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."

Comments

Tiger Features?

[TheRaven64]

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.

So, have the devs been listening?

[Dragoon412]

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.

Re:So, have the devs been listening?

[Refrag]

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.

Re:So, have the devs been listening?

[ajr_trm]

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

Is this feature present in 0.9?

Saved Searches sounds good but...

[samael]

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.

What about performance and memory usage?

[kbahey]

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.

Re:What about performance and memory usage?

[the quick brown fox]

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.)

Privledged

[kc0re]

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!!

Bayesian Folders

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

buggy?

[jstave]

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

Question for the Outlook "switchers"

[holden caufield]

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!

Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers"

[Nevenmrgan]

- 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.)

Re:Question for the Outlook "switchers"

[truthsearch]

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.

Re:I wonder.

[Aliencow]

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!

I want a "Export to mysql" option

[LoboRojo]

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!!!!

Label threads

[elykyllek]

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?

how does it comapre to gmail

[yohan1701]

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 ?

Re:0.8 to 0.9 Upgrade Freezes

[PeteDotNu]

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

Re:Archive?!

[the quick brown fox]

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).

And filtering still doesn't work

[Mastoid]

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.

Forward Wrap

[jeffehobbs]

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

In other news.... (really)

[sepluv]

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 ;-).

Outlook Address Books

[JimPooley]

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!)

Re:Outlook Address Books

[dara]

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

It might have been great...

[hustille]

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...

Gmail ?

[morcego]

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

Looks like GMail is not so unique anymore.

Love TB and FF, but I will not upgrade

[beforewisdom]

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

Add an interface to Gmail...

[b00m3rang]

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.

can we assign a unique SMTP server per personna?

[Locutus]

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

Why is it...

[jeif1k]

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.

But what about local mailboxes?

[Yiliar]

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.

Local Folders

[Saiyine]

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.

Needs one-click send to killfile

[Anonymous Coward]

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!!

gmail...

[torrents]

now if i could read my gmail and my email at the same time i'd be praising mozilla (even more [get firefox])