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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."
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?
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How does it do with mailto: links from Firefox in Linux? That's the one question burning on my mind.
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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?
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?
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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.
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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.
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1. Someone complains about Outlook Express on USENET or in a forum.
2. ???
3. Profit!---er... Download!
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.
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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E-mail and news (and offline dial-up BBS messaging of the old days) are all sides of the same coin, communication-wise:
A well-written news message is the same as a well-written e-mail message. The line between the two further blurs when you subscribe to mailing lists. Why use (and learn) two different interfaces and programs for handling what is essentially the same form of communication?
-- znarkContrary to what many people say its no competition for Outlook. Outlook Express, sure. But its really lacking in features for business and expecially corporate users. No built-in mature calendar, no real full featured palm syncing. How useful is syncing ONLY your address book? I'm not talking about a full blown Exchange client here, but there are certain basics people expect. Unfortunately judging by the response over the last few years those types of features and turning Thunderbird into something that competes with Outlook proper is not something the dev(s) is interested in.
I hope Thunderbird fans don't think I'm just bashing it. I suggest and install Thunderbird for any OE users I encounter. OE is just not safe to use. I'm just kinda let down because its hasn't turned out the way I had envisioned it.
Oh and as the other person pointed out, on Linux Evolution is very nice. Perhaps one day it will be availabe for Windows.
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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
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As a helpdesk techie, I think Thunderbird is going to have a rougher ride than Firefox.
The problem strangely enough, is that Outlook Express was so much worse than Internet Explorer. IE isn't a great browser, but for most people until this last set of security flaws (Infection via Jpg? Yeah, that's tied too bloody close), it's "Good Enuff" - they could work around it. the only other browsers out their had fanbases, but weren't so head and shoulders above to be worth dealing with. I never cared for netscape, didn't like the packaging of mozilla, and didn't wan't to pay for opera - So I tweaked IE's security and stayed with the one that was "Good Enuff".
So when Firefox came to maturity just as the last set of flaws finally did things even my ultra paranoid security settings (Never had an adware get through) couldn't compensate for, people were primed to leave en masse. And it's great - I can tweak it, it's portable, and it does stand head and shoulders over IE.
Outlook express on the other hand never was "Good Enuff", for anything besides simple Email. It's really only used by people that have never bothered to try anything else. Pine and Elm have more capabilities. Everybody else moved, and has gotten to using something else that *is* good enough, and doesn't have the security holes IE had to jolt them. I have fifty+ filters I'd have to port from Eudora, others use Pegasus, or elm, webmail, or whatever.
So the people who wanted to move, have. The people who haven't moved yet aren't just waiting on Thunderbird the way I was waiting for a browser I *liked*.
So it's not going to hit OE as hard as Firefox hit IE.
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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.
That signature issue in particular is a good indicator, I think, of the general reason why Thunderbird (and Mozilla Mail before it) never really "spread like wildfire". I'm not sure what somebody was thinking. I mean, come on. You have to create some kind of text file outside of Mozilla with Notepad or something, save it somewhere (no default location), and then go in to the preferences and browse to the location of that text file that you somehow figured out how to create. And you can only have that one text file, so only one signature unless you go through that process again. And it's either there or it isn't.
The whole process is totally nonsensical to your average user. Other email clients will just let you choose a signature to insert from a list. That's the kind of thing people like. Thunderbird and Mozilla Mail have just been kind of rough in spots until now. Built in mail filtering not withstanding, it just hasn't had anything special to pull people away from Eudora, OE, Pegasus or Opera Mail.
And yes, we are talking about the average Windows user here, the 95% of the population that this software is supposedly being marketed to. In that world there are a lot of users who do not know how to create a simple plain text file with Notepad.
On Mac OS X the case for TB is pretty hopeless. Apple Mail integrates with the rest of the OS like clockwork and is a hell of a lot prettier. I'm actually kind of surprised to see Thunderbird getting to 1.0 so fast. In my opinion it still needs a lot of usability enhancements and beautifying to really compete with other email clients the way Firefox can compete on level ground with all the other browsers. Maybe a miracle has happened since 0.9, but I doubt it.
Of course I'll still be forcing my users to use it anyway, since it's a hell of a lot better than OE on Windows.
It's true that Outlook can do much more than Thunderbird, and as someone else already pointed out, Outlook Express would be a fairer alternative to compare against.
Still, I prefer Thunderbird even to Outlook, for a simple reason: I don't need those extra features. All I want is a mail client that can:
- read mail effectively (including avoiding HTML bugs, not filtering out genuine
.exes, etc.)
- provide a simple and effective address book
- provide decent mail processing rules
- back up and restore mail without losing data
without zillions of stability and security issues. I switched to Thunderbird after a system failure (caused by an official MS update, in fact) took out my MS-based mail system.I doubt I'm the only one in the world who really doesn't care about scheduling meetings and booking rooms using Outlook. I'd rather just have a simple, effective tool that helps me do my job. Trying to schedule meetings using Outlook is far less efficient than simply e-mailing, picking up the phone or (shock!) walking around and talking to people, IME.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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.
Right click on folder, click "Compact this folder". It's idiotic, but TB is following the spec to the letter. Blame the spec.
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