0.6 milestone. 0.7.3 and 0.8 where both rock solid and as soon as Enigmail is updated I'll be giving 0.9 a whirl.

    11. Re:buggy? by Zukix · · Score: 1

      You might want to check what your cleints have received.

      I have experienced deleted text and attachments (they appear deleted in the composer) being sent in messages.

      It is however much faster than Outlook if you need to connect to 5+ email accounts. Outlook used hang for a minute while updating - tb does not.

    12. Re:buggy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IANAL, but you are? Cool.

    13. Re:buggy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I use both Thunderbug and Firecrap as my everyday clients. Thunderbug has a habit of crashing after you've just finished writing, but have not yet sent, a long email which is very annoying but it is fairly stable. I wouldn't put it on any desktops I've responsible for as I would get roasted in hell by the head of IT because people would whinge about the reliability (even if Outlook is no better).

      Firecrap 1.0PR is really bad though, much worse than IE 6.0 on the Win98, Win98se and Win2000 desktops I manage. Maybe it works well on XP or Linux? I've always found the Mozilla range of browsers to be unreliable or they will not render sites (due to the sites being designed for IE). This opinion will probably not please the average /.er and I am a really big OS advocate but there is no way I could ask people to use Firefox it despite it being fast browser. I hope the full release is better but my experience with both Thunderbug and Firecrap is that their reliability has gotten worse as we've moved towards 1.0.

    14. Re:buggy? by l0b0 · · Score: 1

      I'm very sorry to say that I've seen my share of bugs in this program, although I trust it very well with newsgroups and RSS feeds. Check out Bugzilla if you want details on the existing bugs.

    15. Re:buggy? by flint · · Score: 2, Informative

      I try every release... but I have experienced lock ups every time thus far within an hour of normal pop use. Outlook 2000 still does a better job for me unfortunately.

      I also need to trigger the play of a sound file when a message is filtered to a specific folder and haven't seen an extension do this yet (and I'm too lazy to learn xul etc to do it myself). It has been requested as a feature already.

    16. Re:buggy? by Malc · · Score: 1

      If you're worried about stability, then only use it for IMAP stuff. If it crashes it much less likely to corrupt your mail.

    17. Re:buggy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually today there were a few mails around work about the new version. I havent upgraded as my 0.7.3 has been very stable. So stable infact that it has been running since Sep09. With 1500 mails in the inbox (I know) , that's pretty stable in any mans language

    18. Re:buggy? by mkoenecke · · Score: 1

      Whenever a client reports that a document failed to arrive, it is invariably because I was a doofus and forgot to attach the file. I always use straight text (no HTML), and have never experienced any problems.

      --
      TANSTAAFL
    19. Re:buggy? by patrick0 · · Score: 1

      I was using 0.8 (previous version) -- worked fine.

      However, 0.9 just hangs on startup - displays the folder list then goes into a cpu loop. Will now have to trawl websites for the fix.

      I'd wait for the 1.0 release if I was you.

  14. I wonder. by Moby+Cock · · Score: 3, Informative

    Does anybody know of any 'big-scale' implementation of T-Bird? I use it at home sparingly since I find I use more and more web based email and a real decent email client is just not needed. I know Outlook (and others) has countless corporate implementations, and I am wondering if T-Bird has been used similarly. If so, how does it hold up? Anybody?

    1. Re:I wonder. by Aliencow · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We use it on approximately 100 PCs (that's not big-scale but still)

      Right now, the network is a mess (started working here about 6months ago) - but I'm currently working on making MSIs for Thunderbird so I can keep it up to date easily. Someone did the same thing with Firefox and it's great!

    2. Re:I wonder. by automatix · · Score: 1

      One good thing is that you can preset (and change) settings using the user.js and prefs.js files, and also do "group" and "user" settings.

      It also runs 100% happily launching off a shared network drive, which makes it very easy to update (just replace the binaries).

      Rob :)

  15. Time to give another version a try by Megaweapon · · Score: 1

    I'm having a heckuva time getting the recent Thunderbird releases to work with my employer's Cyrus IMAP server. It's a pretty old version of Cyrus, and Thunderbird and it don't always talk well to each other. *crosses fingers*

    --
    I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
  16. Question for the Outlook "switchers" by holden+caufield · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is not a troll.

    I use Outlook for my personal email, and I'm strongly considering changing my mail client. Other than the security benefits of not automatically running scripts when viewing messages, can anyone who has switched to Thunderbird tell me what other features make this client a preferred choice to Outlook?

    I'll politely add that open-source isn't enough to compel me to change, nor is bayesian filtering (I already use SpamBayes).

    Thanks for your help, and really, I'm not trying to fan any flames!

    --
    I'll create an amusing sig when I have something meaningful to post.
    1. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by Aliencow · · Score: 2, Informative

      I use Thunderbird because..
      I like the interface.
      It supports IMAP well, it allows me to have my newsgroups in the same app.
      It supports RSS too, which is a feature I love!

    2. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not automatically running scripts when viewing messages ISN'T enough to compel you to change?

    3. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by gclef · · Score: 3, Informative

      There are a few reasons I use it for my home email:

      1) Mouse gestures. I'm on a lot of mailing lists, and being able to specify common actions as a gesture (right-click & drag right to select the next unread message, for example) saves me a lot of time digging through lists like Full-Disclosure.

      2) Message threading. It's not perfect, but it helps a lot to be able to group messages by thread (I think new versions of Outlook can do this, but my 2000 version can not).

      3) The Baysean filtering is nice, but as you've mentioned, you already have that.

      4) Themes. Yeah, it's trivial, but still...they're fun.

    4. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by Nevenmrgan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      - It's faster than Outlook (though slower than Firefox). In the latest Outlook, message rendering can take up to a few seconds - the UI is just not very responsive.

      - Leaner UI overall. I like Outlook's corporate functions, but I just don't use them that often at work, and never at home. Also, Outlook suffers from having 15 different ways to get to your folders - they keep adding new panels and icons. I don't consider this a good thing at all, since it rarely - if ever - increases my productivity or improves my user experience. It just makes me click around idly.

      - Significantly faster (and better) quicksearch (there are even rumors of search-as-you-type in the future!)

      - As with any other Mozilla product, they listen to the users' comments. If a reasonable, much-requested feature doesn't make it to the release, I'll bet my hat there's an extension that does it.

      - Shockingly, it's a better client for Ma and Pa User. Fewer buttons, leaner out of the box, no office environment mumbo jumbo. (I'm not even going to take seriously suggestions to use Outlook Express in that case.)

    5. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by nvivo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      My reasons to switch:

      1. Profile, preferences, rules, contacts, etc are easy to backup. You can have all your files in one place and you choose where.

      2. IMAP support in Outlook really sucks... in a way i can`t even describe it. Thunderbird is perfect with IMAP, and no need to purge messages manually...

      3. Saved Search folders in 0.9 are great. They are like views in databases, but for your messages.

      4. RSS support to keep you up with the news.

      5. Great extensions makes Thunderbird even better.

      6. It looks much better than Outlook Express.

    6. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wouldn't say that IMAP support is perfect,

      one features that is really usefull to me in Outlook Express, using IMAP is to tag one by one messages I want to download.
      I don't want it to download message body if I click (by mistake) on a message that doesn't interest me at that time or if I'm just checking header details.

      unfortunatly I didn't manage to do this with Thunderbird.
      but apart from that it is great

    7. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by javatips · · Score: 1

      One of the great feature, that has been added recently, is the RSS feed reader. You can add as many feed as you want and it handles each item in the field just like a e-mail message. This means that you can keep an history of the feed you've subscribed and do search. You can even forward feed item like normal e-mail.

      I've dropped using RSSOwl and bloglines to use Thunderbird exclusively for reading my RSS feed.

    8. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by truthsearch · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In addition to what other posters have listed,

      - Administration - One simple screen for e-mail accounts and another simple screen for other configuration options. I find the Outlook barrage of configuration windows and tabs VERY annoying. It's also difficult to see exactly how POP/IMAP e-mail accounts are configured in Outlook. If you see the options in Thunderbird you'll see what I mean.

      - These new Virtual Folders (mail's not really moved into them, but it's a view over all your mail based on criteria you specify). I use Outlook 2002 (XP) at work and I don't see any way to do the same without creating rules to copy mail to folders.

      - Message threads. I see no way to do this in Outlook 2002.

      - Less features. Outlook has more features, but I don't have any use for most of them. So Thunderbird is less cluttered for me.

    9. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by tweek · · Score: 1

      Best IMAP and LDAP support out right now. LDAP support ESPECIALLY.

      --
      "Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
    10. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by Ark42 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I have trouble getting many people to switch to TB even though they quickly took up FF. The things keeping back these people I know that are now using FF + Outlook are:

      1) Buttons work differently, such as the delete button doesn't also close the message if you opened the message in a new Window (These type of problems are solvable with the Buttons! extension)

      2) The context menu for Copy To and Move To is very annoying for them to use since they typically have 100s of folders nested across their accounts, and they can't seem to find the folder they want fast enough, where as Outlook will just pop up a little window with a folder tree for Copy/Move operations.

      3) The address book contacts editor has most of the useful information on the first tab, but the Company Title and Notes section are on the 2nd and 3rd tab, and users find it annoying to have to use these extra tabs for such common pieces of information, when all the other stuff on the 2nd and 3rd tab is unused. Somehow, they wan't those two fields duplicated onto the main tab for the contacts editor.

      4) Having to open the address book in a new window, and the contacts sidebar tab really doesn't help anybody I suggested it to here. Users really seem to wait a contacts folder in their folder list to see the list of contacts.

      5) The contacts list is not easily sortable like Outlook and blank fields seem to sort above A forcing them to sort Z-A and scroll down to find the stuff in the middle. I guess they just want A-Z sorting to put blanks after Z.

    11. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by Ark42 · · Score: 1


      Also, the calendar issues too:

      6) Nobody wants to leave the calendar window open in order to get alerts.

    12. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by Zerbey · · Score: 1

      The message filters don't have that stupid limit on the number of rules you can set. This costs me many hours of wasted time every year at work.

      RSS support, this is sooo useful

      IMAP actually works in Thunderbird, it barely works at all in Outlook (Or Outlook Express)

      Enigmail is free, and much more reliable than the commercial offerings. (PGP support)

      Extensions, of which there are dozens... if you can't find a feature it's very likely someone else has made an extension.

      Flipside, things Outlook has that I like...

      The best scheduling system of any mailer (unless someone can point me in the direction of another mailer)

      A much better dictionary, and a grammar checker

    13. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by bitrot42 · · Score: 1


      I would add that Linux support is a huge advantage. It's even possible (with a little fussing) to share your mail and prefs between Windows and Linux on a dual-boot machine.

      One less reason to find myself in the "wrong" OS when I need to do something...

      --
      FIXME: Add a sig here
    14. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by l0b0 · · Score: 1

      The Best Reason Ever: Portable Thunderbird! I've been using this for the best part of a month, and it's just great having all the settings, bookmarks, and extensions both at work and at home.

    15. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by lizrd · · Score: 1
      2. IMAP support in Outlook really sucks... in a way i can`t even describe it. Thunderbird is perfect with IMAP, and no need to purge messages manually...
      How do you get TB to expunge automatically? Has it been added recently? I attempted to get this to work with 0.7 and gave up in frustration.
      --
      I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
    16. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by iBod · · Score: 1

      Just recently switched from Outlook to TB 0.8 under W2K SP4. As an email client, I'm pretty happy with it. Most things work well enough.

      Had some issues with importing and managing large mail folders from Outlook - TB would not delete imported folders and would hang when trying to traverse them.

      I still can't get away from Outlook's calendar and scheduling functions. Nothing available that really replaces that in Thunderbird as far as I know.

    17. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by richlv · · Score: 1

      1. it's crossplatform, so i can easily migrate my data if i have a need
      2. it stores mail in plaintext, so recovering from a problem is relatively easy (i've tried to recover mbx, dbx, pst etc files for some users a few years ago - huh...)
      this also helps a lot to pass spam to spamassassin
      3. it's rules system beats the hell out of outlook [express] (at least last time i used outlook ;) )
      4. it has threading. reading lists without threading - those outlook users must be sick :) (though i suppose it probably is already implemented by ms)
      5. it's fast
      6. it has an ability to skip opening remote images/objects - this helps to reduce spam sent to my mailbox
      7. it has an ability to easily view source of the mail message
      8. it doesn a lot better job with several pop accounts and several identities (mail identities, that is :) )

      there probably are more things, these are just first i can remember.

      --
      Rich
    18. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by ceswiedler · · Score: 1

      Can you add LDAP records in Thunderbird? I tried to switch to LDAP for my personal contacts, but the only app I could find which would create new LDAP records from scratch was the Turba Horde web app. Ideally I would like to keep my standard Thunderbird contacts in LDAP.

    19. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by afidel · · Score: 1

      These new Virtual Folders (mail's not really moved into them, but it's a view over all your mail based on criteria you specify). I use Outlook 2002 (XP) at work and I don't see any way to do the same without creating rules to copy mail to folders.

      Outlook 2003 has them, they are called search folders. In fact there is a default one called unread mail that includes all unread mail regardless of folder (I wish they had an option to not change the read state for items in that view as it's a really easy way to lose a message), usefull if you have rules filtering your email to subfolders and you want to check all of your new mail.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    20. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by gnu-generation-one · · Score: 1

      Thunderbird reaches version 0.9, and still you can't specify the "From" address of an email message.

      Presumably it still creates a whole new folder structure for each and every email account you have?

      And of course, there's the fascination with switching to HTML mode at every opportunity. In fact, all new email clients seem to be like this.
      Where's the button for "see no HTML, speak no HTML, think no HTML"?

    21. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by 3gm · · Score: 1

      I still use Outlook 2003 for my main e-mail client. I use Thunderbird at my client's site because they don't use Outlook.

      In general I like Thunderbird. Nice to have an integrated News Reader (Outlook users must use Outlook Express for news), although it is missing the Decode and Combine feature that's useful for large binary postings.

      I really like the contacts folder in Outlook. Works really well and I can access the data easily from Word for Mail Merges etc. I also MUCH prefer SpamBayes to the Bayesian filtering in Thunderbird. With TBird, I still get a lot of SPAM in my inbox that Outlook puts in my "Junk Suspects" folder.

    22. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by Zaiff+Urgulbunger · · Score: 1

      Before I start, let me just say that I'm not using Thunderbird as my mail client yet. Because I don't like it yet! As such, I believe everything I've written below is correct, but it might not be 100%. Also, I haven't tried 0.9 yet, so my comments are based on 0.8.

      Thunderbird reaches version 0.9, and still you can't specify the "From" address of an email message.
      I believe you can specify "from"... however, you choose from the identities you've created for each account. Myself, I have a number of Newsgroup accounts, each using the same dummy email address. So I can choose from *any* of these identities even though they're all the same. SO its not quite perfect yet! :)

      Presumably it still creates a whole new folder structure for each and every email account you have?
      No, you can now have everything go into a single folder structure. This does appear to work as desired!

      And of course, there's the fascination with switching to HTML mode at every opportunity. In fact, all new email clients seem to be like this. Where's the button for "see no HTML, speak no HTML, think no HTML"?
      I hadn't noticed this being a problem. I think you can choose how to view incoming emails, and what format for new outgoing, and forwards/replys.

      That said, it would be nice to have a button to toggle between text and HTML views. I think sometimes *the powers that be* tend to think if they've apparently surpassed Outlook Express's functionality, then that is enough. However, I'm still using OE partly because I can set the default email view to text, the default new email format to text and have forwards/reply use the existing format. Soooo, if I get an email that I'd like to view as HTML, I just hit the forward or reply button!
      I know this isn't functionality by design, but the net effect it I can switch between text and HTML views using a single button click.

      The other thing I don't like about Thunderbird (or indeed OE!) is the way Identities get bound to Accounts. Why? Surely these are entirely separate things. Yes, an Account should have a default Identity, by why do I need to create a new Identity for each Account? And Thunderbird also used to bind an Account to a folder structure (as you mentioned) which they've now corrected... although when you set this up, it does kind of feel like a retro-fit..... although, as I said, it does work as I wanted so I shouldn't be too mean to them!!

      Gripes aside, I do like the product for its extendability so I do hope the issues are fixed at some point.

    23. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by gclef · · Score: 1
      Thunderbird reaches version 0.9, and still you can't specify the "From" address of an email message.

      Ummm...what? I do this all the time. In fact, I've done this in 0.8 as well. The only limit is you have to choose between the accounts you've defined for Thunderbird to get mail for. You can't just go choose some random address to source email from. If you want that, use another email client. I don't see that as a big deal.

    24. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by tweek · · Score: 1

      You know, I've wondered why more clients don't support this?!?!

      I would love to be able to add my contacts right there. I'm already authenticating for chrissakes! And the schema for both outlook and thunderbird are online for anyone who wants to add those attributes. Then again, maybe they should just stick with the standard schemas.

      I've been modifying phpldapadmin to allow our users to create a personal address book under thier entries but it's not the best solution in the end.

      I'd much rather have this be a part of thunderbird. FYI, Outlook and Outlook Express don't do this either. I can't understand wh

      --
      "Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
    25. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by mikefe · · Score: 1

      Have you reported this in bugzilla?

      If so, please post links because I'm interested in each of these issues.

      Thanks.

      --
      There: Something at a specific location.
      Their: Owned by someone.
      Please make sure your english compiles.
    26. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd like a "nested" message threading feature.

      I often look at mail by date or size and would like to zoom in on a thread, process it, and then return to where I was looking before. As it is now, there's only one global setting for sort order and when I switch I have to find the message I want or my former position manually.

    27. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "he only limit is you have to choose between the accounts you've defined for Thunderbird to get mail for. You can't just go choose some random address to source email from. If you want that, use another email client"

      Exactly how hard would it be to have a textbox for "From" address like every other email client in the world. Creating a whole new identity, a whole new set of email accounts, and having to specify servers, etc. every time you want to send a new email using amazon_feedback@mydomain.com is just not practical at all.

      KMail has a perfectly good system, with a menu checkbox to specify whether you want the "From" to appear as an editable field. Firefox, which has a whole special system of specifying additional headers, goes to special trouble to prevent you from specifying the address you're using.

    28. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by Ark42 · · Score: 1


      No, I don't post a lot to bugzilla because searching to find if its been reported already is way too hard, and I don't want to waste time posting dup bugs.

    29. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by mikefe · · Score: 1

      Testing these against TB 0.9:

      1.
      a) Double click on message to open in new window
      b1) click on delete in window deletes that message and opens the next message
      b2) go to message list and delete message in open window -- the window closes and the message is deleted

      2. Valid point.
      a) I suggest you work in the 3-pane view so that you can drag and drop the messages in the tree on the left.

      3.
      It would be hard to search for that one, and would need some time to come up with a good bug report.

      4.
      What exact functionality and presentation of information are they missing? I would need a lot more details to make a good bug report.

      5. Good point.

      I'll do some searches through the bugzilla database and see what I find. In the mean time, can you post some details on I asked. Thanks.

      --
      There: Something at a specific location.
      Their: Owned by someone.
      Please make sure your english compiles.
    30. Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You've been able to set From addresses for quite some time. It's in the UI now too. I do it all the time. It's automatic, too; if the To: that you're replying to is one of your From:s, it hooks it up.

      You attach identities to accounts. No need to do anything but add the From you want. No need to mess with servers, etc.

  17. thunderbird and imap by MenAtWork · · Score: 1

    the last version of thunderbird (hmm! i uninstalled it so no idea what version it was but most probably 2 months old), used to create a lock on the imap server, can anyone confirm that problem or verify whether it has stopped doing that ... after move to firefox i was really looking forward to moving to thunderbird but the software was not realible enough. Is filtering over imap supported ?

    1. Re:thunderbird and imap by nsandver-work · · Score: 1

      I've been using Thunderbird as an IMAP client since 0.3 or 0.4, and I've never had a problem with it, even after switching to IMAPS around the 0.5 release. It's been nothing but great for me.

  18. Here you go by Nevenmrgan · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is, of course, an extension that adds this functionality: http://minimizetotray.mozdev.org/ Happy extending.

    1. Re:Here you go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Happy extending.

      That's the second time today someone has said that to me! This morning, I got this email ...

    2. Re:Here you go by gad_zuki! · · Score: 3, Informative

      I use an app called Thundertray. Its pretty much a tray launcher and minimizer for tbird. The tray extension on the mozdev site never worked for me for some reason.

    3. Re:Here you go by the+unbeliever · · Score: 1

      You have my undying love and affection for that link, kind sir.

  19. Delete Duplicates? by lawpoop · · Score: 1

    Anyone who's messed around with multiple email clients, backups, and archives knows that you'll likely make a mess of your folder structure. Does Thunder have or plan to have a feature to delete duplicate emails?

    --
    Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
    -- Pablo Picasso
    1. Re:Delete Duplicates? by Seraphim_72 · · Score: 1

      And while we are at it does someone know of a way to do the same thing with bookmarks in firefox? Some sort of utility to add more organization function to bookmarking?

      Sera

      --
      Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
  20. Archive?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I want the ability to archive messages seperately in text format, with the attachments as well as an option.

    None of the email clients have this for some reason.

    1. Re:Archive?! by the+quick+brown+fox · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Outlook Express lets you drag messages out to the filesystem; the raw RFC822 (headers, attachments, and all) gets saved as a file with an .eml extension. When you double-click the .eml file, OE displays it in a message window.

      Thunderbird lets you save by pressing Ctrl+S on a particular message, but it doesn't work when you have more than one message selected, and you can't use drag-and-drop either. And I haven't been able to figure out how to display the message in TB again (there's a File | Open Saved Message..., but it doesn't seem to do anything).

    2. Re:Archive?! by MrPink2U · · Score: 0

      I second this. I have grown accustomed to "auto archive" ability from using Outlook at work for many years (it's a company standard and they pay me every week). I think this would be a great feature for T-Bird.

    3. Re:Archive?! by KrisHolland · · Score: 1

      Express archiver for Outlook express does a good job of archiving messages, and attachments.

      It really is sad that there isnt a plug in that will allow you to archive all of your messages in readable format.

      I wonder exactly how everyone else who uses Yahoo Groups or Google Groups gets their 'image' attachments out of ther email client ;).

    4. Re:Archive?! by value_added · · Score: 1

      Dunno about Outlook/OE's interpretation of what a saved message is supposed to be (or a mailbox, for that matter), but Thunderbird stores its emails in standard mbox format, i.e. it's ordinary text viewable/editable in any text editor. That text, of course, includes headers, etc.

      The point is this -- by copying messages to a "folder" you're actually saving those messages to a separate file (read "mbox"). Which is what you want, yes? So there's no reason to have a ^C-S feature to save multiple emails.

    5. Re:Archive?! by the_illuminatus · · Score: 1

      That's not what the parent is talking about. The poster wants to save multiple messages to the filesystem as separate files. Here is an example:
      User corresponds with business client via email...
      Client denies that user did their job to spec and refuses to pay...
      User needs to document all email exchanges with client for the court case. All 2648 of them. The only way to do this from within TB is to save them ONE AT A TIME. Ugh.
      (Of course, we are all ninjas who can do this with grep, but not everyone has that luxury.)

      --
      knee-jerk? check. post? check. okay, time to read the article.
    6. Re:Archive?! by januschr · · Score: 1

      Funny. "Open Saved Message..." works for me with messages saved with Thunderbird.

      --
      This is my sig. Read it and weep.
  21. I want a "Export to mysql" option by LoboRojo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For all of use archiving our email for years, wouldn't it be nice to be able to file messages in a real database? YES!!!!

    --

    ---
    All my submissions to Slashdot rejected... and proud of it!
    1. Re:I want a "Export to mysql" option by macaulay805 · · Score: 0

      Maybe some people can get together and write an extension that'll accomplish that very task?

    2. Re:I want a "Export to mysql" option by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think I really need to say anything at all.

      +5 Funny

    3. Re:I want a "Export to mysql" option by anaplasmosis · · Score: 1

      No. Databases suck for handling free text.

    4. Re:I want a "Export to mysql" option by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      wouldn't it be nice to be able to file messages in a real database?

      What's that got to do with mysql?

    5. Re:I want a "Export to mysql" option by frostman · · Score: 1

      You should check out the DBmail project.

      Speaking from experience, I can tell you there are some real performance issues once you get a big mass of e-mail into a database on lower-end hardward (read: affordable hosted box). But if I were running my own mailserver without paying monthly for the hardware, I'd throw everything into Postgres in a second.

      --

      This Like That - fun with words!

  22. Label threads by elykyllek · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'd like to be able to label threads, and for it to automatically label any messages added to the thread. That way I can view my unread and be able to tell if I previously labelled the thread as important.

    Any idea if this is possible or planned?

  23. 0.8 to 0.9 Upgrade Freezes by elysian1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    People have been reporting problems with upgrading from 0.8 to 0.9. It seems like there may be a compatibility problem with older profiles that causes 0.9 to freeze. I think I may wait a while before upgrading since 0.8 works fine for me.

    1. Re:0.8 to 0.9 Upgrade Freezes by C_Kode · · Score: 1

      Hmm.. I went from .6 to .9 without problems. (or at least I haven't had any *yet*)

    2. Re:0.8 to 0.9 Upgrade Freezes by PeteDotNu · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Ah, go on, live dangerously. Back up your profile first, and see what happens.

      --
      My other processor is big-endian.
    3. Re:0.8 to 0.9 Upgrade Freezes by vivek7006 · · Score: 1

      I didnt have any problem. Upgraded from 0.8 to 0.9 on WinXP-Pro. Noia/Cute theme also continues to work without any problems.

    4. Re:0.8 to 0.9 Upgrade Freezes by Saeger · · Score: 1
      No problems for me when going from 0.8 to 0.9 on SuSE 9.1, but I backed up my profile and kept 0.8 around just in case.

      # cd /opt
      # wget http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird /releases/0.9/thunderbird-0.9-i686-linux-gtk2+xft. tar.gz
      # mv thunderbird thunderbird-0.8
      # tar zxf thunderbird-0.9-i686-linux-gtk2+xft.tar.gz

      --

      --
      Power to the Peaceful
    5. Re:0.8 to 0.9 Upgrade Freezes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm one of the people in the thread you mention that had problems with their old profiles. There appears to be an easy solution available. Now, Thunderbird doesn't freeze for me anymore.

      The only thing I had to do was deleting all the MSF files in my profile. I was told those file are an index of all your messages and are used to display folders, so TB doesn't have to look at the subject and sender of each and every message before showing the list of e-mails. Of course, after deleting those indexes forces Thunderbird to make new ones, but that's just a matter of seconds for each folder.

      Problem solved!

  24. Re:Minimize to tray by ning · · Score: 3, Informative

    I use PowerMenu. It adds a few items to every window's title bar menu - minimize to tray, set transparency, set task priority and 'always on top'. I find it incredibly useful. hth ning

  25. Have they... by phozz+bare · · Score: 1

    ...added a little tray icon that notifies you that there's new mail waiting? (I've selected "show alert" and it DOESN'T.. and I wouldn't want a messagebox anyway)

    ...done something about the horrible, extended disk thrashing that occurs whenever it's been minimized for a while? (My system: Win2k, 256mb RAM with usage at around 240, recent fresh install of Thunderbird with very few messages, and this never happens with FF or Outlook or Outlook Express)

    phozz

    1. Re:Have they... by Red+Alastor · · Score: 1
      Did you tried poptray ? It's a really cool small windows app that tells you when you get new mails.

      http://www.poptray.org/

      --
      Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
    2. Re:Have they... by djdanlib · · Score: 1

      The reason that thrashing never happens with Outlook [Express] is thanks to a special Microsoft-only feature. You see, instead of wearing your system out by swapping data from memory to disk to memory to disk all the time, it runs entirely from virtual memory. This also improves performance, because the computer isn't spending all that time moving the data back and forth. It even makes your system marginally more electrically efficient, since it doesn't waste bits, and we all know bits are electricity. /end completely ridiculous satire

      Maybe Thunderbird is trying to do some shuffling around with its data files after it's been idle for a while. Another thing... Have you defragged lately?

    3. Re:Have they... by jlusk4 · · Score: 1

      tray icon: yes

      John.

    4. Re:Have they... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is it a plugin? I haven't been able to find one that works on Linux.

    5. Re:Have they... by elwell642 · · Score: 1

      I hear ya. I was looking for one for a while. This one works great (on 0.8 anyhow)

      http://moztraybiff.mozdev.org/

      --

      <insert witty linux comment here>

    6. Re:Have they... by I+confirm+I'm+not+a · · Score: 1

      I'm probably missing something, but didn't this already exist? My version 0.8 used to show a white/green envelope in my sys tray (Windows XP) when I had unopened mail - no extensions, before someone suggests I'd installed poptray without realising!

      --
      This is where the serious fun begins.
    7. Re:Have they... by jlusk4 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, it probably did. I know Moz had it (I just switched to thunderbird 0.9, coincidentally, last night).

  26. how does it comapre to gmail by yohan1701 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have a gmail account and its great. But I still would love have a mail client with gmail like features.

    Instead of folders, categorizing messages, so that a message can have multiply categories. I always hated using folders anyways and everything just ended up in my inbox.

    The search is best part of gmail. How does searching in Thunderbird compare ?

    1. Re:how does it comapre to gmail by yohan1701 · · Score: 1

      PS. gmail invite http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-f11f8c2fd-fd4579e7 9a-6cb89e9bb9

    2. Re:how does it comapre to gmail by bobintetley · · Score: 1

      So you not only didn't read the article, you didn't even read the header of the discussion!

      ...New features include Saved Search Folders (aka Virtual Folders) which allow you to display messages based on previously set search criteria across multiple folders. Message Grouping allows you to organize e-mail in a folder by grouping them based on various attributes like Date, Sender, Label, etc...

      What do you think "Saved Search Folders" are?

      What's even worse is that someone moderated this "Interesting".

    3. Re:how does it comapre to gmail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks

  27. PIM features? by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think the next important step for Thunderbird would be to allow it to be installed (via extensions and such) as a full PIM suite. Calendar, address book, etc. are features people look for, and if these were available, Thunderbird would start converting Outlook users at the same rate Firefox is converting IE users.

    Adding in the existing Calendar extension would be a good start. Adding in connectivity to an standards-based open source groupware server would create the end-to-end solution we've been looking for all these years.

    --
    Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
    1. Re:PIM features? by Carcass666 · · Score: 1

      Well, like you mentioned, Mozilla has more the "all-in-one" package you're looking for.

      In my organization, we finally are migrating from IE to Firefox. We've run into some Javascript compatibility problems with our on-line CRM Netsuite, but I've been able to work around them.

      We could get off of the Microsoft Outlook bus if Thunderbird (or other package) had a Microsoft Exchange protocol (and, for now, we're stuck on Windows because of some apps we need to run to stay in business)

  28. Related Story by Omega1045 · · Score: 2, Informative
    Reuters has a story about Firefox gaining on IE this morning:

    Story here.

    The story says Firefax now enjoys a 6% market share!

    --

    Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein

    1. Re:Related Story by aug24 · · Score: 1

      They are confused little bunnies at Reuters... the 6% figure would appear to be Moz plus FF, unless everyone in the world has stopped using Moz (and I haven't!).

      They are doubly confused as istr they announced that IE was down to only 91% about a month ago in a NetCraft survey. This one is by WebSideStory. I don't understand why Reuters has such a reputation for news when they just regurgitate stuff...!

      J.

      --
      You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
    2. Re:Related Story by Fnkmaster · · Score: 1

      Equally importantly.. no, more importantly to me, the looong time Slashdot/Firefox rendering bug appears to have been fixed with the new Slashcode update as of this morning. I am getting zero misrendered pages now, no more CTRL-mousewheel up-down to get proper rendering! After months and months of waiting, somebody has finally gotten off their asses and stopped pointing fingers.

      Yes, I realize it's a Firefox bug with a certain kind of nested table structure that Slashdot uses, but still, it can't have been that hard for Slashdot to clean up their HTML a bit and join the rest of the web. Of course, the FF devs should get off their butts and fix it on their end too.

  29. Excellent by Steeltalon · · Score: 1

    Great to hear! I was at a conference this week and ended up talking up Firefox/Thunderbird quite a bit. I can't imagine that MS ever thought that open source could be the threat that it has become.

    --
    Regards, Ian
    1. Re:Excellent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      > I can't imagine that MS ever thought that open source could be the threat that it has become.

      No they didn't see that one coming did they?

  30. Link to homepage. by SoupIsGoodFood_42 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here's the obvious, but missing link to the Thunderbird homepage.

  31. Firefox 1.0RC2 by xabi · · Score: 1

    Note that Firefox 1.0RC2 was released today. More info

    --
    Check populicio.us
    1. Re:Firefox 1.0RC2 by snowman11 · · Score: 1

      Maybe a coincidence but hotmail is not working now... RC2 issue or Microsoft issue?

    2. Re:Firefox 1.0RC2 by sepluv · · Score: 1

      Just re-opened my ancient hotmail a/c and it works fine for me with RC2. (Why do you us hotmail anyway?)

      --
      Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
      [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
    3. Re:Firefox 1.0RC2 by snowman11 · · Score: 1

      Migrating hotmail info to my gmail account... Guilty as charged... :-(

  32. type to scroll? by DangerTenor · · Score: 1

    One feature that has been missing in Thunderbird and makes it less useful for me is the ability to sort by a text field (such as Sender or Subject) and then type something in, and have it scroll to the first matching message which starts with that. It's really handy.

    does 0.9 have it? Will a future release?

    --
    Check out our infosecurity industry blog: http://securitymusings.com/
    1. Re:type to scroll? by richlv · · Score: 1

      hmm. maybe typing your search in quickfind input field and sorting results afterwards will do what you want ?

      --
      Rich
  33. mozilla.org have great servers. by leuk_he · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They heave great servers at mozilla.org. THay can handle a /. But if you really want to share the file to a /. crowd make a .torrent file and share it using bittorent.

    1. Re:mozilla.org have great servers. by SimonShine · · Score: 1
      The funny thing about the slashdot effect is that slashdot can't handle the slashdot effect. On the contrary, CNN loaded nearly instantaniously (and that considered, I live in Europe) during the election.

      The disadvantage with using bittorrent is that a slashdot effect would probably overload any tracker. But admittedly, they would save bandwidth.

      --
      Take off every 'ZIG' !!
  34. From Tracy Island by Silver+Sloth · · Score: 1

    Is Thunderbird 0.9 the one that comes up from under the swimming pool?

    --
    init 11 - for when you need that edge.
    1. Re:From Tracy Island by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 1

      Is Thunderbird 0.9 the one that comes up from under the swimming pool?

      Kind of. 0.9's the one which comes up from under the swimming pool while the swimming pool is still in the way. It should be fixed for Thunderbird 1.0, after they've knocked the (literal) dents out...

      (Engage topic realignment!)

      Um... The only major thing I can think of as missing from Thunderbird when I last installed it was some sort of mbox importer. It's easy enough to copy the files in to Thunderbird's Special Folder, after you've figured out where that is (in Windows at least, it's not particularly obvious), but making it part of the email import wizard would be brilliant. Like it is in Apple's Mail.app. :-)

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
  35. also Lotus Notes by dominux · · Score: 4, Informative

    the way Notes stores mail is a little different in concept to most other things, folders don't "contain" messages, messages exist in their own right in the database irrespective of what folders they might be in. It is perfectly valid for a message to exist without any folders including the message. Folders in Notes can have documents dragged into them which stores that association and you can get to the message through the folder. A saved search is what would be called a view in Notes, that is a folder which is based on a selection formula rather than manual fileing. It is perfectly valid also for one message to be shown in many many folders and views, but delete it from one it is deleted from all. Deleting a message is very different from removing it from a folder. Views and folders can also be categorised, this is basically the same thing as the group by feature. Notes views are indexed rather than calculated on the fly so I suspect they would be quicker for large mail files.

    Notes of course isn't open source and you can only do limited view customisation without the design client, I do like the user interface for creating these saved searches, it is better than creating a private view in Notes.

    1. Re:also Lotus Notes by bitchell · · Score: 1

      Even with a design client you are limited to the fact that if you change the design you will either lose your changes during the next incremental release or be stuck on that version of notes mail forever.

      I personally find it a miracle that the mail file works at all. It is with out doubt one of the worst pieces of coding that I have ever seen. Talk about verbose.

    2. Re:also Lotus Notes by afd8856 · · Score: 1

      Chandler is an open source application that is intended to replace and revolutionize PIM and messaging. At least one team member worked on Lotus Agenda. So, with a bit of luck you might get in the near future a replacement for your Notes :)

      --
      I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
    3. Re:also Lotus Notes by bitchell · · Score: 1

      OpenNTF is an opensource project for Notes that replaces many of the lotus databases such as mail and calendar. It is well worth a look.

  36. PopTray by tabdelgawad · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is a great open source mail notifier that will monitor as many Pop accounts as you like, at any interval you like, with preview and delete functionality while the email is still on the server. One button click will launch your favorite email client, so it's almost indistinguishable from having Thunderbird minimized to tray, and it uses less memory.

    --
    Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
  37. Version after version, none works by galay · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I've waited 0.6 0.7 0.8 now 0.9, yet junk mail still doesnt get deleted in my junk folder (although the prefs are set to delete them after 1 day). Bug report here as confirmed by many (even screenshots). https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24046 8 See, this is exactly the problem with F/OSS, features get added as if its a race to beat someone (maybe it is, who knows), while the original basic set of features/bugs are ignored. Quite disappointing to see that we arent really moving forward at all, always playing a catch up.

  38. TB: Can't print phonebook right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I am stuck with OLK because
    -it does contacts right (formats phone #s)
    -lets me print 10-12 contacts per page in columns.

    I have mentionned this in a bug but no devs are biting.

    1. Re:TB: Can't print phonebook right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      lets me print 10-12 contacts per page in columns
      ...
      I have mentionned this in a bug but no devs are biting.

      That's because you're requesting a feature, not pointing out a bug. You might try rephrasing your request as such.

  39. I've just discovered a new killer feature by afd8856 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The new View > Sort > Group By Sort (G)

    You'll have to download it to see what it does :)

    --
    I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
    1. Re:I've just discovered a new killer feature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's awesome! I love it. I'll probably leave that turned "on" for the most part from here on out.

    2. Re:I've just discovered a new killer feature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      wow......just wow, that's awesome *turns it on and leaves it on*

    3. Re:I've just discovered a new killer feature by richlv · · Score: 1

      actually, this feature (particulary threading by sender) was one thing that some users were missing when they were migrated to mizlla recently. i just hope moz 1.8 will have it, too :)

      --
      Rich
    4. Re:I've just discovered a new killer feature by Neoncow · · Score: 1

      Yes, very insightful... But what does it do?

      I can't download here and you're making me all suspenseful. =\

  40. Add Outlook to the list... by norminator · · Score: 1

    Outlook 2003 has search Folders, too.

  41. So *THAT* is what vfolders are... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...I've had them in Evolution for ages, and I never knew what they were for.

    1. Re:So *THAT* is what vfolders are... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can you get thunderbird to AUTOMATICLY move taged spam into your junk folder like outlooks create a rule feature? cuz my spam detection software marks spam, but i cant get it out of my inboX!!!!

    2. Re:So *THAT* is what vfolders are... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know. I don't use TBird, I use Evolution. It works fine in Evolution.

  42. Option that I had in The Bat! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Ok, firstly can I say that I *heart* Thunderbird and it's now the only email client I use.

    Now, I hope I can explain this properly but the option that I wish it has is so that if you have a number of folders setup under an account you can create an email using that folder as the outgoing email address.

    For example, I have an amazon folder and as a spam aid I gave them my address as amazon@mydomain.com

    Now, if I wanted to send an email to them using that same address I want to be able to select the amazon folder (which is configured to have my outgoing email address as amazon@mydomain.com) and when I compose an email it will automatically use that address.

    The Bat! had the option to do this and I found it very handy indeed, however I've never found a siple way of doing it in Thunderbird.

  43. Lean and mean? by Mr.+McGibby · · Score: 1, Troll

    I'm just waiting for the thunderbird folks to create an *actual* lean and mean version of thunderbird. It currently is using 34 MEGS of RAM just to sit and wait for mail to come in.

    I thought firefox (currently using 55 MEGS of RAM) and thunderbird were supposed to be "lean and mean"?

    --
    Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
    1. Re:Lean and mean? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I thought firefox (currently using 55 MEGS of RAM)

      Yeah, nothing like IE's 8MB of memory usage. Er, I mean 8MB + all those other integrated DLLs that are in the Task Manager.

      Firefox 1.0PR, memory usage 21MB. Maybe you should upgrade.

    2. Re:Lean and mean? by mschiller · · Score: 1

      UH... Something is screwy with your Thunderbird Installation.. My Thunderbird is currently taking ~7MB on Windows 2000... Do you have a large number of emails in your inbox or folders? I use IMAP and my inbox is usually 20 messages [I'm delete happy, figure worse case I can load up the deleted items folder, which takes for ever since it has many thousands of messages]..

    3. Re:Lean and mean? by Mr.+McGibby · · Score: 1

      Yes, I have a large number of emails. But I don't see how that should make any difference. I don't have MILLIONS of emails, which is the only thing that could do something like that.

      If they're caching to RAM instead of to disk for IMAP and other such things, then it *certainly* isn't lean and mean.

      --
      Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
    4. Re:Lean and mean? by DarkSarin · · Score: 4, Informative

      just checked, thunderbird is taking 41,192K and firefox is taking 58,936K.

      Of course I do have 5 inboxes, one of which has 413 messages and the other 327 (the other three all have less than 100 (72, 15, 0)). I have two separate windows open, and two tabs in one and 3 in the other.

      What can I say, that doesn't seem too unreasonable. Note that explorer.exe is taking 16,368, and IEXPLORE.EXE with just slashdot takes 17,800 alone.

      Is firefox lean? Maybe not as much as it could be, but it is pretty good. THe fact that it opens as fast or faster than IE without the same OS hooks? Bloody ingenious if you ask me.

      --
      "We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
    5. Re:Lean and mean? by l0b0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Uh, my TB has maxed out at 60572K today, and I'm just using it for one newsgroup and twenty-something RSS feeds. And why has the parent been modded troll? This is clearly an issue...

    6. Re:Lean and mean? by Mr.+McGibby · · Score: 1

      I *am* using 1.0PR

      --
      Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
    7. Re:Lean and mean? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also IEXPLORE.EXE isn't the entire browser, due to hooks in the operating system to mshtml.dll and such.

  44. Is a "Spread Thunderbird" campaign in the works? by Eric+Giguere · · Score: 1

    Given the success of the Spread Firefox campaign, is there an equivalent campaign for Thunderbird in the works?

    Eric
    Why the Vioxx recall reduced spam (humor)
  45. Hmmm... by sn0wflake · · Score: 2, Informative

    After installing Thunderbird 0.9 I get a lot of timeout errors :(

  46. Is it still slow? by AtlanticCarbon · · Score: 1

    I use thunderbird but it's irritating how slow it is. I've recently thought about switching to another app that might be faster. Has this improved?

  47. How did this get modded as interesting? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    These features were available in Evolution from the beginning--before OS X even shipped.

  48. Extensions.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For example I can control I tunes from my mail windows...

  49. Firefox/Thunderbird Bundle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Both Thunderbird and Firefox are fantastic products, as should be clear by their surge in popularity. Mozilla should seriously consider bundling the two programs together. Maybe even throw in an HTML editor. Oh, and integration with each other! That would truly be amazing.

  50. Credit where credit is due by jrumney · · Score: 5, Informative

    The inspiration for this feature came from Usenet legend Kibo, who in the early 90's was grepping the Usenet spool so he could find and reply to every post that ever mentioned his name. Gnus (the Emacs newsreader) got this feature in 1995 under the name "nnkiboze" (other backends being nntp, nnmail, nnrss, nnslashdot etc).

    1. Re:Credit where credit is due by NaDrew · · Score: 1

      Did someone let him know you mentioned him here? I expect to see a reply any minute now...

      --
      Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
    2. Re:Credit where credit is due by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You do know I read slashdot, right? Kibo

  51. Automatic removal of marked spam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can you get thunderbird to AUTOMATICLY move taged spam into your junk folder like outlooks create a rule feature? cuz my spam detection software marks spam, but i cant get it out of my inboX!!!!

  52. Not a Selectable Folder problem by altp · · Score: 1

    Thunderbird still pops up an alert dialog when you click on a folder that is not selectable.

    This has been the one reason why i haven't switched to using Thunderbird. If you set it to check mail in all folders it pops up that dialog every time it checks each folder.

    Huge problem with imap servers that use mbox instead of maildir.

    1. Re:Not a Selectable Folder problem by dvrabel · · Score: 1

      Don't subscribe to unselectable folders -- Thunderbird will show them in italics and won't complain when you click on them.

    2. Re:Not a Selectable Folder problem by altp · · Score: 1

      That is how i have it set, and they do show in italics. Still get the popup.

  53. And filtering still doesn't work by Mastoid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    At least, filtering based on Body content.

    I'm on a mailing list that, due to its nature, must accept submissions from non-members and has a public address. Naturally, it gets swamped with spam. SpamAssassin catches most of it, but doesn't add headers or change the subject; instead, it politely sends a warning message (I believe report_safe is set to 1) and attaches the original message.

    Since I have no headers to work from, I have to create filters based on body content. Simple enough, right? If it contains words foo bar baz, delete the message.

    Except it doesn't work. Didn't work in .8, doesn't work in .9. In fact, when I go back and try to edit the filter to figure out why it's failing, Thunderbird has changed the Body check back to Subject and lost the condition check. This is highly annoying.

    --
    I had an argument...with the person here at the university that teaches OS design. I wonder when I'll learn --Linus
    1. Re:And filtering still doesn't work by cyxxon · · Score: 1

      Well, this is very interesting, because I have always wanted Thunderbird to have the option to filter based on body content. Problem is, my Thunderbirds (all versions except this new one on Win32 and Linux) just don't have that option. I can only set Subject, To, ... the usual header parts, but not body. How do I?

    2. Re:And filtering still doesn't work by Mastoid · · Score: 1

      "Body" is one of the options on the drop down when I create a filter. I first noticed it in version 0.8. I looked for it previously but it wasn't available. Perhaps it still isn't fully implemented yet.

      What's interesting is that I imported all my mail and filters from Outlook Express when I first made the switch, and the filter based on body content that I had then worked just fine after importing. I've never been able to duplicate it, though.

      --
      I had an argument...with the person here at the university that teaches OS design. I wonder when I'll learn --Linus
    3. Re:And filtering still doesn't work by cyxxon · · Score: 1

      Well, checked it at home now, still don't have that option. Gonna download the new version now and try it with a spanking new profile, but I still find it a little weird that you have the option (even if not fully functional), and here it is not even showing up. IMAP as well? Or POP3?

    4. Re:And filtering still doesn't work by Mastoid · · Score: 1

      I have two IMAP accounts and one POP3, and all have the option.

      Maybe it's a holdover from when I imported my mail from Outlook Express and it's simply not supported under Thunderbird. It would make sense that way, because I did the same import process at home and at work and I had the same filters on both. Strange that it would keep a filter that it didn't recognize instead of deleting it.

      Either way, it's a feature I'd reall like to see. Outlook and Outlook Express both handle it easily.

      --
      I had an argument...with the person here at the university that teaches OS design. I wonder when I'll learn --Linus
  54. Forward Wrap by jeffehobbs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of the major annoyances my company is finding during our internal Thunderbird testing is this freakish behavior:

    1) user gets email.

    2) user replies to email, text wraps correctly.

    3) user forwards email and the text does not wrap at all, but instead runs off the screen horizontally causing annoying readability issues.

    Does anyone know why this is? It still appears to be in Thunderbird 0.9. I'm confused as to if it is a bug or by design. If it's a bug, it's kind of a big one. If it's by design, it's kind of a poor design and there should be an option or preference to have "reply" and "forward" act consistently.

    Otherwise, Thunderbird ROCKS -- nice work Thunderbird developers. It's fast, free and just getting better and better with each release.

    ~jeff

    p.s. Inline spell check would be nice

    1. Re:Forward Wrap by bcrowell · · Score: 1
      On a related issue, does anyone understand why doesn't it wrap usenet messages? In my preferences, I have the box checked that asks it to wrap at 72 columns, but it doesn't actually seem to do it when I make a post. (Or maybe it sometimes does and sometimes doesn't? I haven't spent much effort on investigating the bug.)

      In general, however, I'm pretty happy with Thunderbird as a usenet client, after using it for a week. I was using pan before, but switched because pan's plonk function is broken (pan crashes when you try to use it). This wrapping issue is the only problem I've really had with Thunderbird.

    2. Re:Forward Wrap by Some+Bitch · · Score: 1

      TB can't post to the monastery though, no way to sacrifice the chicken.

    3. Re:Forward Wrap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you belong in the Monastery, surely you should be able to hack the source yourself to add the desired chicken-related facility?

    4. Re:Forward Wrap by Some+Bitch · · Score: 1

      I could, but as a sometime denizen of the Monastery I know that using the correct tool for the job (Pan) is an easier option and avoids unnecessary ork ;)

    5. Re:Forward Wrap by ManxStef · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yeah, I've seen that happen before, both with replies (only from one friend -- seems their Exchange server's sending in a wierd format) and forwards. It drove me nuts for a while, until I noticed the following:
      (reply or forward first) Go to Edit, Rewrap. This should reflow the text :)

      It is somewhat annoying, though.

    6. Re:Forward Wrap by asqueella · · Score: 1
      Sounds like a bug. Bugs 265406 and 237558 are related. p.s. Inline spell check would be nice

      Inline spellcheck was implemented for Mozilla Suite by Linspire recently. It will probably be included in future versions of Thunderbird (not necessarily in 1.0).

  55. In other news.... (really) by sepluv · · Score: 1, Interesting
    Firefox 1.0 RC2 is out.

    This should be the last release candidate [RC] before the big 1; because in theory all the bugs should have been ironed out in this RC, but, nonetheless, Mozilla.Org is asking users who want to beta-test to download it and, in particular, check for bugs in these areas in RC2:

    • authentication (especially over SSL)
    • extension installation via update.mozilla.org and other sites
    • MacOS X builds
    • the new re-implementation of software update.

    Some non-English RC2 builds are avaliable too according to Mozillazine. (Where are they?) For more info check out Ben Goodger's (lead developer's) blog.

    For the rest of us, 1.0 final is supposed to be coming out in less than a week--then we can all party ;-).

    --
    Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
    [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
    1. Re:In other news.... (really) by nmg196 · · Score: 1

      Why do you say it's out? It doesn't appear to be out at all. There's a folder called RC2 but that's it - there are no installers/binaries or sources in it. The fact that someone's created a new folder hardly qualifies as a release.

      Compare the contents of the RC1 and RC2 folders to see what I mean.

    2. Re:In other news.... (really) by sepluv · · Score: 1

      When I wrote my post the binaries (for GNU, MSW and MacOS) where available at the FTP server on the URI I gave in my post (and they still are). (As I say in my post, I cannot find non-en-US ones yet, though.)

      --
      Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
      [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
    3. Re:In other news.... (really) by wnknisely · · Score: 1

      It's out. It's announced on the front page of Mozillazine. http://www.mozillazine.org/ But it's not meant for the average user, only people who have been doing testing of nightlies for a while.

      --
      In illa quae ultra sunt
  56. Outlook Address Books by JimPooley · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So is it better at importing Outlook address books? I'm trying to make it the standard mail app at work, but our support staff won't budge from Outlook unless we can succesfully import 500+ contacts into the Thunderbird address book - including all notes held in Outlook's address book.
    (Mind you, even then it'll be an uphill task, despite the company having 14 Linux servers handling all our mission critical stuff, our tech. support guys are diehard Microsoft fans who are afraid of anything not by Microsoft!)

    --

    "Information wants to be paid"
    1. Re:Outlook Address Books by MadBurner · · Score: 1

      I prefer using .csv format for my back ups and re-imports of my address book.

    2. Re:Outlook Address Books by dara · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Unfortunately, the address book in Thunderbird is still very primitive compared to Outlook, Evolution, or Kmail. You can't use pictures, Geo locations, there is no place for Birthday, Children, etc. - only the four custom fields and Notes. There are only two email addresses that can be stored. How in the world could it import information from Outlook without losing it?

      In response to another poster, I'm sorry, but .csv is not good enough for an address book anymore. There are too many fields (many of which won't be used for all entries) so viewing your book as a spreadsheet becomes tedious. Plus, there is no way to store picture information in a .csv file.

      I'd prefer to use Thunderbird (or Mozilla) over Evolution or Kmail since I use both Windows and Linux, but I wish the three would get together and hammer at a way to have a really powerful address book standard, leaving no vCard info behind and storing any other info not included in vCard (e.g. Last Sort View State). And of course leaving no useful Outlook info behind either.

      Dara

    3. Re:Outlook Address Books by leighklotz · · Score: 1
      ... .csv is not good enough for an address book anymore. There are too many fields (many of which won't be used for all entries) so viewing your book as a spreadsheet becomes tedious. Plus, there is no way to store picture information in a .csv file....but I wish the three would get together and hammer at a way to have a really powerful address book standard

      Sound like there is call for an XML-based standard; then it could be manipulated by programs with XSLT and displayed in Mozilla XForms or CSS.

      It seems that XML VCard work is ongoing and there is XML VCard support in Perl and a proposal for Jabber as well.
  57. It might have been great... by hustille · · Score: 2, Interesting
    but they still emulate braindead MS software.
    What connection is there between receiving accounts and identities? At least sending servers are separated out, but if identities have a connection at all, it's as a folder preference: I might be subscribed to different mailing lists with different email addresses.

    OK, it's definitely an improvement if you're switching from Outlook, but as linux user I have kmail...

  58. Gmail ? by morcego · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is it just me, or is gmail inspiring some of the new features ?

    Looks like GMail is not so unique anymore.

    --
    morcego
    1. Re:Gmail ? by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 2, Informative

      Saved search folders are part of Outlook 2003, which was probably the original inspiration.

  59. Thunderbird is very cool but ... by tetranz · · Score: 1

    I've used Forte Agent for my email and usenet at home for almost ten years now. Its still a great application which is being actively developed again although its not open source and doesn't really handle multiple mail accounts (that's coming soon).

    I tried Thunderbird a while back with a thought to switching to get the multiple accounts. One thing stopped me from switching. In Agent, I'm used to getting new articles in a newsgroup, reading those that interest me and then deleting all or some of the articles. As far as I could figure, you can't delete usenet articles in Thunderbird. I don't remember the exact details now but somehow marking articles as read didn't make them disappear.

    Maybe I'm missing the point of how a news reader should work because I think Outlook Express works similar to Thunderbird in this way. It just seems so easy and logical in Agent to simply get articles, read some and then toss them out so as to start with a clean slate next time. I think if I tried to delete articles in Thunderbird it thought I was trying to send a cancel message out to the world.

  60. (In other news...) Related Stor_ies_ by sepluv · · Score: 1
    Google News has over 700 stories from the last few weeks about Firefox (and how it is gaining on IE) <shock>including ~30 from this morning</shock>

    This can only mean one thing....

    Hmmmmm....may be that m/b/Mozilla Browser/Phoenix/Firebird/Mozilla Firebird/Firebird Browser/(Mozilla) Firefox is an evil conspiracy to take over the world...uuhhh...by using consecutive name chages to wear us down until we all cry for no more....muhehhawwwwwhhawwwwwiuughhhh. Hmmmm...

    --
    Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
    [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
    1. Re:(In other news...) Related Stor_ies_ by sepluv · · Score: 1

      Nooooo...and now they've changed its name to Firefax (see grandparent post)...I give in...I really do...

      --
      Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
      [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
    2. Re:(In other news...) Related Stor_ies_ by thephotoman · · Score: 1

      That's why there's Firesomething.

      --
      Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
  61. I take it all back. by nmg196 · · Score: 1

    I just refreshed the view and loads more files appeared!

    I guess they must have been updating the en-US folder as I was trying to view it.

    Sorrysorry!

  62. expunge/purge deleted by Hohlraum · · Score: 0

    My biggest gripe is having to go into a menu and compact the folders to expunge deleted messages. With outlook express.. I've got cntl-d all my messages and hit the 'Purge' button on the top of the screen. With Evolution I've got cntl-d all my messages and cntl-e to expunge.

    When you get a lot of email using thunderbird becomes a serious pain in the ass when you organizing/deleting messages :(

  63. Released??? Where's the source???? by buchanmilne · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but every other application is only considered released when source is available ...

    Why is Mozilla.org so unfriendly to Linux distributions????

    1. Re:Released??? Where's the source???? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thunderbird is now apparently closed source. Time to fork 0.8 and create Dodobird for all the poor suckers like me who bought into this thunderbird thing thinking they could finally have an open source email tool. Now we have to go back to mozilla even though everybody said mozilla is dead, use thunderbird. I don't understand why it has to be this way. Maybe the release team has been bought?

    2. Re:Released??? Where's the source???? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The source is always available from the CVS.

    3. Re:Released??? Where's the source???? by aconbere · · Score: 1

      ftp://ftp26moz.newaol.com/pub/mozilla.org/thunderb ird/releases/0.9/

      as far as I can tell this source was there from almost the moment that thunderbird was announced

      (last night around midnight pacific time)

      Anders

    4. Re:Released??? Where's the source???? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is a dead link.

    5. Re:Released??? Where's the source???? by buchanmilne · · Score: 1

      Huh? Source? Where?

      The directory you point to contains:


      File: KEY 3 KB 03/11/04 21:34:00
      File: MD5SUMS 1 KB 03/11/04 21:39:00
      File: SHA1SUMS 1 KB 03/11/04 21:39:00
      File: Thunderbird Setup 0.9.exe 5886 KB 03/11/04 16:49:00
      File: Thunderbird Setup 0.9.exe.asc 1 KB 03/11/04 21:39:00
      Directory: contrib 03/11/04 21:37:00
      Directory: contrib-localized 03/11/04 21:37:00
      File: thunderbird-0.9-i686-linux-gtk2+xft.tar.gz 10133 KB 03/11/04 21:35:00
      File: thunderbird-0.9-i686-linux-gtk2+xft.tar.gz.asc 1 KB 03/11/04 21:39:00
      File: thunderbird-0.9-mac.dmg.gz 11534 KB 03/11/04 21:35:00
      File: thunderbird-0.9-mac.dmg.gz.asc 1 KB 03/11/04 21:39:00
      File: thunderbird-0.9-win32.zip 7849 KB 03/11/04 16:49:00
      File: thunderbird-0.9-win32.zip.asc 1 KB 03/11/04 21:39:00
      Directory: windows-xpi 03/11/04


      So, we have 3 file integrity verification files (KEY, MD5SUMS, SHA1SUMS), a Windows binary installer and it's signature, a linux GTK2 binary and it's signature, a Mac binary and it's signature, and a Windows binary in a zip file and it's signature, and 3 directories which can either not be entered or have nothing in them.

      I'm looking for the equivalent of:
      ftp://ftp26moz.newaol.com/pub/mozilla.org/thu nderb ird/releases/0.8/thunderbird-source-0.8.tar.bz2

      Guess we'll have to pull it from CVS ... again.

  64. Bad Moderation by nmg196 · · Score: 1

    I don't see why the mention of a release of Firefox against an article about the release of Thunderbird is offtopic! Someone mod this poor guy back up.

    1. Re:Bad Moderation by sepluv · · Score: 1

      Don't worry...I'll get my own (karma) back by posting a troll on the next story that comes along (with troll in the subject) and get +5 Insightful. 'Tis the way of /. ...

      --
      Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
      [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
  65. Why aren't they shipping them already? by geg81 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Whether Apple wants to announce support for industry-standard features in their apps before they are ready to ship them is really for Apple management to decide. I actually think they should stop announcing features before they are ready to ship them.

    The real question one has to ask is why Apple isn't already shipping these features. According to Apple, isn't Cocoa such a super-productive platform that implementing and testing such features should be really easy? So, why is it taking them so long to provide features that many other mail clients have had for a while?

  66. not a smooth upgrade for me by geg81 · · Score: 1

    I tried just running it, but it doesn't seem to just work with the mailbox or preferences from Thunderbird 0.8. Furthermore, its "import" feature doesn't specifically talk about importing from Thunderbird 0.8, so it wasn't clear to me whether I could even import from 0.8 (with several hundred megabytes of mail, I didn't want to risk it).

    Has anybody had more luck running 0.9 after using 0.8? Does import work?

    1. Re:not a smooth upgrade for me by richlv · · Score: 1

      didn't try upgrading, simply replced program directory leaving data directory intact - no problem :)

      --
      Rich
  67. Opera innovates mozilla popularizes by Headbonk · · Score: 1

    Now don't get me wrong. I still use Thunderbird for mail. And I still think the Mozilla suite is awesome for many reasons, though I use mostly Opera for browsing.

    It just seems like the 'cutting edge' browser features that people always talk about in Mozilla products were first featured in Opera years before: 'Tabed Browsing' and Gestural Navigation being the prime examples.

    Now the new mozilla buzz is "Virtual Folders".

    Well guess what gang? The Opera mail client has had that for at least 2 years now.

    1. Re:Opera innovates mozilla popularizes by ChristTrekker · · Score: 1

      The \. crowd is probably loathe to admit it, but good things still come when you are paid to do them. Don't get me wrong, I love OSS, and actually submitted my first patch to a project today. But I don't mind paying, and there's nothing wrong with asking to be paid, for something superior to the rest of the pack.

  68. Timed Filtering by Calmth · · Score: 1

    I'd like a 'Delayed Filtering' feature where incoming mail sits in the default mailbox for a period of time (24-48 hours) before being filtered to specific local folders.

  69. Love TB and FF, but I will not upgrade by beforewisdom · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I love TB ( and FF ) but I will not upgrade until features are added that I absolutely must have.

    It used to be that upgrading either of these wouldn't effect my plugins, but these days I have to redo all of my plugins after each install.

    A major pain,... I will wait until a "must have" new feature comes out.

    Steve

    1. Re:Love TB and FF, but I will not upgrade by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      After 1.0 the APIs should be frozen, so subsequent upgrades will not break your extensions.

    2. Re:Love TB and FF, but I will not upgrade by bogie · · Score: 1

      So your just going to do without the security updates that come with each release? Not a very smart move IMO.

      --
      If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
  70. Firefox release by Evanrude · · Score: 1

    For those who like to live on the bleeding edge Firefox 1.0RC2 is available.
    Get it while its hot!

    --

    ~.Evanrude
  71. Almost 2005 - Can we have Combine and Decode now? by Alzheimers · · Score: 1

    Wow, the second most interesting program that Mozilla has to offer, and they *still* haven't fixed the one reason I don't use it. I don't understand how something so fundimental to Newsgroups (Combine and Decode split binary posts) still hasn't been implemented.

    I have a copy of Forte Agent I have carried with me since 1996 that I still can't get rid of, just for this use. I'd almost use Outlook Express, except for that dirty feeling I get whenever I think of all the spam I receive that could be carrying a dangerous payload. MS won't let us turn off HTML in the preview pane and Mozilla won't let us combine and decode newsgroup posts. And so I wait, still in 1996, to someday use a modern email/news program at home.

    Someone should modernize and combine Pine and Tin -- still my favorite combo of all time.

  72. Please mod this up or respond to parent by Noksagt · · Score: 1

    I am also an IMAP junky & have this and other questions. Can anyone comment more on Thunderbird as an IMAP client? I have been guiltily using Mulberry and Pine--Thunderbird's IMAP supprort had continually been improving, but it wasn't there. Evolution was OK, but too big & I need something cross-platform. Mutt's a nice client, but IMAP still wasn't there & didn't seem to be getting there. It also wasn't available natively on all platforms. Though I now run Linux exclusively on my desktop and would consider a Linux-specific product, I'd prefer a MUA that had native ports to OS X and win32.

  73. But does filtering work?? by cynon83 · · Score: 1

    I'd love to use this program, but I couldn't get filtering to work and that's very important to me. In fact, there are several entries in the mozilla bugs forum that talk about this issue, but no one's posted a fix.

    So... anyone know if it's fixed??

  74. Sure, it's fair by Roadkills-R-Us · · Score: 1

    I normally use elm, and I have dozens of mailboxes, some with thousands of old emails in them. ELm comes up very quickly, and moves around really fast. I use mutt for MIME stuff; it's almost as fast as elm. Firefox, while not having to deal with "all that data", at least comes up quickly and performs most actions rather speedily (until a couple of pages I have auto-updating have run for a while, anyway).

    Thunderbird, OTOH, is much, much slower than elm or mutt, despite the fact that I haven't imported most of my emails into its directories. Data isn't the problem. It takes far more time to load than Firefox, an dthe GUI isn't as responsive in most cases.

  75. links by kilgor · · Score: 1

    I've never liked the way Thunderbird handles html links in messages. You should be able to right-click and launch in a new window or tab. (like Trillian)

    Sometimes it even launches the links in IE! That's just wrong.

  76. Add an interface to Gmail... by b00m3rang · · Score: 2, Interesting

    and they'd be unstoppable. Seriously, the main problem I have with Gmail is the inability to sort by subject. I'm subscribed to about 50 mailing lists, and I don't want to search for each of them individually to find the latest posts for a particular group. It's silly.

    1. Re:Add an interface to Gmail... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think Google would care for that very much. The only way they make money off Gmail is by showing those ads you know.

  77. Re:Almost 2005 - Can we have Combine and Decode no by What+is+a+number · · Score: 1

    >MS won't let us turn off HTML in the preview pane

    My Outlook Express (6.) has a checkbox:

    [x] Read all messages in plain text

    ---
    I type this every time.

  78. Use the source, Luke by tepples · · Score: 1

    Where's the source???? Sorry, but every other application is only considered released when source is available ...

    Then what is behind the "source tarball" link on this page? The "products" page is designed for end users, the "projects" page for developers and redistributors.

  79. I like Xnews by tepples · · Score: 1

    I used to use Forte Agent or Outlook Express to read news on my Windows machine, but I've long since switched to Xnews.

  80. What's there? 0.8 by buchanmilne · · Score: 1

    Let's quote that:

    If you do not want to use CVS, you can download a source tarball for the latest 0.8 Milestone.

    Yes, that is a link to the source for 0.8 (as they say), not 0.9 (which is what we're looking for).

    I guess, this being an odd-numbered release, we get to wait an extra month for the source release ...

    BTW, I *did* check the mirrors for 0.9 for source before posting, and no, there isn't any source tarball for 0.9 anywhere yet.

    So, seems even the projects page isn't for redistributors ;-).

  81. What about replies? by degradas · · Score: 1
    I really like one feature in Kmail, KDE mail app - when you select some text in a mail message and click reply, only the selected text is included in your reply. Saves you much trouble if you like correct quoting :-)

    Shame they don't implement this in Thunderbird.

  82. Apple Address Book integration? by Damek · · Score: 1

    Anyone know of any progress on getting Thunderbird to access the built-in OS X address book? That's the main thing keeping me on Mail.app for the time being.

  83. can we assign a unique SMTP server per personna? by Locutus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The last time I checked, Thunderbird did not allow me to use a different outgoing SMTP server based on the personna(reply-to) used.

    This is a big problem these days because SPAM filters at the ISP block email where the reply-to address is not within the same domain as the sending SMTP server.

    It's a must-have feature me to move to it.

    LoB

    --
    "Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
  84. format=flowed? by boomgopher · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think what you're seeing is related to "format=flowed" in the content-type header of sent messages:

    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

    Though this shouldn't force scrolling AFAIK, at least when I view it in T-Bird.


    --
    Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
  85. Why is it... by jeif1k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Guys, this is the Mozilla section. I already deleted the Apple section from my frontpage because I'm tired of the ceaseless Apple marketing and rewriting of history by Apple fans. Making incorrect claims that open source projects are copying features from Apple, when the opposite is the case, are insulting and just make Apple look bad.

  86. But, the calendar still sucks. by EvilStein · · Score: 1

    I don't know anyone that will switch from Outlook simply because the calender offerings from the mozilla folks *suck*

    Read some of my past posts. I'm too tired to rehash it, but basically the calendar is lacking really important features. Sunbird just doesn't cut it. Not even close.

    The Mozilla Foundation needs a kick ass calendaring application. *That* is what holds a LOT of people to Outlook.. the goddamn calendar.

  87. mini ask slashdot by pohl · · Score: 1

    I know my odds are not good here, but I'm a long-time user of MH (now using nmh, in particular) and I have a large amount of mail in the MH directory format that I would like to import into Thunderbird.

    Has anybody managed to migrate from MH to Thunderbird? In fact, has anybody managed to migrate from MH to anything else? (Maybe I could use some other mail program as a stepping stone to Thunderbird.)

    --

    The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...

    1. Re:mini ask slashdot by ejasons · · Score: 1

      I use the UW IMAP server to handle all of my mail, and it supports MH folders. I could then drag them into local folders, but don't, because it is quite nice to be able to access all of my mail from anywhere that has access to my IMAP server...

  88. But what about local mailboxes? by Yiliar · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How about letting me read my local mailbox?? and Wouldn't it be GREAT to read root's mail in ThunderBird? For those of us who manage lots and lots of servers, it would be awsome to be able to read root mailboxes with a decent email program.

  89. calendar extention not yet ready by SteelRat · · Score: 2, Informative

    It should be noted that, if like me, you are a user of the mozilla calendar extention, you are hosed if you upgrade right now. Wait for the extention to catch up with the release build or be sorry.. like me. :(

  90. OT: Re:Add an interface to Gmail... by AstroDrabb · · Score: 1

    Gmail supports filters now. Why don't you just create a filter for each mailing list and then each mailing list will bypass the inbox and go directly to whatever label you give it.

    --
    If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
    it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
    1. Re:OT: Re:Add an interface to Gmail... by b00m3rang · · Score: 1

      Just because it would take more time than it's worth. I use the account to keep up with mailing lists only, not as my main account, so I can't justify putting that much time into the project. Plus, for the most part, I hate dealing with web mail interfaces.

    2. Re:OT: Re:Add an interface to Gmail... by Feztaa · · Score: 1

      Wow, the two seconds it would take to make a filter rule per list just isn't worth it. Must not be very important to you, then. Can't see why you're complaining.

      I've done the same thing, I use gmail for mailing lists and very little for personal email (for which I use my ISP's mail account & thunderbird). I have my mailing lists filtered into their own labels, so when I log in I see how many new conversations came in from each list, then I go in and read what interests me, and skip over what doesn't.

    3. Re:OT: Re:Add an interface to Gmail... by b00m3rang · · Score: 1

      No, it's not. A few seconds multiplied by the 50+ lists I'm subscribed to, plust the fact that I subscribe to and unsubscribe from lists frequently means it's more hassle than I care to deal with. I don't see how hard it would be for them to let me sort by subject. Honestly, how hard would /that/ be to implement? If people don't want to sort by subject, they don't have to, but I don't see why they're so dead set against the idea.

      I do have 5 or so filters for my most commonly accessed lists, but it would be SO much easier to click one button and sort by subject.

    4. Re:OT: Re:Add an interface to Gmail... by AstroDrabb · · Score: 1

      Gmail is in beta. They do have an email that you can send requests to. Shoot them an email. If they get enough requests for a feature, they will certainly implement it.

      --
      If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
      it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
  91. Re:can we assign a unique SMTP server per personna by dartboard · · Score: 2, Informative

    You can, and have been able to for quite some time AFAIK. Under the server settings for the account in question, click the "Advanced" button and choose your SMTP server. Of course you need to have created the SMTP server at the SMTP server creation screen first.

  92. linux / windows transparency... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anyone know of plans on building a tool that will convert mail settings and mail files / folders from the windows version to the linux version??

  93. MSI Package by Aliencow · · Score: 0

    Here it is...tested on few computers (Two Win2ks SP4, One WinXP Sp2, removing previous versions before installing this one is recommended) Send comments to gepeto@aliencow.com ! If too many of you guys download it I'll have to make a Torrent only...

  94. Local Folders by Saiyine · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It is possible in this new version to remove the "Local folders" ???

    I just dont use it so DON'T want to have it on my screen.

    --
    Hosting 20G hd, 1Tb bw! ssh $7.95
  95. Thundertray Is Dead by superyooser · · Score: 1
    News at protonfx.com (5/13/2004):
    For starters the Thundertray (Thunderbird minimize-to-tray) project is now officially dead. There will be no new versions and all download links have been removed from the site.
  96. Purge by yem · · Score: 1

    The first (and only) extension I install in Thunderbird is purge.xpi that puts an expunge button in the toolbar. Hiding the imap functionality with "autoexpunge" is frickin annoying. Now if only it had a hotkey.

    To the guy who was looking for the option:
    Tools -> Account Settings -> Server Settings -> "When I delete a message"

    --
    No, I did not read the f***ing article!
  97. Hotmail does it... by b00m3rang · · Score: 1

    You can access Hotmail through Outlook Express.

  98. Fedora C2 repository still has 6.0! by rleibman · · Score: 1

    Does anyone know why the Fedora 2 apt repository (fedora.us) still has 6.0? No recent release is even in unstable or testing.

  99. I wish... by faccenda · · Score: 1

    That it could import mozilla mail messages, filters and so on with a single click... so I can migrate to it.

  100. Installing over 0.8 by Tachys · · Score: 1

    I have 0.8 if I install this will may mail from 0.8 transfer automaticly to 0.9

  101. Re:can we assign a unique SMTP server per personna by Locutus · · Score: 1

    holy crap, thanks.

    One note for anybody else reading this: Go to the General Outgoing server settings first and then go to it's "advanced" option. Here you're allowed to add more outgoing servers. Then you'll have a choice within the "advanced" option for the individual accounts.

    Nice and thanks again.

    LoB

    --
    "Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
  102. Perhaps with an IMAP server by jesterzog · · Score: 1

    Storing email in a database would be an interesting way to do things, but it sounds a bit overly complex for most mail readers out there... most of which (rightly, I think) spend the bulk of their effort focusing on the front end and actually reading the mail. Also, the word "export" seems to imply that you don't want to keep the database up-to-date with your email in real time.

    I think it'd be very interesting to see an IMAP server that would manage mail folders in a database, though. That'd take a lot of stress off the folder managing complexity away from the mail reading client.

    Someone else who replied mentioned that databases suck for handling free text. In my experience, they're at least as good as any other format, and they tend to have a much more established way of organising text indexes for any searching that's needed. The headers on emails can easily be separated for separate indexing and searching away from the body text, and even the body text can be indexed with real full-text indexes. (I'm not sure how well MySql supports that, but there's at least one contributed extension to PostgreSQL (tsearch2) that does full text indexing nicely.

    1. Re:Perhaps with an IMAP server by LoboRojo · · Score: 1

      To elaborate more on what I said in the initial post, I must make it clear that:

      (1) I'm talking from the point of view of a single user, not a sysadmin.
      (2) Email clients must be simple and snappy.
      (3) I have found they are not very appropriate to keep (and eventually search through) a large archive of old emails.
      (3) A database seems to be a good way to keep a larger archive of emails messages (including, of course) attachments. For huge archives containing many accounts there could be efficiency problems, but not for a single user (nowadays I've got about 1GB).
      (4) I had found some partial examples about how to parse mbox files to import into mysql, but nothing really elaborated. I'll check DBMail with attention. Many thanks!

      --

      ---
      All my submissions to Slashdot rejected... and proud of it!
  103. Re:PopTray - Open Source for Windows by owlstead · · Score: 1

    Just before penquins like me start looking at it...

  104. Needs faster searching by DJ-Dodger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'd really like to switch to Thunderbird...but I just can't give up the instantaneous searching capabilities that the LookOut add-in gives Outlook. I've gotten so used to being able to search my entire Gigabyte-sized Outlook archive in less than a second that I just can't bring myself to give it up, despite the cool features I'm seeing added to Thunderbird.

    Anyone know of speedier search capabilities coming to Thunderbird anytime soon?

  105. Needs one-click send to killfile by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Something I find lacking in Thunderbird is a simple one-click "block sender" for adding Usenet posters to a killfile. That's the one thing Outlook Express has that Thunderbird doesn't that I really, really miss.

    Anybody know of a plugin that does something like this? Otherwise, Thunderbird ROCKS!!

  106. IMAP by Craig+Ringer · · Score: 1

    That's my #1 reason - the IMAP support works. I'm the administrator of a Cyrus IMAPd server for work, and I am _all_ too familar with the pain Outlook causes IMAP server admins and Outlook IMAP users.

    Grepping the Cyrus sources for 'outlook' is less hilarious than I would've expected, but then Cyrus isn't big on comments. *sigh*. Eudora takes the cake anyway - and no surprise, that client is pure evil.

    I actually use Evolution myself (but it won't do you any good - no Windows port), but Thunderbird would be my next choice, mostly for stability and because it's a tolerant, well behaved client that I can expect to just work without worrying about it.

  107. IMAPd database by Craig+Ringer · · Score: 1

    There's at least one IMAP server that does use a database - Exchange. I don't know about you, but I don't find the results thrilling at least from an admin's perspective.

    There has been repeated discussion on the Cyrus IMAPd list about mail-in-database storage, but the general consensus is that it would gain nothing over how Cyrus currently does things. Cyrus keeps its own header index and an optional body text index (searching a non-locally-cached 30,000 message mailbox in < 1 second, over dial-up = nice) and does rather well with that approach.

    In other words, the facilities are already there. You could use Cyrus for an IMAP server for the kind of client you describe. All you'd need is to write a client that used the IMAP SEARCH command to get folder contents.

    1. Re:IMAPd database by jesterzog · · Score: 1

      That's a fair enough point. I guess the main advantage with using a database would be the ability to query your email a little more flexibly than what might be available in a mail client.

    2. Re:IMAPd database by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oracle has sold database-backed mail servers for ages. It's now called... lessee... Oracle Unified Messaging, and does e-mail (IMAP), voicemail, fax, search, etc.

  108. I'm unconvinced by Craig+Ringer · · Score: 1

    I'm not convinced.

    In a sense, I guess I do keep my mail in a database - the Cyrus IMAPd mail store. There it's indexed (body and header indexes) and sorted. Sure, its a heirachal database otherwise known as "the file system" with additional files for the mail-specific header and body indexes, but it works very well.

    Personally, I don't think a full RDBMS is necessarily the right answer, but I can see the appeal in some form of client-side database-like functionality, yes.

    (I've also replied to another reply to your post with some more information, btw.)

  109. gmail... by torrents · · Score: 2, Interesting

    now if i could read my gmail and my email at the same time i'd be praising mozilla (even more [get firefox])

    --
    Get your torrents...
  110. Local Folders Encryption by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm a bit late in the game in replying, but seriously, anyone who grabs my computer for 10 minutes can download all my email with just a knoppix CD. Is there a way I can encrypt my inbox, sent mail, etc., so that someone will actually have to work to read my email with hardware access? Or is there a way to turn off using local folders without causing a load of problems?

  111. Thunderbird source tarball. by akulbe · · Score: 1

    where is it?? the gzipped binaries are on the mirrors. But where is the actual source code tarball??

  112. mod parent up PLEASE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    this has information that people may have missed out on. it deserves a +5 informative

  113. PowerMenu by gottabeme · · Score: 1

    http://www.veridicus.com/tummy/programming/powerme nu/ PowerMenu is better than needing individual apps to support tray-minimizing. Try it, tastes great.

    --
    "Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
  114. Re:can we assign a unique SMTP server per personna by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, one thing I don't like about Thunderbird is the insistance that 'you only need one SMTP server for all your accounts'. This doesn't jive with SPF at all. Hopefully in new thunderbirds they default to having a separate (or re-usable if necessary) smpt server per account.

  115. When all you have is a hammer.... by IncohereD · · Score: 1

    On a reasonably fast connection it can take longer to connect to a BT swarm than to download a 5 MB file. Not to mention your BT download will be a lot slower.

  116. Good but not perfect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Bayesian spam filter just doesn't work. The more rules it makes the less accurate it gets. On a clean install, of 163 spam messages the filter catches over 100 of them. On my original install, of the same 163, the filter catches 86 of them. Thank goodness rules-based filtering was added recently.

    Also, it's becoming bloatware. Since it was designed as a knock-off of Outlook Express that may not shock anyone, but with each revision Thunderbird is loading slower and slower, and putting more and more of itself into memory. Perhaps the Firefox strategy should be applied to Thunderbird: focus only on the essentials for the main client, but keep it modular. I don't see why RSS readers, FTP clients etc ought to be a part of the main release. When Microsoft does that sort of thing, bloody murder is cried.