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."

Comments

Popularity

[fembots]

Is Thunderbird as "spread-like-wild-fire" as Firefox? I just don't hear people talking about TB as much as FF.

Even in newsgroups where you need a news reader to do anything, people still talk about FF. I'm using TB but I don't have the same enthusiasm to discuss it.

Is this due to lack of usage, or lack of competition, or something else? Or just me?

Re:Popularity

[Anonymous Coward]

Any serious usenet junkie will tell you TB won't cut it-- same with OE, though. I like pan. ;)

Re:Popularity

[oneeyedelf1]

Outlook has so many more features then thunderbird. Since I dont use outlook I will give my mom's answer when she looked at thunderbird for her office. Can I use it to schedule the presentation rooms? Can I use it to sync? With email filters pretty much grabbing all the outlook viruses anyways, most buisness shouldnt be too concerned running outlook. Firefox was different it has MORE features and protects in ways that just arent too realistic on win2k in an office enviroment. When employees go home, generally they like to keep the same stuff. Besides most users stupid enough to get a virus with outlook will get a virus with thunderbird, so there's no real reason to get people to switch.

Re:Popularity

[EvilStein]

I've itched about this before as well - Thunderbird very well could blow away Outlook in many organizations, but the CALENDAR *SUCKS* - Sorry, Sunbird sucks more ass than anything that has even sucked ass before. The last time I tried it, it was incapable of recognizing its own calendar files, instead they were opening as plain old text in Mozilla.

Here's my idea: Ditch flippin Chatzilla. Put a lot of effort towards the calendar.

The Calendar is one of the big reasons (that I have found) that people stick with Microsoft Outlook.

It doesn't even have to be the whiz-bang calendar like Outlook has, but it'd be nice if it would actually work worth a crap.

Handling in Linux?

[thephotoman]

How does it do with mailto: links from Firefox in Linux? That's the one question burning on my mind.

Thunderbird is missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Thunderbird user and have been for a long time, about as long as it has existed. It's a fine email client, a good one, in fact. However, it's missing something. Missing what? I don't know. But it's missing something that would make people want to switch from the client they're already using. If it's your first client, or you're not happy with the one you're using, it's a good choice. But if you are happy, I'm not sure how to convince you to change to it.

Spam filters? Available in other clients, either natively or through add-ons. RSS reader? I think most people that read RSS already have a reader they like. It's not the fanciest looking client, and it still has some bugs. So, how would you convince someone to use it?

Re:Thunderbird is missing something

[Oscar_Wilde]

No spell check suggester

And on systems that have spell checking ability built into every GUI element that can contain text (Cocoa apps on OS X at least but I'm sure there are others) there is still no spell checking.

It just doesn't feel right on a mac when text boxes don't let you spell check things. Perhaps this kind of thing will be more common when the rest of the software world catches up ;-)

Desired Features

[SlashdotOgre]

What I really wish Thunderbird would do is sync with my PocketPC. At the very least I wish it was easier to sync my address book. I also hope they have better support for vCard exporting. On a side note, does anyone know the timetable for the next major mozilla.orf milestone, Mozilla Suite 2.0, to be released?

A couple of things:

[lawpoop]

1. The importing process seems to only have a wizard to import from other email programs. I would like to have the option to point to a directory or file of email to be imported.

2. 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? Sort by email address, sort by folders. I wonder why no popular email client has this.

KMail

[Helios1182]

I used Thunderbird back in the Windows days (say, 9 months ago or so). Since I switched to Linus (Suse w/ KDE) I've been using K-Mail. It works great, integrates well, and does everything I need. Quite frankly see no reason for Thunderbird at this point. I do have a copy installed so I can walk my Grandparents through when they have problems, but thats it. If I still had Windows I would probably use it still.

Re:What's keeping me from switching from Outlook -

[boomgopher]

Why doesn't TB offer something like SpamBayes: Good Mail, Maybe Spam, Spam. I tried TB a few months ago and don't like the idea of having to check dozens of spam messages to make sure a good e-mail didn't end up in there

Dude, I've used TB for year or two now, and get a few thousand spams a week on my work account - couldn't live without Tbird. TB's spam filter trains rapidly like within a day or so it seems, and is very accurate. My account would be unusable without it.

I have a work copy of Outlook 2003, which looked neat, but tried it for a few days with SpamBayes (well, I think it was spam bayes), and... I hated it. It took longer to train than TB, and I don't know about you, but I don't trust MS with freaking anything when it comes to security. Especially not my personal and professional emails.

Though see my sig for a humorous bug/feature of tbird :).

Thunderbird still doesn't support MS-TNEF

[ptbarnett]

I know that MS-TNEF is generated by a lame Outlook. But, I get a lot of email from corporate clients that I wouldn't be able to read (either partially or entirely), and it's not appropriate for me to tell them it's their problem.

I have to forward it to an account where I can use Outlook, or launch a web browser and use SquirrelMail to open the IMAP folder and read the message. I had to install a plug-in to SquirrelMail to read MS-TNEF email. If the Thunderbird team doesn't want to put it into the default installation, they could at least develop an MS-TNEF extension/plug-in for Thunderbird.

This issue is the one that prevents me (and others) from abandoning Outlook altogether and switching to Thunderbird. Yes, I know there are some programs available that will interpret MS-TNEF. But, that requires a lot of manual effort and makes it difficult to convince the typical business user to use Thunderbird.

Re:Reasons to use Outlook Express

[Pxtl]

Speaking of which, Thunderbird's IMAP support, while pretty, has one idiotic fault: there's no built-in way to purge deleted email messages. If you do manual purges with the purge button extension, you can't use the "move to deleted items folder" mode.

The "move to deleted items folder" doesn't actually remove the deleted messages from the inbox, just flags them as deleted. This sucks if your IMAP system is ever accessed from anywhere else (which is the whole freaking point of IMAP) because when you log in, you find that all the junk-email and deleted items are still sitting flagged right in your inbox.

This is a serious pisser.