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Thunderbird 1.0 RC1 Released
KingDaveRa writes "Mozilla.org has quietly released Thunderbird 1.0 RC1. 1.0 RC1 includes lots of bug fixes and improvements for features like saved search folders, the RSS reader, mail migration, and message grouping. The default themes have both been updated with new and improved artwork as well."
Under Gnome, clicking a mailto: link in firefox launches the default mail program you select under Preferred Applications in gnome-control-center. If Thunderbird is your default mail client, it will launch that.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
with gmail providing pop3 access, you /could/ integrate the two :)
But really, I use both. gmail has taken over "web" duty from my old yahoo account and thunderbird controls mail from my domains.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
Pegasus Mail is a decent mail client that handles multiple accounts better than Thunderbird. Also it's particularly robust and free for personal use.
Pegasus Mail
I think the only reason why someone wouldn't use it is because there may not be a lunix client.
You know one big advantage it has over it's competition (at least the MS flavor of competition?)
I know exactly where my e-mail is stored on my computer. If T-bird ever crashes or if I need to copy the entire in-box I can do it easilly.
In Outlook Express, the location of the mail is hidden. With absolutely no information on how to find it in the help-files or MS website. Further you can't export your mail to any easilly accesible format. I can't count how many messages I've lost simply because I was updating to a new HD and there was absolutely no easy way to migrate with OE.
Thunderbird's identity management is much improved even in 0.9. You can now set up multiple outgoing e-mail addresses, all using the same smtp server and all linked to a single incoming account. Very handy for me as I run my own mail server which pulls e-mail from a couple of different ISP and webmail accounts.
Previously you needed to manually edit a config file to do this but now there is a dialog box for it.
Allan
I have recently moved a client Off thunderbird due to issues. Refer here http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=1710 10 for my post to the Tunderbird forums. Here is the summary of the issues from my message for those too lazy to click on the link
I still use it myself as a preference.
The weathers here - Wish you were beautiful
There's a setting buried in OE for youre "Store folder"... it points to where your mail is stored.
But it's still fairly well buried in about 50 nested subdirectories in a non-obvious place. Bastards.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
First off, it's not a browser.
Secondly, TB offers NNTP an option. Personally, I use TB as a POP client, and use another client as a NNTP client.
Problem with Thunderbird is that I never liked the way it handled multiple-acounts.
:)
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to, but I have a feeling you didn't like the way the mail was split up, with one "Inbox" per account? A lot of people didn't like that.
Well, the good news is that you now have a choice. For each email account, you can choose whether the mail goes into an account-specific Inbox OR a "global Inbox". So you can have all your mail in one big Inbox, if that's what you like.
Personally, I like having separate Inboxes for each mail account, because I have many mail accounts and each one has a pretty specific purpose. One for spam, one for friends, several for business/website-related purposes, etc. But apparently the majority of users want a global Inbox, and the developers listened. Pretty cool if you ask me.
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Despite our "corporate software standards" I run Firefox as my default browser. However, I have not found that I can replace Outlook 2003 with TB in an Exchange 2003 environment. I'm sure that Microsoft puts less effort into IMAP workings than they do integrating their client.
It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims. -Aristotle
Well, there is one reason to use a POP3 account (managable easily through Gmail without paying extra): spell checking.
Gmail has a spell-checker and it's quite fast/reliable!
Doomie
It would be really cool to have automatic virtual directories. I have my email sorted into subfolder by email address. I have rules set up to put emails into folders. Why not have this be automatic?
Saved Search Folders is exactly, precisely what you want, and it's in Thunderbird right now. It's an insanely great feature.
~jeff
I think thunderbird is an amazing mail client. But as said above many people dont use mail client any more. Most people use webmail, even when a mail client is avalible. When people do use a mail client most of the time its Outlook. We need a spread thunderbird campain, it probably would help with the spam/worm problem.
Tbird is one of the few mail readers that support 'Secure Password Authentication' for people that want to read email off of a Windows 2003 POP server without Entourage on the Mac.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I quite like TB as an email client. Its 'learning' ability for detecting spam is brillant. But as a news reader it lags a tad.
I know the new version has impoved grouping for threads, but I'll wait till i see it tonight before i pass judgment on that feature.
I am still waiting for:
* combining of encoded posts that are split,
* mark posts for download
As I'm a lurker in alt.binaries.pictures.wallpapers , encoded post handling is important (especialy when someone split a 400k wallpaper into 20k chunks).
"When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." - Sherlock Holmes
Then it sounds like you're a candidate for "Grouped by Sort", which is a dumb name for a cool feature:
1) sort your mail by sender.
2) hit "G". Now all your mail is arranged in little collapsed subgroups depending on the sender/email address.
This doesn't use folders per se, so I agree that it's not exactly, precisely what you want, but the end result is similar.
~jeff
In Outlook Express, the location of the mail is hidden. With absolutely no information on how to find it in the help-files or MS website.
Erm... in Outlook Express, click on Tools, Options, click on the Maintenance tab, and there's a 'Store Folder...' button that will tell you where your OE files live, and allow you to move them to a different location.
Personally, I found the mail files location harder to find in TB!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I found this information very easily on Microsoft's web site. From the left side of Microsoft's home page, I clicked the "Support" link, then the "Outlook Express" link, then the "Backup" link. The first How-to article at the top of the "Backup" page is "OLEXP: How to Back Up and Recover Outlook Express Data."
From Microsoft's support page, that was just three clicks on easy-to-find links. I agree that Microsoft software can sometimes be a pain in the arse, but I think their support site and knowledge base are freakin' great.
On the other hand, I don't know why the heck this info is so hard to find in the local help files.
From that freakin' knowledge base article:
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Limited signatures
:) And I never, ever send HTML email, so no issues there.
Try Tagzilla. Works great with Thunderbird. I've been using it since TB 0.6. It's not *quite* as easy as Outlook's, but it's good enough for me, and my sig file includes a dozen different sigs.
Can't say much about your other points. I don't use spell checkers, I deal in unusual subjects with words that drive 'em nuts. I never knew about OE's sort function jumping to a letter, so I didn't miss it.
What TB has that OE doesn't is far easier handling of multiple send addresses. I don't have to create a separate account for each, just add new "identities" under an existing account.
Mozilla does have an official calendar extension that works with either Firefox or Thunderbird, and it allows for shared calendars (either via a secure mod_dav setup, or via a highly-insecure FTP setup). I choose FTP, but then, the worst that would happen if someone were to stumble across my calendar would be that they'd know my work schedule and other such mundane info.
Using the FTP method, the calendar works like this. I add / edit something on my calendar, hit ok to confirm it, it then uploads a copy of the calendar to my server. When either my ol' lady or I open our calendar, it downloads the fresh calendar from the server. I instantly see any changes she made, she instantly sees any I made, and they're always in sync. Also, I could hand out the FTP info to anyone, and they'd have the same adding / editing options (I'd imagine piracy nuts / businesses would want something a wee bit more secure, but this works for me).
Watch Out!!
I made the switch to Thunderbird a while ago because Outlook Express kept locking up on me for unknown reasons. (That's right, not because of security issues - my OE was locked down tight. And yes, this would be on the Win32 platform.)
:P
However, I found many issues with Thunderbird which have convinced me that although Thunderbird has more options and probably more long-term viability, it is not the better e-mail client for the average user.
I'll list some of the issues I found in 2 weeks' time, just in regular use, below.
And yes, don't worry, I'll go waste* an hour or two of my time perusing a giant bugzilla database to see if there's any previous report of the issues I encountered. Wouldn't want anybody just reporting it and have some sort of moderator just label it a dupe, after all. Even though they are probably able to tell, from memory, whether it is a dupe or not, and I have to spend a serious amount of time to find out
( I moderate a private Bugzilla, so I do know the issues involved. )
* waste, depending on whether the issues get addressed. I'll happily concede if a majority of users believe that how I think things should work is not the right way.
1. Mail Filters not applied to Local Folders on incoming mail.
Problem: When fetching mail, the Mail Filters specified for the Local Folders group is not run automatically.
Solution: Tools > Run Message Filters... manually
Expected: Mail to be filtered automatically, dur.
2. Headers area does not scroll
Problem: When dealing with an e-mail with a lot of headers, viewing all headers causes the header area to be sufficiently large to extend outside of the screen, and there is no scrollbar to scroll down!
Solution: View > Message Source (Ctrl+U) manually
Expected: I'd expect a scrollbar where scrolling is required for proper operation.
3. Message filters have no quick summary preview
Problem: There is no quick way to see what a specific message filter does.
Solution: Double-click the message filter or choose Edit... to see the full details
Expected: See Outlook Express's Mail Rules dialog.
( yes, OE's mail rules ruleset is much more limited, but its user-friendliness is much better )
4. Cannot rename with change-of-caps only
Problem: When renaming a folder, say, 'test' to, say, 'Test', the warning about a folder with that name already existing pops up.
Solution: Rename to something else first, e.g. 'Test dammit', then rename to proper target, g.g. 'Test'.
Expected: I'd expect to just be able to change the case of a folder without it thinking I'm making 2 folders of the same name.
5. Save dialog uses an internal variable, rather than the actual filename field, causing issues.
Problem:
Step1: Save an e-mail to a file called 'test'
Step2: Start saving an e-mail to a file called 'test', but rather than hitting the Save button select the previous 'test' file and rename it (hit F2) to 'test2'
Step3: Hit the save button
Watch as Thunderbird complains how the file 'test2' already exists. Now check the filename field.. still reads 'test', right ? So it shouldn't try saving to 'test2'
Solution: Go to filename field, add a character, backspace it, then hit Save.
Expected: I expect whatever application to save the file under the filename I actually specify in the filename field - and not what it has stored in some variable.
Note: ThunderBird isn't the only application to have this issue. Is it the use of a particular file dialog handling API ?
6. Mail imported from OE excludes 'read/unread' flag.
Problem: Mail imported from OE is all unread. Solution: Means you have to go mark all of them read, and then compare with OE side-by-side to mark unread that which was actually unread.
Expected: I would've expected the read/unread status to have come across properly.
7. There's no 'Stop processing any more rules/filters' option in Mail Filters.
Problem:
Filter A: [Message subject] contains [hello] move to
I still use Mozilla Mail (it's largely the same as TB) but there are a few serious issues that keep me unhappy:
- frequently fills in addresses wrong (bug 93453)
- searching body text is extremely slow (no indexing) and you can't make it faster by pre-filtering on subject (bug 154867)
- can't delete attachments from received mail (bug 2920)
- can't copy the name from displayed addresses (bug 232021)
- can't paste images into mail (bug 47838) although this is supposedly fixed in TB itself.
These bother me on a regular basis. Seeing something like "saved searches" go in while these much more basic things remain unfixed makes me wonder if there is anyone seriously working on TB/Moz mail. (I am trying to learn how to develop Mozilla - so far got a working build - but most of these are quite involved).
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Somebody else probably agrees with you. Check the Thunderbird Extensions section of The Extensions Mirror and see if there's anything in there you might be able to use.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
Mozex is an extension for Firefox that can handle mailto links (just about) anyway you want. I use it with pine, as I (ALSO) don't like graphical mail. Mozex can also be configured on how to handle: news, telnet, irc, ed2k, ftp, aim, downloads, Viewing source and editing text areas. Great program, I hight recommend it.
Additionally, you can use the mozex extension to handle these types of things, completely independent of the window manager.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Um... It's far easier to change the location of your mail folder in Outlook Express than in Thunderbird, it actually works without loads of profile hackery, and the default directory is perfectly sensible and fits in with the Windows standards for application data. But apart from that, your argument was great. :-)
Seriously, Thunderbird has many things going for it over OE, but how it stores the files on disk is not one of them.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Yes, it is called Novell Evolution. It is a groupware client for Linux that does e-mail, calendaring, tasks and contact management. And can work with IMAP, POP, SMTP and Authenticated SMTP, Microsoft Exchange 2000 and 2003 and Novell GroupWise. I use it at work on Linux to work with our MS Exchange 2003 server.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
It's not quite that bad. You can write the signature within Thunderbird itself, rather than using Notepad, then save it to a text or HTML file. And you can set up multiple identities, each with their own signature, and change them on the fly while composing a new message.
I would agree that it's still a lot kludgier than it should be.
Right click on folder, click "Compact this folder". It's idiotic, but TB is following the spec to the letter. Blame the spec.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
Beware if you have norton antivirus configured to scan incoming email and remove infected files.
I lost my inbox 1 day ago because norton flagged a virus and removed the inbox.mdf file. I didn't remember having this problem with other software.
For each email account, you can choose whether the mail goes into an account-specific Inbox OR a "global Inbox". So you can have all your mail in one big Inbox, if that's what you like.
Yeah, unless you want to use Thunderbird with your local mail spool (or "movemail" as the code calls it for no reason) -- in which case, you're out of luck: it doesn't use the global inbox (see bugzilla bug 263013) the mail notification sounds don't work (see bug 270186), and in general you get treated like a third-class citizen.
Which is inconvenient, ironic, and a shame, considering the disproportionate number of Thunderbird users who are on Unix-like systems, and thus have local mail delivery as an important (if not THE most important) account.
-- Watch the REAL Jon Katz.
enter about:config to the addressbar
set (or create) these key-value pairs:
network.protocol-handler.external.mailto (bool) = true
network.protocol-handler.app.mailto (string) = mozilla-thunderbird