Mozilla Sunbird's First Official Release

jcraveiro writes "MozillaZine announced yesterday that Sunbird, Mozilla's standalone cross-platform calendar project, has reached its first official relase: version 0.2, for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X." This is good news for all of us waiting for decent free calendaring software.

Comments

Waiting, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is good news for all of us waiting for decent free calendaring software. Are you going to download Sunbird and put a reminder in it to "continue waiting for decent free calendaring software"? ;-D

Re:Waiting, eh?

[maroonhat]

remember that sunbird is on its 0.2 release thats like a 1.0 release of commercial software..

Re:Waiting, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um...no.

Re:Waiting, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

That was beautiful, man.

Re:Waiting, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because that will no longer be the case. :)

Any Onamous

Re:Waiting, eh?

[aussie_a]

Then why did so many people say "Of course Firefox is buggy, it isn't at 1.0 yet." Are you saying Firefox is commercial software?

Re:Waiting, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why did so many people say "Of course Firefox is buggy, it isn't at 1.0 yet." Are you saying Firefox is commercial software?

Uh... I'm not actually endorsing his view, but it seems obvious that he meant that at 0.2 it would be as buggy as a 1.0 proprietary release and, presumably, that by 1.0 it would be less buggy than a 1.0 proprietary release. I don't see any way to read his post to mean that all bugs would be resolved before (or at or after) 1.0

Maybe you could explain your point better?

Re:Waiting, eh?

[symbolic]

I guess porting it to XUL is an interesting change, but I still see a very narrow mindset with respect to what an "event" is. Not all "events" have a start time and a stop time. With some, you just want to note the date and time they occurred (past tense), and are completely uninterested in anything related to duration. I hope that someone will take an innovative step in the design of this (or other OS calendaring software) that will allow users to define events however they want.

Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[TheWanderingHermit]

Okay, so the Lizard is split into Firefox, Thunderbird, and Sunbird. With XUL, you can write applications that run on Mozilla. It does about everything but play games and work as an office suite. So when are we going to see Mozilla integrated in with OpenOffice and the two together turned into MOS (Mozilla OS)?

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

Mozilla games: http://games.mozdev.org/

Mozilla can't be integrated with OOo, because of licensing issues, and the enormous bloat it would create, given the two different codebases.

In any case, a web-utilities suite and an office suite aren't enough to constitute a web browser. They would be enough for a simplistic out-of-the-box experience though.

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[dilvie]

Baby steps, man, baby steps. =)

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[MikTheUser]

Ever heard of EMACS?

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[TheWanderingHermit]

EMACS?

Isn't that some kind of vi clone? (he said as he hid under the table, cowering in fear...)

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[Eriky]

Would it be interesting to write a decent Office suite based on XUL and mozilla? Maybe code can be reused from NVU

That could ultimately lead to a whole range of Mozilla based products. Sounds cool to me!

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[B3ryllium]

I would be far more interested in a Mozilla IDE, capable of handling PHP, C++, Python, and Java. Mostly PHP, in my case. HomeSite-style.

What I'd *LOVE* is for such a PHP IDE to have code-folding and a tree view that actually checks my *includes* for functions and objects that will be used. Not to mention, the potential for live-testing would be neato. :)

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[zemoo]

Already been done!
OEone HomeBase.
Check out this screenshot:
http://www.linux.org.ru/gallery/bigbBdSgP.jpg

Although it's hard to find info about it, the product integrated OpenOffice into a Desktop written entirely in XUL.

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[zootm]

Adding some XPCOM libraries would make it possible to build a Mozilla-based Office suite, though. Would be an interesting thing to see.

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[Qwavel]

Something like this exists, but it isn't free.

It's Komodo from ActiveState.
http://www.activestate.com/Products/ Komodo/
I've never used it so I'm not commenting on its quality.

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[Jesus 2.0]

A browser, email client, calender, and office suite do not an operating system make.

That minor point aside, a main problem with the whole XUL concept, in terms of extensibility, is the lack of good namespacing (or similar) capabilities in Javascript. If your extension uses a function called "getData", and mine uses a variable called "getData", guess what, there are problems. And nothing is going to tell you "hey, there's a conflict" - the underlying engine will happily call one of them. Maybe not the one you wanted. Global variables further complicate the issue.

Of course, today, this kind of problem is merely one that makes plugin developers scratch their heads and waste a lot of time, until finally they realize "Oh, goddamn, this programming environment is idiotic", and fix the immediate problem.

But if XUL has grand schemes on everything in the entire computer world, this issue has to be addressed.

Another issue is that the base applications don't always give names to widgets that you may want to modify. As far as I know, there is thereafter no way to safely extend those in a plugin - maybe its parent is named "blah", and you can say "modify blah's fourth widget child", but what if another plugin programmer inserted a widget before blah's (initial) fourth, thus making the one that you want to modify the fifth? Then you're modifying some random widget that you didn't intend to, with unpredictable and unintended consequences.

If you think C/C++ buffer overflows are bad, wait until XUL takes over the world. You'll have malware that hijacks function calls, malware that intentionally causes popular plugins to modify things that they weren't intended to modify, and so forth.

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[TheWanderingHermit]

Hmmmm..

Maybe I should have used "light sarcasm" tags. I didn't realize anyone would be literal enough to take that comment seriously.

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[jdray]

Sure, it costs money, but the Personal license is only $30. I tried the 30-day eval and thought it was a pretty good IDE. If I get to the point where I need something more complicated than vi for my Perl programming, I'd probably buy Komodo.

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[superyooser]

A browser, email client, calender, and office suite do not an operating system make.

True, but it does make an egg.

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[LWATCDR]

Sure just port it to run on the L4 microkernel.

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[BigBir3d]

Appears to be operating under Axentra.com now. I had this back in the first release days... it was to far from linux to be usefull for me. Still... glad to see something different than the usual KDE/Gnome/Whatever desktop for a *nix based OS.

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[jonadab]

> Isn't that some kind of vi clone?

You're thinking of viper. Emacs is the platform it runs on. HTH.HAND.

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[TheWanderingHermit]

So EMACS is some kind if viper clone?

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[Trejkaz]

I thought it stood for "Eighty Megs And Constantly Swapping." Maybe I'm thinking of something else. :-)

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[jonadab]

No, Emacs is an operating system. Viper is a vi clone that runs on Emacs.

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[TheWanderingHermit]

An OS, hunh? Someone else just told me it's a religion.

So let me get this straight: Someone had to write Viper to make Emacs work as well as vi?

(Yes, I realize how dangerous it is to make a joke like that!)

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[jonadab]

> Someone had to write Viper to make Emacs work as well as vi?

No, someone wrote viper so they could run vi on Emacs. Comparing Emacs to
vi is like comparing apples to an orange GTO. The apples are smaller and
lighter-weight, and you can throw them ever so much faster.

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[TheWanderingHermit]

But you can go much faster in a GTO.

So is Emacs a fruit or a muscle car?

(And why would one want to throw an orange GTO? They're much more fun to drive.)

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[jonadab]

> But you can go much faster in a GTO.

Yes, because the GTO lets you automate the process much more completely. You
don't have to do most of the work of going yourself; the GTO does it for you
(once you put the gas in the tank and do all the other necessary things to
get it to start, learn a bit of lisp, et cetera).

The GTO also has more accessories. You can install a cupholder, a dashboard
clock, fuzzy dice, whatever floats your boat. If you want to go all out,
you can turn it into a stretch limo complete with a pool.

Re:Coming Soon: Mozilla, The OS

[TheWanderingHermit]

So Emacs is Vi with fuzzy dice?

whine whine

[psavo]

This is good news for all of us waiting for decent free calendaring software.

You know, there's KOrganizer and loads of other that are free and actually useable..

Re:whine whine

[Matt Perry]

You know, there's KOrganizer

You assume we all run some form of Unix.

Re:whine whine

[Anonymous Coward]

There's rainlendar for windows.

Re:whine whine

[emidln]

KOrganizer runs under Cygwin on WinXP if you really want it to.

I know what you mean, but just saying.

Re:whine whine

[joib]

You assume we all run some form of Unix.


Ok, so there's also planner-mode in emacs, which works just fine under unix, windows, and probably whatever platform you fancy.

Re:whine whine

[Anonymous Coward]

Get your facts straight. Emacs doesn't run under anything.

Emacs is an Operating System that just happens to run Unix, Windows, and whatever platform you fancy. ;-)

Re:whine whine

[Raagshinnah]

Emacs is an Operating System that just happens to run Unix, Windows, and whatever platform you fancy. ;-)

Too bad it doesn't have a decent text editor.

Re:whine whine

[Chiisu]

you're replying on Slashdot, are you not? ;)

Re:whine whine

[harlows_monkeys]

You know, there's KOrganizer and loads of other that are free and actually useable..

KOrganizer has some annoying bugs. For example, you can export to a web page, which is good. But what if you want to do that automatically? Check the preferences, and there is an "export to HTML automatically on ever save" option. But it does nothing, and is not mentioned in the documentation.

Or consider KOrganizer's todo list handling. It's cool that it supports sub-todo items. However, in the "what's next" list, it flattens that, essentially treating each sub-item as a top level item. And there is no easy way, given an item on the "what's next" list, to locate it in the todo list. So, if you have a lot of "todo" items, with tasks split down into smaller sub-tasks, it gets very awkward. To be really useful, a task's priority should be inherited from the highest priority sub item, and the "what's next" list should either be heirarchical, or it should link back to the todo list.

Basically, KOrganizer is one of those programs that is fairly useful--it beats a manual calendar--but is far short of being "good". There is a lot of room for a good free calendar application, so I welcome Sunbird's entry into this area.

Re:whine whine

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but I'm sure he did assume that those who don't have the ability to install Cygwin.

Re:whine whine

[los furtive]

Snap! Oh man, I haven't laughed that hard on Slashdot in ages. Somebody give this guy five for funny.

Re:whine whine

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it does.

The System Tray

[Henry V .009]

Like Thunderbird, Sunbird is hampered by the fact that it will not minimize to the system tray in Windows XP. I don't want to leave it on all the time because it takes up a lot of space on the task bar. And what use is a calendar program that isn't on all the time?

There are third party fixes to this, and for all I know extensions that do the same thing, but it would be really nice to have system tray minimization as default behavior.

Re:The System Tray

[Refrozen]

Yeah, that is a problem, but Thunderbird has a lot of other problems as far as I've seen (making me choose Refrozen-WebMail as my client of choice, no you can't use it, for my personal use only :-))

With Thunderbird, if you save a letter to send later, you have no way (that I can find) to send it, you have to restart the program for it to send it self, (in other words, there is no send button, just a recieve button)... Maybe I am wrong, or have the concept mixed up, but, that's how I see it.

Re:The System Tray

[maroonhat]

afaik doing that in outlook takes a registry hack under windows (or mabe i just never found the option box)

Re:The System Tray

[hey!]

Maybe I'm missing your point, but I believe what you do is double click on the message in your drafts folder to open it, then click the send button that is the leftmost item on the toolbar.

Re:The System Tray

[rsmeds]

If I'm not mistaken, you can actually config Outlook 2003 to minimize to the tray without any reg hacks.

Re:The System Tray

[Zugok]

Try Suntray . It's not part of the Sunbird package but minimises it into the tray nicely and I am very happy with it.

Re:The System Tray

[Anonymous Coward]

solid solution to your problem

Re:The System Tray

[don'tyellatme]

wow. that's not a problem with any mozilla software. that's what extensions are for. http://minimizetotray.mozdev.org/

Re:The System Tray

[Anonymous Coward]

I moved by Taskbar to the right side of the screen. It's takes a little getting used to, but now its one of the first things I change when I get a new computer. It also gives you more usable vertical space and you can stack a lot of apps onto the taskbar this way. I also use virtual desktops and have my apps in different desktops based on function.

Re:The System Tray

[caferace]

Outlook 2003 will never minimize small enough to make me happy.

Re:The System Tray

[yulek]

try ALT-F4

Re:The System Tray

[wwahammy]

Yes it does; it's a nice feature. I wish there was a standard choice in Thunderbired and Sunbird to do that. Doesn't have to be the default just have it in the preferences or something. This is offtopic but does anyone know of a media player for windows that minimizes to the taskbar like WMP 10 does? As much as I dislike their library interface, this keeps me using WMP.

Re:The System Tray

[spdt]

If your workspace is real cluttered, I'd suggest using VirtuaWin, which works much like workspaces in Linux. You can give yourself an entire virtual desktop dedicated to email. Hit a couple of keys, and you have a clean, new desktop.

Re:The System Tray

[Cthefuture]

I didn't find that a problem because there are several utilities that will do this for you on Windows.

My problem is that it won't minimize the "system tray" (or equivalent) in either KDE or GNOME. It boggles my mind as to why they can't just add that relatively simple feature. Ugh, come on people! This is 2005, not 1995.

I've been using Evolution for ages because of just that one missing feature. I don't care for Evolution because the S/MIME support limited (no PKCS#11 support) or broken.

Re:The System Tray

[erlenic]

I think what he's wanting to do is reply to a bunch of e-mail when he's not connected to his mail server, and then click one button to send them all at once when he gets to a connection.

Re:The System Tray

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple solution: Winamp (just check the options)

Re:The System Tray

[Gamasta]

You can get WindowsPowerPro to minimize the window you want to the system tray. I've been using to get some stuff out of the way. It's free and has plenty of other functionality

http://powerpro.webeddie.com/

Re:The System Tray

[Anonymous Coward]

> Like Thunderbird, Sunbird is hampered by the fact that it will not minimize to the system tray in Windows XP.

I'll grant that this is a bummer that it doesn't ship with that feature, but you are aware that there are oodles of "minimize to tray" utilities out there? Find some at nonags.com.

Re:The System Tray

[ampathee]

also try powermenu - allows you to minimize any app to the system tray, set it always-on-top, set its priority, and set its transparency. I found it a very useful little app :)

Re:The System Tray

[Anonymous Coward]

please do not use "wow" unless you are refering to World of Warcraft. you got my hopes up and no where did you mention anything about wow.

now i'm depressed. :(

Re:The System Tray

[rjhall]

If you mean the feature where wmp minimizes but leaves you the play/pause buttons etc. on the task bar, then iTunes (4.7+) does that. r-click on the taskbar->toolbars->itunes

Re:The System Tray

[chill]

With Thunderbird, if you save a letter to send later, you have no way (that I can find) to send it, you have to restart the program for it to send it self, (in other words, there is no send button, just a recieve button)... Maybe I am wrong, or have the concept mixed up, but, that's how I see it.

File Menu --> Send Unsent Messages

Re:The System Tray

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to leave it on all the time because it takes up a lot of space on the task bar.

Blame it on Windows' stupid behavior. You don't run into this problem on Mac OS, since it doesn't assume that the program and the documents are one and the same.

Re:The System Tray

[spectre_240sx]

Or control panel > add \ remove programs > remove

Re:The System Tray

[HorsePunchKid]

Have you thought of something like Vern? There are a zillion other virtual desktop programs for Windows out there, but this has been my favorite for years. It makes overwhelming the task bar a non-issue. I can just keep Sunbird maximized on a separate desktop. Here's a screenshot (see the bottom right corner) to show how useful it can be. Why clutter the system tray even more when you can just leave all of your windows exactly where you want them to be?

Your mileage may vary, but I hope you find this useful.

Re:The System Tray

[jsight]

There are several alternatives:
All Tray

KDocker (not kdes specific either)

Re:The System Tray

[Cthefuture]

Awesome, thanks for those links. I didn't know they existed.

Re:The System Tray

[Bequita]

You can always use the outbox extension, it gives you a send later option in teh compose mail window, and a send unsent mail button in the main screen.

Very easy to do, really.

Re:The System Tray

[don'tyellatme]

fuck world of warcraft. wow is what i thought when i read that stupid post. like as in wow you probably spend way too much time playing world of warcraft. wow you should probably get out more. that type of thing. get up from your leather chair and look outside your monitor every once in a while. troll.

Is it integrated with Thunderbird yet?

[Refrozen]

Have they/are they planning on integrating it in to thunderbird? It looks a lot like Outlook's calendar, I think integrating it with Thunderbird (and even Firefox? Maybe let you add items through Firefox?) would be their greatest 'next' step.

Re:Is it integrated with Thunderbird yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sunbird is a stand-alone version of Mozilla Calendar (which is linked in the sidebar on the Sunbird page). Mozilla Calendar is an extension that you can install into Mozilla, Firefox, or Thunderbird. In other words: Sunbird is not going to be integrated into Thunderbird, as the project it's based on already is.

Re:Is it integrated with Thunderbird yet?

[bcmm]

If they went down that road, they would be in danger of just reintegrating everything, and might as well just abandon the standalone applications and devote resources to Seamonkey.

Re:Is it integrated with Thunderbird yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

If its not integrated kiss goodbye to getting people to switch from Outlook, Mozilla Calender is not integrated, its just a damn button on the toolbar, you call that integration? Laughable. Stick with outlook.

Not to be taken seriously until its integrated for groupware.

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Refrozen]

"Also, this is cribbed directly from Mac OS X. "

That is also the exact same window used in Firefox, thus, I doubt they stole it, they adopted it from Firefox. You do need SOME WAY to control the toolbar, just because two apps use the same doesn't make it 'cribbed'.

Of course, I don't want to start a fight, so I'll back out now. :-)

Re:Looks like iCal...

[tehshen]

It is cribbed directly from Firefox actually. And making up part of a suite, it isn't surprising.

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Gob Blesh It]

And where did Firefox rip it off of? Yeah, that's right: the "customize toolbar" panel built into Mac OS X's Cocoa framework.

An exact copy is never better than the original. In order to make it better, it must, at a minimum, be different (not that everything different is automatically better).

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Gob Blesh It]

Well, you'd think the Firefox developers could come up with a better (easier, faster, more efficient, more intuitive) way to do it than Mac OS X does. Like I said elsewhere, you can't innovate and improve upon an original by making a direct copy. And I don't think there's any way to look at those two screenshots and say one wasn't ripped off the other.

I've not been waiting

[confused philosopher]

I've been using this program, for months now. It's rather clunky though, and crashes sometimes in my Windows XP.

Re:I've not been waiting

[bcmm]

define:Beta test

Of course it is unstable now.

Re:Looks like iCal...

[tehshen]

Why shouldn't Firefox and Sunbird have the same customize toolbar box, though? It works, so why mess with it?

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Matt Perry]

Why the obsession with being original? If someone has a good idea what's wrong with using it? Not everyone has to 'innovate'.

Nice

[tsa]

I've used Sunbird for Linux for a while now and I must say it's fairly good. There are a lot of bugs of course but it's usable and I like it. But that's also because I didn't try anything else. Because I have a Mac, Xp, and Linux I love all Mozilla stuff because it runs on all those platforms almost exactly the same.

Re:Nice

[Epistax]

I'd really like to use it but as a linux user who isn't an expert, I can't install this software. The readme mentions two different ways to install Sunbird, of course both mention scripts which don't actually exist (mozilla-installer and mozilla). All I'm left with is a bunch of .so's and executables.

I know this isn't the place to ask for tech support so I'm not asking for any. I'm just saying they didn't make it obvious to me how to install Sunbird.

Re:Nice

[terrab0t]

"Because I have a Mac, Xp, and Linux I love all Mozilla stuff because it runs on all those platforms almost exactly the same."

That's what I like about these apps too. They truly unbind us from the OS. This is good for Linux users who want decent apps without a crappy OS, and Windows users who can't abandon some of their software lock-ins regardless of how good they apps they could run under Linux are.

You know what else runs great on all platforms? GMail. It's the best mail app I've ever used. It's extremely light, and ultimately portable. I don't even have to install it on other machines, I just go to the page and my mail app is there. I no longer use Thunderbird, just Firefox.

Now all we need is a decent online calendar app to replace Sunbird and we're all set. Hotmail has one but, like the rest of Hotmail's web interface, it's too slow and cluttered to be useful. We need somebody to step up, make an open standard for calendars, and make a slick, useable web app for it.

Offices can use Microsoft Outlook (pretty useful design) by forcing everyone to install it, but an open calendar format would let friends and loose organizations use whatever calendar service / app they wanted and still work and interact with one another as easily as they email one another.

In the meantime, I'm off to get this new Sunbird release. It doesn't help me work with other people, but it at least helps me keep myself organized. I highly reccomend it to students. If you find yourself getting distracted or procrastiniating, get this app and make yourself a daily schedule.

Re:Nice

[tsa]

I haven't tried version 0.2 yet but the earlier versions you could just unpack and then run the executable. Maybe you can try that.

Re:Nice

[Epistax]

Oh yes the program does run fine, I just don't know the proper place to put all the files myself. I don't want to have it sitting under my home directory.

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't want it in your home directory move it to /opt or /usr/local. Don't bother moving the individual files about, it's completely unnecessary and it just makes updating harder.

Re:Nice

[Digi-John]

Online applications may be convenient if you are running from computer to computer all the time, but if you can't get internet access or don't want to dial up just to read an old email, they aren't that great. Thank god for offline newsreaders.

Re:Nice

[Prof.Phreak]

I've used Mozilla calendar for a while, until I've moved to linux on amd64... and all of a sudden, among a number of packages, Mozilla Calendar (well, Sunbird) stopped working. It just crashes outright.

I had to move over to Evolution (that has e-mail and calendar). So far so good. I'll definitely try this latest Sunbird release to see if it works on amd64 linux.

Re:Nice

[gentlemoose]

sudo mv ./(sunbird folder) /usr/local/
sudo ln -s /usr/local/(sunbird folder)/(sunbird executable) /usr/local/bin/sunbird

Re:Nice

[mdavids]

I would normally wait for .deb packages to become available, but with the Firefox/Thunderbird 1.0 releases, and now this, I just couldn't control myself.

I would suggest that unless your distro already puts stuff in there, /opt is the place to put third-party software. It means you can run the latest version alongside your distro's stable one, unless there are significant incompatibilities between versions. With Mozilla, file formats and config files have been pretty stable for a while, so you're pretty safe. I suspect you may have problems with some extensions, though.

Re:Nice

[BigGerman]

for those who may come here after us ;-) -
It seems to work well under Fedora Core 3 on AMD64

Re:Nice

[mrchaotica]

Try emerge sunbird You'll have to unmask it first, though...

</gentoo troll>

: D

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Gob Blesh It]

I think I was trying to point out that the Firefox developers could have come up with a way of doing things, crossplatform or no, that didn't give the appearance of ripping interface features shamelessly off the Mac. And in the process, who knows--maybe they could have come up with something better than Cocoa's customize toolbar panel.

I mean, it seems to me you could just as easily say: iCal works, so why mess with it?

Download is pretty slow...

[Karl Tacheron]

It's coming in at around 10kbps. Is there a mirror or torrent of the download?

Re:Download is pretty slow...

[Refrozen]

Oddly enough, I am downloaded it at 150kb/s at about the same time your comment was posted. Could it be your end that is slow? Maybe someone could mirror it anyways, it's free karma after all. :-)

Re:Download is pretty slow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a torrent or mirror? Yes, I believe there is.

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Refrozen]

"An exact copy is never better than the original. In order to make it better, it must, at a minimum, be different (not that everything different is automatically better)."

I see NOTHING that can be improved with something as simple as a customize toolbar window. When you develop applications do you ever have a button that says "Ok" or "Yes"? I betcha you do, and so does everyone else, doesn't that make you unoriginal? Why not put "kjfdgnfs" on the button? People want "Ok", not "kjfdgnfs".

Other than that, you are 100% right, something cannot be better by being the same.

Doesn't solve my problem

[Simon Lyngshede]

I gave up using calendars. What I can't keep in my head or on post-its doesn't get done. It's not that I don't like the idea, caledars are great, both the page and software version, but I can't remember to add stuff to them. Result: My calendars are always blank and therefor of no use.

What I need is a calendar which will add tasks automaticly.

Re:Doesn't solve my problem

[TekMonkey]

I've never needed the use of a wall callendar, let alone an app that runs on my PC. I'll stick to writing everything down on my arm, thanks.

Re:Doesn't solve my problem

[chris_mahan]

Same here.

I have yahoo calendar. A desk calendar ( you know, the one you doodle on --well, not you, me). I also have a calendar in my cell phone, and one at work in my ARRGGHHH!!! lotus notes.

In the last year, I have entered 2 items in the calendar. And never looked back.

I do my tasks in a wiki, as ascii text. Much easier, much faster. not stuck to one pc. (i use 10 machines on a regular basis (home - 2, office - 3, other office - 2 , other office 3, not counting all the "friends" I support when food is provided.)

I barely use my USB ram, I don't have it with me all the time. A web-based wiki is best for me.

Re:Doesn't solve my problem

[Dorothy 86]

and software in particular that you use? I've been thinking about doing this recently.

Re:Doesn't solve my problem

[Anonymous Coward]

You need Outlook/Exchange ;o)
When you get sent a Schedule item, it automatically adds itself to your calendar as a Tentative item. If everyone else is sending out schedules, you don't need to add any yourself!

Re:Doesn't solve my problem

[JeffWhitledge]

I do my tasks in a wiki, as ascii text.

Where's this wiki? I've got some stuff I need you to do.

Re:Doesn't solve my problem

[smeenz]

What I need is a calendar which will add tasks automaticly.

You probably say that in jest, but what you're actually describing is a collaborative calendar. When people want to book a meeting with me, it should appear on my calender automatically.

Unfortunately, sunbird isn't very integrated with what my employer uses (novell groupwise).. mainly due to groupwise being very proprietary and ignoring standards. (sounds like another company we know)

Re:Doesn't solve my problem

[danheretic]

What I need is a calendar which will add tasks automaticly.

I have one of those, it's called Wife.

Re:Doesn't solve my problem

[witte]

"What I need is a calendar which will add tasks automaticly."

You should get married, then.

I tried it...

[flamechocobo]

And I didn't really like it. When Linux still worked on my computer (driver issues drove me insane and eventually just didn't support my computer), I loved Evolution. I'm just going to wait until Evolution gets ported to Windows. Sunbird just seems less usable than the rest.

Re:Looks like iCal...

[bcmm]

That customization interface has been in Mozilla suite, Firefox and Thunderbird for a *long* time. Who cribbed from who, troll?

And what is wrong with copying interfaces? Where did Window's, Mac OS's and X11's window manager concept come from? (Hint: it wasn't Apple, Microsoft, or X).

Does it work with Exchange?

[jpmoney]

I know this is setting me up for a'Floggin', but does it integrate with MS Exchange? The only thing keeping me in Windows on my work PC is the need for a calendar system that works with the company's Exchange system.

I've looked at the site, but can't see any mention of it.

Re:Does it work with Exchange?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't see any mention of a feature then it isn't there.

Sunbird is a personal calendar; if you want "enterprise" calendaring try Evolution.

Re:Does it work with Exchange?

[CritterNYC]

I know this is setting me up for a'Floggin', but does it integrate with MS Exchange?

Nope. Right now the Mozilla Calendar Project and, hence, the standalone Mozilla Sunbird, only support open calendering protocols (CalDAV and ICS). While there is demand for Exchange support, noone has stepped up to offer it. I'd guess, as Sunbird and the Lightning Project mature (and if enough demand builds up), someone may release a pay component that handles Exchange connectivity first... followed by an open source one at some later date.

Head to the Calendar:Protocol/Storage_Providers section of the Mozilla Wiki for more info.

Re:Does it work with Exchange?

[ajaf]

1- Evolution + plugin for exchange.
2- Kmail (or Kontacto) + plugin for exchange.
3- Microsoft Exchange web access.

The days of "I stay with windows becouse of outlook+exchange are over"
Come on, you don't need Windows ;)

Re:Does it work with Exchange?

[MPolo]

Unless, of course, your company security expert is worried that M$ Exchange web access could be a security hole, so won't activate it, leaving you with Crossover Office and Lookout or nothing...

Re:Does it work with Exchange?

[BenRussoUSA]

"The days of 'I stay with windows because of outlook+exchange are over'"

I'm a UNIX SysAdmin, I've been using Linux on the Desktop (not exclusively)
for many years. None of the solutions you mention works well... Believe me,
I have tried them all. They aren't anywhere near as easy to use as a mail/calendar interface as OUTLOOK+Exchange on a native Windows system.
Nor are they as good as using Outlook2000 with CodeWeavers CrossOver office on a Linux box.

Maybe you are right about "don't need", but I would say that if you spend a lot of time using Outlook for E-mail, calendar, tasks, forms, and shared-folders, it could very well still be a day of "I stay with windows because of Outlook+Exchange".

Of course I would love to replace Exchange with an open source, open standards server platform that joined SSL enabled SMTP/IMAP/NNTP/LDAP/ACAP with a cross platform client that was fast, stable+robust, easy to use.

Firefox+Thunderbird+Sunbird is getting there! Go MOZILLA.

Re:Looks like iCal...

[FuzzzyLogik]

You seem to be a big proponent of recreating the wheel. see iCal is pretty sweet for calendaring and _individuals_ plans. it isn't great for collaborative calendaring but i lays a good groundwork for it, it's possible to make iCal a lot better, but the groundwork is there.

sunbird uses the same thing, why fix something that isn't broke? besides the best part of this is, you can export your iCal calendar and load it into Sunbird and it does the exact same thing. it coexists with iCal, unlike Outlook which obviously wants to remain closed and unopen to any outside influence.

it might look ugly but that's easy to fix after the functionality is built in big guy. why not get something working first, then make it pretty? if you're so upset about the ugliness, why not commission someone to go in and make it prettier? or do it yourself. there's only so many people working on it, so why not contribute instead of bitch?

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Refrozen]

No, I'm not. I am 100% for innovation, but only where innovation is going to give substantial improvemnt.

Sunbird should not just be an iCal ripoff, however, there isn't much more I can add to this discussion, because I don't understand your view point in the post (maybe you were being sarcastic in some spots, or maybe you were talking to other people, or... I don't know)

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Richard_at_work]

Theres always a big bruhaha whenever MS comes out with a product or feature not 100% origional and unique. Why ignore it when OSS does it (and blantantly so)?

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Gob Blesh It]

True. I still think it's dangerous to suggest the "customize toolbar" dialog couldn't possibly be improved or completely reimplemented... there's always a zillion ways to do these things that no one's imagined yet.

It just rubs me the wrong way when you hear (from some people) open source foo is superior to proprietary foo, or more conducive to creativity, or more original or whatever. Because even as they speak, the other hand's busy ripping off proprietary innovations like this toolbar interface.

PocketPC sync

[rxmd]

As long as it doesn't synchronise with a PocketPC, it's pointless for me as an iPaq owner.

OK, you can blame MS on not opening the ActiveSync protocol, but it should be possible to synchronize Sunbird or Thunderbird with a small client application running on the PocketPC, similar to how IntelliSync works.

Re:PocketPC sync

[Anonymous Coward]

Fully agreed! However, given the relatively short lifespan of PDAs (I read recently the average is 2 years), I wouldn't expect any movement towards improving already-existing models in this way. Of course, the good news is that our PDAs are likely to die within a few years, so if they do open a future version of activesync, it won't be terribly long (in the timescale of things other than technology) before we'll have reason to acquire the latest.

Re:PocketPC sync

[Lemmy Caution]

Likewise, except my sync target is Symbian Series 60. But all of us would-be synch'ers should keep an eye on Sunbird, as all these platforms are mentioned in the Requirements page.

Thunderbird synch with Symbian would be nice, too - without it, I'm still not really using the T-bird address book as a real contact manager.

Re:PocketPC sync

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets hope the Sunbird team are looking into SyncML:
http://www.openmobilealliance.org/tech/af filiates/ syncml/syncmlindex.html

There is an open source implementation here:
http://www.sync4j.org

It's actually pretty nice, I'm using it for syncing my Outlook and my Qtek PDA. Newer phones phones from Nokia and SE support SyncML, but I havent managed to get this working yet.

Re:PocketPC sync

[mp3phish]

Calendaring is useless to everyone right now unless you are teathered to your desktop... Until they fix this problem I won't be bothering with any calendaring apps..

The problem seems to be that there is no implemented standards to sync PDA's to the calendar server without first going through your PC. While this might sound kinda "silly" to some of you, it really is a requirement. You see, Palm sells the Tungesten C which has built in WiFi. They also sell the Treo 600 and Treo 650 which has built in GPRS or CDMA internet access... So what is the use of this PDA if its PRIMARY FUNCTION cannot sync to your calendaring server directly?

All bundled up? Calendaring is a great idea. When they actually get PDAs and cellphones to sync with the central server, it will be of some use. Until then: forget it.

Re:PocketPC sync

[purplemonkeydan]

PocketPC's can do this through Exchange ActiveSync.

Re:PocketPC sync

[mp3phish]

Not to talk crap about your suggestion, but most people who would be using iCalendar or Sunbird would not be using Exchange...

If I were in the market for a microsoft only solution, it might be a valid suggestion. But I just don't see that many people jumping into that boat (any new people, not to say there aren't already a lot there)

Re:PocketPC sync

[supergnom]

Try Multisync. It can synchronize between Ximian Evolution, PocketPC, SyncML, the Sharp Zaurus, PalmOS, IrMC, LDAP and take backups.

Works like a charm. Of course, it does nothing with Sunbird - yet. :-)

Good job

[Snap E Tom]

Way to be oblivious to the big picture, Slashdotters!!!

The sooner that Exchange is emulated in OSS, the sooner there will be no reason to run Microsoft products on the backend for small and medium sized offices.

* IIS? Gone with Apache.
* File/Print? Gone with Samba.
* Email? Not so fast. We like the groupware functionality of Exchange.

And of course, consultants who don't know any better see that there's no OSS to fulfil the groupware need, and therefore, there's no reason to learn/pitch Apache/Samba. Why bother with those when you can have the "nice integration" of MS products? Once Sunbird/OpenGroupware, et al reaches the ability of invitations, seeing busy/free on other user's calendars, and inviting resources, then Redmond will run real scared.

Good job, Sunbird. You're the missing link and you're looking good.

Re:Good job

[njcoder]

In some news clippings, Sun has talked about releasing their Java Enterprise System as open source. It includes messaging and calendar as well as a number of other enterprise applications. If it's open sourced and available free it would be cool. There's already a plug in for Evolution.

For small shops, less than 100 employees, i think it may still be free. Otherwise you can get some peices of it for $50/employee/year.

Re:Good job

[illustir]

Firstly, I think this is very cool as most Mozilla is.

But what's wrong currently with SuSE OpenExchange Server?
And they have also hired a guy to port Evolution to Windows. How's that for decent calendaring software.

Re:Good job

[AutumnLeaf]

There are two cash-cows that Microsoft will defend vigorously. Office, and Exchange. Outlook as a mailer is no big deal. But email/calendaring integration are what make it so attractive to businesses. Interoperating w/ exchange will be the way to kill it and I'm not sure if that M$ will ever sit still long enough for that to happen.

I think it would be better if Sunbird and the OSS community designed a good calendaring/email (Sunbird/T-Bird) solution that worked well stand-alone because it would be easier to implement and they could innovate some nice alternatives to the suckitude of exchange. But a standalone solution may not be able to penetrate the marketshare Exchange has.

In any case, this is the number one thing I'm watching in the OSS community - an exchange killer. As mentioned before, when one manifests the folks in Redmond will be running scared.

Yes - Evolution and Connector are bridging the gap for now, but they are not quite 100% of the way there.

Re:Good job

[Micah]

I think there are already reasonable alternatives to Exchange on Linux, though they are not necessarily free.

My organization will in a month or two migrate from our #^$#@% Exchange 5.5 server to Bynari Insight Server. It uses open source components (Postfix, OpenLDAP, etc) and some proprietary components to put together a pretty good set of features. Our IT director did a TCO study, and Bynari (along with all the other Linux options) costs a small fraction of what Exchange would cost. And we think it will do what we need.

Also, this is supported software. Their tech support rocks. They've gone way out of their way to accommodate our demented testing and questions, before we spent a cent! Try that with anything Microsoft.

At first, we'll likely use their web client for calendar/groupware functions, but eventually they say it will support iCal support, which would enable using it with Sunbird. I'm certainly looking forward to that.

There is reason to believe that there will be a truly Free/OSS groupware server on the level of Apache in the next couple years. Until then, Bynari is a very good choice IMHO.

Re:Good job

[zemoo]

Exchange has already been emulated in OSS:
Take a look here.
The only problem is that Evolution runs only on Linux at the moment. But if you're going all OSS what does that matter?
Though have a look at http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/17/ 190204

Re:Good job

[noda132]

* IIS? Gone with Apache.
* File/Print? Gone with Samba.
* Email? Not so fast. We like the groupware functionality of Exchange.

Utter bullshit. Sunbird isn't appropriate as a small business integrated solution. Why am I so sure? Because it's not integrated with anything!

Small business already have no reason to use Windows; Novell (Ximian, SuSE) and Red Hat have had comprehensive solutions for years. Evolution already works way better than Outlook.

I'm not going to go as far as to say that Sunbird is a waste of effort -- it hasn't yet proven itself to be otherwise, but that doesn't mean it won't -- I'm just saying there is software written specifically to fit the niche you describe, and it is not Sunbird. Open source is all about "right tool for the job", after all.

Re:Good job

[beforewisdom]

* IIS? Gone with Apache.

I don't think that will happen until Apache is as easy to set up and manage as IIS ( the same tired idea for why a lot of windows software persists in the face of backend superior, but front end unfinished OSS ).

I know nothing about networking or web servers. I remember years ago several jobs back that I could point and click my way to getting IIS set up and running on my local machine. From what I heard about Apache that is not possible.

I had another job working in the same office as some hardcore networking guys. These guys knew everything about unix, mac, and windows. They could even script and program on all 3. They chose Apache, but from their comments ( polite and not ) I got the impression that Apache is not easy to deal with.

There are still people in OSS who think only brain dead dead, non enthusiast end users want things easy. That is not true, people who work in IT want things easy too.

Until all major OSS software realizes and implements that idea M$ will always have a place

Re:Good job

[witte]

So you are saying we need Mozilla Birdhouse.

(...Or should that be Cathouse ? Mousehole ?)

I love the way they display the same fixation with animals as O'reilly.

Palm?

[rscrawford]

I know that the major thing keeping my wife tied to Outlook on Windows is that her Palm won't sync with Thunderbird or Sunbird.

Re:Palm?

[Planesdragon]

I've successfully gotten Eudora for Palm (free) to sync with Thunderbird without too much hassle.

It requires a little bit of legwork, but it's quite doable. Had I a longer commute, I might start doing it again.

Re:Palm?

[rscrawford]

I've suggested that to my wife, but she wants both address book and calendar integration. The Palm Desktop is great for calendaring, but I've never been able to make it talk to an e-mail client, so the address book is almost pointless. I'm hoping that with Sunbird/Thunderbird, though, at some point in the future, we can move my wife away from Outlook.

For the record, I have my wife behind three firewalls: the firewall hardwired into our Linksys router, the firewall that came with WindowsXP SP2, and the ZoneAlarm firewall. We also run AdAware and Spybot S&D religiously. I'm not overly concerned with the security issues, but we're both philosophically in favor of OSS.

Re:Palm?

[Planesdragon]

Not just the address book. Actual e-mail sync with the palm, using Thunderbird, Windows, and Eudora.

Re:Palm?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should try a Mac for your wife. Firewall included and Adressbook and Calender sync easily with your palm (or most other organisers).

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Gob Blesh It]

Fact is, this particular interface innovation appeared, in its present form, first in Mac OS X circa 2000--long predating Firefox and Thunderbird.

Nothing's wrong with copying interfaces, of course, but doing so sort of undermines the argument that open-source software is creative and original in its own right.

ScheduleWorld works far better

[MarkSwanson]

ScheduleWorld is free, works on Linux, Mac OS/X, Windows, Solaris. It is by far more standards compliant and interoperates really well with Exchange/Outlook and Notes. Check it out and see for yourself.

Re:ScheduleWorld works far better

[gh5046]

Basic calendaring and scheduleing is free for now. Our intention is to keep the basic calendaring and scheduling features free and generate revenue via advertising and corporate extensions.

It isn't totally free, and it isn't open. Sunbird might have its bugs, but at least it truly is free.

Re:ScheduleWorld works far better

[Anonymous Coward]

That looks pretty cool. I'm definitely going to try it out.

Re:ScheduleWorld works far better

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah. The site doesn't even work right in Safari, there are no OS X screenshots and it looks like it's written in Java - which means crappy and slow UI on the Mac.

Sorry, but even in Sunbird's buggy state it's better for OS X.

Re:ScheduleWorld works far better

[MarkSwanson]

I use animtree for the tree on the left that you say doesn't work in Safari. Perhaps my version of animtree is obsolete. Can anyone running Safari view the animtree home page demos properly?

http://dhtmlkitchen.com/scripts/animtree/demo/in de x.jsp

BTW, you'll find the ScheduleWorld GUI pleasant and snappy under OS/X. And as soon as Apple releases Java 1.5.0_01 (_01 is important) I should be able to have a mostly perfect OS/X look and feel for the OS/X folks.

Cheers.

Re:ScheduleWorld works far better

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a proper review but animtree demos leave a lot of stuff on the screen when closing an item under Safari 1.2.3, then rolling over the real but undrawn item will draw it but then with all the extra stuff on the screen you don't know what's real and what isn't. Works the same way for the sw website.

As for the "cost". I'll pay for a good application but "free" and having it put advertising as an item on my calendar is a non-starter. It works for TV and newspapers, but I'll pass in a calendar.

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Refrozen]

Yeah, you are right, I take that back, the customize toolbar dialog, in theory, could be improved. And, I have nothing more to say on it, but, they have been using it since an early, early, EARLY version of Firefox, it just seems that they would continue to make things work similarly throughout their applications. (their = mozilla org's)

"It just rubs me the wrong way when you hear (from some people) open source foo is superior to proprietary foo, or more conducive to creativity, or more original or whatever. Because even as they speak, the other hand's busy ripping off proprietary innovations like this toolbar interface."

I agree completely, one thing I try to get across to people with the Slashdot mindset is that if you are just USING software, it makes no difference if it is open source or proprietary, the thing that makes a difference is how well it works, how efficent it is, how easy it is to use, and how much you can accomplish with it. Open source doesn't directly tie in to any one of those things, granted, some open source software is better than some proprietary software, but vice-versa as well.

Re:Looks like iCal...

[hagenman]

It was Xerox!! Way to go PARC!

Good

[reassor]

I want to look after it later.Need a calender programm.

Re:Looks like iCal...

[bcmm]

Correct, but unnecessary :)

And this is good because

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike the extra shovelware in Mozilla Suite, if I don't want to download this, I don't have to.

Wait for 0.3

[Anonymous Coward]

From the above linked Sunbird page;

Tuesday, February 4th, 2005: The Sunbird team is proud to announce its first official release: Sunbird 0.2 for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. You can find builds for the different platforms on our download page.

Maybe the day-of-the-week problem will be fixed in 0.3;-)

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Gob Blesh It]

"it's possible to make iCal a lot better, but the groundwork is there"

Good point, and oftentimes I do wish it were possible to hack proprietary software to add missing features and the like.

How do you suggest I contribute, though? Should I submit a bug to Bugzilla titled "Interface is wretched"? Should I write to the developers with a point-by-point list of what might be improved, or would they consider this whining?

I suppose I could commission a graphic artist to make it look better, but iCal already suits me fine... :)

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Richard_at_work]

THeres a difference between copying the concept and outright copying the interface. Ones acceptable, the others not.

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Trillan]

While I don't refute that Firefox and Sunbird rippped off Mac OS X, they did manage to improve it a little. In Firefox and Sunbird, dragging a tool icon out of the window and into the tool bar causes it to disappear from the window. This makes it much easier to find the tool icons you're not using.

While confusing to Mac users like myself (and thus, probably not a good idea on the Mac at all), it is a better way to do it.

Thunderbird integration and the Lightning project

[CritterNYC]

Have they/are they planning on integrating it in to thunderbird? It looks a lot like Outlook's calendar, I think integrating it with Thunderbird (and even Firefox? Maybe let you add items through Firefox?) would be their greatest 'next' step.

The Mozilla Calendar Project is actually a plugin for Firefox and Thunderbird that adds a calendar to either program. Mozilla Sunbird is the standalone version of this.

The calendar plugin doesn't really "integrate" into Thunderbird as most would like, though, which is why the Lightning project was begun (it was mentioned on Slashdot in December.) The Lightning project aims for "tight" integration with Thunderbird, so you get more of a seamless program to handle all your email, calendar, contact and task needs. Expect to see more about Lightning later this year.

Re:Looks like iCal...

[bcmm]

This is in Seamonkey too. This was probably in Mozilla (or even maybe Netscape) before 2000. So what? They must have got the idea somewhere as well.

It amazes me the way some people think that all innovation comes from Apple.

mozilla composer

[lethe1001]

Mozilla also had an html composer component. I liked it. I wonder if we'll ever see that as a standalone XUL application.

Re:mozilla composer

[Anonymous Coward]

There already is. NVU - http://nvu.com/

It's being developed by Linspire, of all companies.

bobjuanjoe

Re:mozilla composer

[aurb]

It doesn't count -- it's not named bird/fire/something like that.

Re:mozilla composer

[The One KEA]

Never heard of Nvu, then? It's the spinoff of Mozilla Composer.

Re:mozilla composer

[lethe1001]

thanks for the link, I was not aware of that project. I still wish it were an XUL application from the Mozilla Foundation, like Thunderbird and Firebird. Just for the sake of consistency. Is that too picky of me?

Re:mozilla composer

[mrchaotica]

Is that too picky of me?

No, unless it's too picky of me as well.

Re:mod DOwn

[Anonymous Coward]

Was there really a point in posting that? Seriously. That shouldn't even be on the internet. And, no one is actually going to click it anyways, so, why bother posting just to get modded down?

Release date....

[ribo-bailey]

Tuesday, February 4th, 2005:

You'd think a site for a calendar app would be able to get it's own release date correct...

otherwise, it's a neat app

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Gob Blesh It]

Yep, it's never helpful to say open source is always superior to proprietary software, or vice-versa for that matter. I shudder to imagine what the world would be like without Apache, but I think I could probably live without Sunbird... as you might have guessed. :)

Too heavy

[Ecio]

i've found sunbird too heavy for my needs: Thunderbird is already eatin 50MB of my memory and i dont want Sunbird to do the same so I'm currently using EssentialPIM a small (1MB) and free PIM for Windows and it's quite ok for small todos and appointments. I think that Evolution could be the right solution on Linux, but i've not tried it too much...

Re:Too heavy

[rduke15]

Yes, it's quite heavy here in XP:

tasklist
...
sunbird.exe 2256 Console 0 25'152 K

It's actually second, right after Firefox which eats 50 MB at the moment.

Does printing work yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

PalmOS sync

[aussie_a]

This is the dream app for me as a college student (I hate using PalmOS's default calender app). But whilever it doesn't install and syn on PalmOS (Tungsten E), it's useless to me as well.

Re:PalmOS sync

[Daniel Serodio]

There's an extension (PalmSync) to sync Thunderbird Contacts with the Palm, maybe it works with Sunbird?

Re:PalmOS sync

[aussie_a]

Hey, thanks a lot for that :) Have you got a link by any chance?

New GOOD Software is driving me batty

[chia_monkey]

I'm loving the fact that there are so many new alternatives to IE (I mainly use Safari and Firefox), Outlook (I use OS X's Mail and am still dabbling with Thunderbird) and now calendar (I use iCal and am now testing Sunbird) apps. It's driving me batty though...I get used to using one particular app and then new, better ones come out. Not one to be stuck using the old stuff, I gotta try the new releases. The only problem...there's a small learning curve and I have to redo the way I used to do them before.

I'm an early adopter and I admit it. It's one of the things I have to deal with. My concern however is, just how many people in the everyday world are willing to stop using Outlook to learn an entirely new way of doing things. Some apps, such as browsers, don't matter as much. A browser is a browser, with a few features here and there, but the underlying concept is the same. Type in a URL and go. Other things though...aye...

Re:New GOOD Software is driving me batty

[Zillatron]

But isn't it nice to tackle each new one quicker than the last? And the frustrations of a previous program or even a previous version (w00t! I just printed a calendar in Sunbird and it didn't crash!) can turn into the joy of seeing it fixed.

I'd better wrap this up before I start talking about fuzzy-assed bunnies or something.

Re:New GOOD Software is driving me batty

[roror]

"Some apps, such as browsers, don't matter as much. A browser is a browser, with a few features here and there, but the underlying concept is the same. Type in a URL and go. Other things though...aye..."

You have a point. But, the alternative theory can be seen by examining this "A car is a car. You use it to go from point A to point B."

Not that some people don't think of car this way.

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Gob Blesh It]

In this case, it's pretty clear that the Mozilla suite's toolbar editor is pretty much a widget-for-widget, if not pixel-for-pixel knockoff of Cocoa's.

And while I certainly don't think Apple is the font of all wisdom, even I've gotta say this is far from the only example of OSS copying interface features from the Mac. Frankly, I'd be happy if they copied less from Windows and more from the Mac OS. :)

Less than stable on Mac OS X

[TimmyDee]

After launching Sunbird for the first time on Mac OS X (1.0.3.7), it quit (like Firefox often does on a first run) and informed me that any old extensions I had would be deleted. Fine, as I don't have any Sunbird extensions. Then it relaunched automatically (again, like Firefox) but then "unexpectedly quit". I tried relaunching it only to have the icon appear momentarily in my Dock and then disappear. Again. And again. I've tried ejecting the disk image, but it can't because it's "in use".

Repeated trips to 'ps -ax | grep Sunbird' reveals that Sunbird is caught in a nice little loop that spawns a new PID and then kills it each time it appears in my Dock. By the time I try to kill it, it's already killed itself and grabbed a new PID. Thankfully, Apple has included 'killall' and my problem is over.

Obviously this is an early beta, but I was hoping it was going to be more stable than this. I seem to remember Thunderbird being pretty stable at 0.2 At least I have faith that things will settle down in a few point releases.

P.S. I know, I know. . . submit a bug report. Don't worry.

Re:Less than stable on Mac OS X

[Justin205]

As much as I love Firefox, Thunderbird and other Mozilla projects... I do find them to be not-as-good on OS X as Apple's offerings.

Don't get me wrong, I love using Firefox on my Linux box, but Safari is just better on OS X. Same with Mail, Address Book and iCal.

Re:Less than stable on Mac OS X

[GerbilSoft]

You're supposed to copy the Sunbird executable out of the disk image first. This infinite restart loop is a known bug IF you run it from the disk image.

Re:Less than stable on Mac OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

This also happened to me with Firefox,
but on Windows.

I managed to kill it, eventually, thanks to my video-game-honed reflexes...

Its time like this I feel like hugging my Linux box (And `killall -9 windows` ;).

Re:Less than stable on Mac OS X

[SPY_jmr1]

Man, you suck... You're still on version one of OS X? Viva la version 10 baby!!!

Re:Less than stable on Mac OS X

[dankelley]

I came to OSX from a linux background, so I am pre-disposed to try all the new open-source things. The Mozilla family is central in my tests, since it is halfway reasonable on Linux.

Unfortunately, I have yet to see an open-source offering that is competitive with the Apple software. They tend to be buggy, they tend to be slow, and they tend to be awkward to use.

Given my linux background, I'll keep on trying the open-source things every few months. Surely they will at least become less buggy, although it is difficult to imagine they will become less awkward, because they are not built from the ground up on Cocoa and they were not targetted from the start at the OSX way of working.

Will the open-source applications every exceed the Apple offerings? Sure, if they offer something different. If all they do is offer a new version of an existing product, then they won't gain a lot of ground. A browser is just a browser. Safari does that well. A calendar manager is just a calendar manager. iCal does that well. Ditto for email, contact lists, etc. But if the open-source community can come up with a new idea, as opposed to a free version of something already in existence, then things could get very exciting.

PS. I realize my words are straying from the topics of the thread.

Re:Less than stable on Mac OS X

[prockcore]

Repeated trips to 'ps -ax | grep Sunbird' reveals that Sunbird is caught in a nice little loop that spawns a new PID and then kills it each time it appears in my Dock. By the time I try to kill it, it's already killed itself and grabbed a new PID.

Ah, OSX.. allowing the masses misunderstand unix.

You're killing off Sunbird's children. Look at a child's parent pid and kill -TERM that one.

Re:Less than stable on Mac OS X

[macgyvr64]

If you get stuck in this loop like I did, remove it's Application Support folder and it asks you about profiles Then just Force Quit the app.

Another impending naming debacle?

[Eil]

Had to chuckle when reading this on the main page:

At the moment the "Sunbird" name is a project name. It is not official and may change in the future.

At least they got that out of the way from the get-go.

Re:Another impending naming debacle?

[wpmegee]

What's with this freaking obsession with car names? Firebird, then Thunderbird, now this. They should just call all 3 the SunFireBird Browser/Email/Calendar and get it over with.

And *why* have they not been sued over Thunderbird yet??

Re:Another impending naming debacle?

[chris_mahan]

The Ford Motor Company is not worried about FOSS making cars anytime soon.

Re:Another impending naming debacle?

[Laconian]

Nothing makes you feel more like a man than a new ThunderCougarFalconBird!

Re:Another impending naming debacle?

[rah1420]

ISTR you aren't necessarily infringing on the name if it's not the same kind of product. There's probably lots of legalese wrapped around this, but Ford's gonna go after someone who makes a vehicle named "Thunderbird" but there's damn little they can do if someone names a piece of software "Thunderbird."

IIRC there was a "Mustang BBS" way back when, and Ford didn't pester Mustang Software overmuch about that either.

Re:Another impending naming debacle?

[oojah]

The Ford Thunder Cougar Falcon Bird! Nothing
makes you feel more like a man than the Thunder
Cougar Falcon Bird!

Re:Another impending naming debacle?

[Eil]

Is somebody else using "Thunderbird" for a software project?

Re:Another impending naming debacle?

[rossdee]

'ISTR you aren't necessarily infringing on the name if it's not the same kind of product. There's probably lots of legalese wrapped around this, but Ford's gonna go after someone who makes a vehicle named "Thunderbird" but there's damn little they can do if someone names a piece of software "Thunderbird."'

I don't recall them suing "International Rescue" (Or Gerry Anderson etc)

"IIRC there was a "Mustang BBS" way back when, and Ford didn't pester Mustang Software overmuch about that either."

They did't complain about North American aircraft company making the P51 but I think that predates the car made by Ford.

I think the rules are different for common words made into trademarks, (like mustang, or Apple) than for totally new made up Trademarks (Like Xerox or Viagra).

Re:Looks like iCal...

[NutscrapeSucks]

Apple themselves copied the idea from MS IE for Mac, which appeared long before OS X.

If only...

[CBob]

It could deal with MeetingMaker 6.0.5 files and such.

Something about having to recreate an 89meg schedule for a data center by hand seems to be putting me off switching to anything even vaguely current.

Palm Desktop 4.1.4 doesn't "require" a Palm device

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a couple people who continue using their Palm Desktop long after their handheld device died. And another person that uses his Palm device just for backups. They all love the Palm Desktop which is downloadable.

ps

I hope Palm doesn't screw it up by changing it. Like they screwed up PDAs by making them too large. The Palm V and Vx were perfect in terms of size and I'd buy one today for $400+ if it could do email in that form-factor. Until then, I'm sticking with my Palm Vx because if the PDA is too big, I won't be carrying it around.

OOofF

[starwed]

Well, theres this: OOofF. There seems to be a slight markup in the price of both products though. :)

Actually, Microsoft's

[Trillan]

No, it was not in the Mozilla suite (aka Seamonkey). In fact, it still isn't. It was first seen in Internet Explorer on Macintosh, then (with a lot of refinement) in Mac OS X 10.0, then copied almost pixel by pixel (with an improvement in behaviour) to Firefox.

Is it a big deal? No. But at least don't refute its history.

Internet Explorer for Mac Release Dates (IE 5 was March 2000)
Mac OS X 10.0 Review, Page 10 "The real fun starts when you select "Customize Toolbar..." from the "View" menu (or shift-click the toolbar widget in the window title bar). The contents of the window are replaced by a palette of toolbar widgets shamelessly reminiscent of Internet Explorer's toolbar customization feature."
Independent Mac OS X 10.1 Release Date Mac OS X was released on March 24th, 2001, with a suggested retail price of $129 and a version number of 10.0.
First Customize Toolbar In Any Mozilla Product A few of the features new to this release include: Customizable toolbar.
Phoenix 0.1 Release Date (September 23rd, 2002; over a year later)

Re:Actually, Microsoft's

[redivider]

It's interesting how the argument just stopped right here.

If everyone was so upset about Firefox "ripping off" interface concepts from Apple, shouldn't you be just as upset about Apple doing it to Microsoft?

Re:Actually, Microsoft's

[Trillan]

To be fair, there were significant differences between Microsoft's implementation and Apple's. From Apple to Mozilla is almost a pixel-per-pixel copy.

Many soon-to-be Mac OS X technologies saw their first implementation as part of MBU applications. It makes me wonder who thought them up -- certainly, the MBU is a possiblity, but I'm fairly sure that the MBU was getting Mac OS X information long before the public.

For instnace, Internet Explorer 5 also introduced aqua-like racing stripes. This was well after Mac OS X previews were seen sporting such stripes. It's entirely possible that Microsoft saw an early implementation of the customize toolbar functionality. Then again, maybe Apple ripped them off. Who knows?

Personally, I have no problem with Mozilla copying the idea. I'd have no problem with Macromedia, Adobe or Sun copying it, either. It's a simple enough idea. I object only to people here saying it was in Seamonkey before it was in Mac OS X, since that is demontratably factually wrong.

Where is the changelog?

[Mustang Matt]

I'm having difficulty finding the changelog. My office has been running subird for about 6 months now. It works well for what we're doing. (Small office) but it would be nice to see it grow into something a little more directly in competition with outlook. That allowed multiple users to post to the same calendar but keep their records identified by their user.

I really can't wait for a sync to palm button. It will make my palm pilot so much more useful.

Oops.

[Trillan]

I titled my link wrong. That is the release date of 10.0, not 10.1. However, the feature was in 10.0, so all the dates are correct. Just a typo.

Send later with Thunderbird

[Nasheer]

"With Thunderbird, if you save a letter to send later, you have no way (that I can find) to send it, you have to restart the program for it to send it self, (in other words, there is no send button, just a recieve button)..."

Maybe I'm missing your point, but I believe there is a File -> Send messages in outbox menu option.

Re:Send later with Thunderbird

[tarnin]

You are correct, its "Send Unsent Message". It's under File if your in the outbox and on the right click menu of the outbox.

rainlender works splendidly

[nealrs]

rainlender really is the perfect calendering app for me. I modified the ical skin to shave off the task list, so now i have nice white square that sits on my background with color coded boxes telling me where i need to be and when. no task bar stuff to worry about. just a nice clean background app.

check DA for the original skin so you can see what im talking about.

Potential Here

[Dougthebug]

I think this project could go either way at this point. They have the momentum from the success of Ffox/Tbird and there is a market for an OS calender project. But in order to make this product worth my time would be if it would sync with my palm and share dates with other users. What bugs me about my current software is the that I have to enter in holidays manualy. I'd be nice if I could set it to insert holidays, and local events from some source on the internet like my school's portal site.

Re:Potential Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Sunbird is based on iCal, you can gank some calendars from Apple at http://www.apple.com/ical/library/. Just change the protocol from webcal to http and place that link in the File>Subscribe to remote calendar.

Rainlendar

[katharsis83]

I just tried out Sunbird, and it's pretty nice. It's also a bit too complex/takes up too much screen estate. Not saying it's a bad program, but just that I don't need that much functionality in a day-to-day environment.

I like to keep my to-do list on my desktop constantly along with a small calendar, and I think Rainlendar is the perfect tool for that. Takes very little memory and is Open Source. You can only run it in Windows though. Skinnable too so it looks pretty.

Here's a link to the website:
http://www.ipi.fi/~rainy/index.php?pn=pr ojects&pro ject=rainlendar

(I'm not affiliated with the author in any way...just like the product.

Their website needs this more than us

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone else notice the date on the sunbird page?

Tuesday, February 4th, 2005

But...

[CastrTroy]

But will it be as slow as that other Mozilla program known as thunderbird. I'm using a P II 266 as I just graduated from university and was too poor to buy a new one while I was there for 5 years. I use evolution for email, because if I install Thunderbird, typing and email causes the display to fall behind my moderate typing speed of 30 wpm. It's unbearably slow. This is on linux though. I remember it being faster on windows last time I tried. BTW, speed of firefox is fine.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

a PII? Seriously, you can probably find a faster computer in a back alley these days...

Re:But...

[CastrTroy]

Yeah. but for some reason, even though I have a good job now, and the money, I can't justify buying a new computer.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't justify buying a modern computer but you're complaining about modern software not running fast enough?

Wait for Chandler

[drapmeyer]

It may just as fine - or even better - to wait for Chandler: Chandler

Re:Wait for Chandler

[Anonymous Coward]

wxWindows is dog-slow crap. Might as well use a Java-application.

(Ok, the last part was not very tasteful)

Re:Looks like iCal...

[FuzzzyLogik]

discussing it with the developers is probably step one since i don't even understand exactly what would go into making it look better.. however i do know it is possible.. ;) hence the reason i didn't give further details than looking into doing so. i'm kind of doubting there's many people working on it probably just a couple main developers. it isn't as big of a project (popularitywise) compared to firefox or thunderbird. so definitely look into getting into it early and make your stance known.

Core media player

[AMystery]

Depending on what action on WMP 10 you like (i have never installed it so i can't say exactly how it behaves) but core media player makes me very happy. Controls from beside the clock, although it doesn't show the scrolling song title on the task bar like I remember winamp doing, but it shows it when minimized to the task bar.

Ok, i think I'm not making much sense I am very sick, but if you can decypher this, then enjoy.

Is that seriously a show-stopper?

[JavaRob]

You have a point; any "always open" app like email/calendar should not take up space on the task bar. Personally I have lots of apps like this (that I want to leave open all day w/o them taking up taskbar space). Is that seriously a show-stopper for people, though?

My current solution is PowerMenu; it's tiny, freeware, and gives you a "minimize to tray" option for all windows. I also use it to reorganize things on my taskbar (e.g., comparing old output with new, I can have the older document on the left... it just works better in my mind).

Tips: use the commandline options to disable menu extras you don't want. Here are my options:
-hideself on -disable priority -disable transparency -disable alwaysontop

There's an even larger picture....

[LionKimbro]

There's an even larger picture being missed here;

When iCalendar support is built into everything, it'll be very easy for public groups to see each other's meetings, and for individuals to participate.

I easily lose track of when the Seattle XP programmers, Seattle Perl programmers, Seattle Python programmers, Seattle Robotics Society, Seattle Cosmic, Seattle Wireless, Seattle Java, Seattle C++, Seattle Wikipedia, Seattle FreeBSD Users group, Greater Seattle Linux Users Group, Seattle Bloggers, East side Bloggers, Seattle Futurists, etc., etc., etc., ...I easily lose track of what's going on when. With automatic calendaring, when we can subscribe to calendars as simply as we subscribe to RSS feeds- we're going to see a surge in awareness of what groups are meeting when, and how to meet up with them.

Right now, I can only track 1 group at a time. "Is Seattle Python meeting this weekend?" "No?" "Guess there's nobody to see this weekend."

But, as you can see from my short list above (compared to how much activity is actually going on,) there's actually a whole lot going on that I might be interested in visiting.

As Automatic Calendaring picks up, the public will recognize the power of its ability to communicate and organize.

Previously, this is something that only people who could afford secretaries could experience.

Printing

[hedwiggy]

Just where are the decent printing options for Sunbird? The current printing options are very poor. For example, I wanted to print out a birthday list for the year with 12 x month-views.

Does anyone else find it funny...

[eLoco]

... that a page devoted to calendaring software would have the date Tuesday, February 4th, 2005 under its Latest News section? Today is Saturday, February 5th, 2005 by my calendar, so there seems to be a problem here.

Either the Sunbird team is not using its own creation, or it needs to go back to the drawing board...

Open source groupware standards

[IGnatius T Foobar]

The problem we've been failing to solve for way too long is that there's no standard access protocol for open source groupware clients to talk to open source groupware servers. Fortunately, this is about to change.

GroupDAV is a subset of DAV designed to handle this task. The draft version of the spec is available already, and unlike most new protocols, its primary goal is to be simple enough for widespread implementation. GroupDAV uses the vCalendar/iCalendar and vCard standard data formats, and a simple HTTP-based transport with some DAV-like methods to allow searching and updating.

GroupDAV is being implemented by (at least) the following projects:

• Citadel (open source groupware server)
• OpenGroupware (another server)
• Kontact (and KOrganizer, et al) (the KDE groupware client)
• Evolution (client)
• There is a Sunbird implementation rumored to be in its beginning stages as well.

It's probably only a matter of time before some third party ties Outlook into GroupDAV as well.

I've been advocating the idea of open source groupware since 1998. Fortunately, some concensus is finally starting to form about how everything is going to interoperate. Exchange is one of the most heinous Microsoft products out there and it's about time we displaced it.

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Anonymous Coward]

because the entire point of OSS is to improve what's out there by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Silly Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

When trying to download their new sunbird software, firefox prevented mozilla from installing it's own software on my computer...

Nice but still full of bugs

[rduke15]

I like it's simple layout. Used some previous version before, which was an extension to Firefox or Thunderbird, but that stopped working after an upgrade.

I could import my old calendar into this new Sunbird, which is nice. (The import was not difficult, but finding the files in the insane directory jungle all these Mozilla projects create was hard. Turned out to be buried in "C:\Documents and Settings\xxx\Application Data\Phoenix\Profiles\default\9gltk3bn.slt\Calenda r\". Why is it so hard to tell these programs to put their data files into "E:\Cal", "D:\Mail", or such?)
The 2 bugs I encountered in the 10 first minutes are:
- in print preview, changing the layout between Landscape and Portrait kicks you out of the preview and back into the main screen
- The Alarm window doesn't close when clicking on either of the Aknowledge buttons. You have to close the window.
So far, these are just annoyances which will hopefully quickly get fixed.

The installer also has the same problem as the other Mozilla apps: on Windows, it uses a moronic "Browse for Folder" dialog which I guess is what MS recommends. The problem is that it shows you a text box in which you think you can just type your directory and click OK, but that is not the case: whatever you type is ignored. You have to click your way to the directory, and if it doesn't exist, you have to click "Make New Folder", then change it's name so it isn't "New Folder", and then click OK. I guess that is Microsoft's idea of usability. But it's sad that many OSS projects seem to use this particularly stupid dialog during the install.

Re:Nice but still full of bugs

[drewness]

Turned out to be buried in "C:\Documents and Settings\xxx\Application Data\Phoenix\Profiles\default\9gltk3bn.slt\Calenda r\". Why is it so hard to tell these programs to put their data files into "E:\Cal", "D:\Mail", or such?)
Because MS is trying to make Windows a multiuser OS, so each user has a profile with app specific configuration in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data
And the rest is all Mozilla. The 9gltk3bn.slt business is them trying to make hard for the path to be guessed by attackers, as I understand it.

Try Quanta Plus

[samjam]

Search on freshmeat.net for quanta.

It does most of what you want including code folding and even integrates with gubed (see freshmeat,net), the php debugger written in PHP.

Qunata is ACE, apart from the odd bit of extra unneccesary screen painting which really shows up if you are running coLinux and FreeNX instead of booting natively (sometimes I have to do it that way).

It doesn't check your includes yet...

Sam

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Anonymous Coward]

because the entire point of OSS is to improve what's out there by standing on the shoulders of giants.

So you're saying the idea is to improve on proven ideas and concepts by doing something completely different.

Integration

[Gamefreak99]

It would be great to have it integrate with Firefox (or anything else for that matter).

Think of this: you're surfing the web and you see that your favorite band is having a concert next month. Just highlight the date (ie "4/1/05: New York at Rockafeller") and then right click and hit Send to Sunbird (or a hotkey like ctrl-s or something) and it would automatically pop up with a box and fill in as much information as possible (what time, what date, etc etc). It might take some tinkering with at first to make sure it fills in everything correctly but once it got working you'd be set.

Along with this; date specific alerts. For example, if on 3/25 you wanted to be reminded to buy tickets, you could schedule an alert to pop up on the 25th. This is much like Thunderbirds "New Email" alert.

If Mozilla can be creative and get stuff like this happening, they've got it made.

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Richard, meet Strawman. Mr. strawman, this is Richard. I can already see you two get along swimmingly.

Is it Too Much To Ask

[rcjhawk]

that a calendar program be able to figure out when Easter is? There are civil as well as religious uses for this -- e.g. in Maryland, Good Friday and the Monday after Easter are school holidays.

Once upon a time I had a program which knew Easter, Yom Kippur, Ramadan, the start and end of Daylight Savings Time, the phases of the Moon, and could convert all it to the Mayan calendar. One could Easily Manipulate and Add CalendarS. Can't think of the name, though. It will come to me presently.

In the meantime, I'm using Sanjay Ghemawat's old ical program.

Re:Is it Too Much To Ask

[thelenm]

You must be thinking of Emacs.

Re:Is it Too Much To Ask

[oshy]

The real miracle would be getting it to work out when the easter holiday is in Aberdeen. It varies from the rest of the UK and even the officials dont know when it is year to year.

ActiveState's Komodo?

[namekuseijin]

It's an IDE specifically targeted at scripting languages like Perl, PHP, Python and TCL. It's based on the Gecko engine. It is not open-source, though, neither is a Home-site website builder.

ScheduleWorld license

[horza]

ScheduleWorld license is a bit vague. It's free for now, they may charge in the future but for what functionality they aren't sure, for some parts there will be a monthly fee but not sure how much (this applies to the timesheet functionality and not the basic calendar). It really doesn't give me confidence.

The competition still seems to be between Sunbird (still immature) and Evolution (bloated). I'll stick with Sunbird for now, though keep an open mind.

I just wish all apps would use the ical format and store in a standard place. Then I can use the app I want without being held hostage by the data.

Phillip.

Re:ScheduleWorld license

[MarkSwanson]

It's not uncommon for a product to be released initially for free in order to get as many people as possible using the system providing feedback. I use the feedback to build the features folks want, which in turn causes more people to subscribe, which causes more feedback, etc. Free simply means a much stronger and diverse and quickly growing community.

ScheduleWorld uses open standards (iCalendar) and your data is never held hostage. Simply switch to any other product that uses iCalendar at any time you wish. The web site states this clearly. The question of wether or not I may charge for the service in the future does not change this.

I believe it's inevitable that ScheduleWorld will move to an open source license as well. Though technically all other competing products are far behind ScheduleWorld it's only a matter of time before the open source solutions catch up and then there will be little point in being closed.

What can be done Right and what can be done Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I welcome Sunbird. I welcome all of the new stand-alone Mozilla applications. I still use the Suite for power-surfing, but Firefox is now my default-browser.

Since they all originate from "Mozilla", the split of these applications means development on top of the same codebase, something, that I personally think is very important. Less code means more people focussing on it and thus more development and maturity in a shorter time. Very productive!

For those, who don't know (are there any?): Mozilla is not only a set of Internet applications, but a developing framework, that loads XML/Javascript documents, interprets them and runs the application described within this document. This is (was?) called XPFE and is comparable to DHTML. XHTML (=XML) with ECMAScript. Here we have XUL (=XML) and Javascript.

In the moment, however, each Moz-derivate still comes with its own XPFE engine. Hopefully, and recent developments do manifest this, this will change to a stand-alone XUL runtime, on which these applications will run then, meaning less code to be loaded into memory. More like a scripts/interpreter consteallation.

This also might mean easy inter-application-messaging within any Mozilla-Application.

However, I am not so sure, if things will develop as they could.

Looking at the lack of fantasy in the open-source community in the past, I doubt it.
For those who don't see the lack of fantasy:

Why do the popular open source desktops look&feel like the Windows desktop ? It's just "ported" to another codebase. At least at the user-level. Menus still are in the application's window,(Desktop-)Shortcuts are meant to represent the file they link to. Ever dragged&dropped such a shortcut onto an editor-window ? On Windows this would insert the files URI, not its contents. Same on Linux ! Not even corrected. Just taken over. Other example: The filebrowser. Tree-based (slow), unscriptable, widely unconfigurable document-cnetric view of the filesystem. Do we see a generic scripting host on open-source desktops, like a definition for an API, to which applications can "export" their functionality and power-users write scripts, that control these applications ? No. But it is a need, as the scripting capabilities of OpenOffice (StarBasic), The Gimp (Perl, Guile, Python), Emacs (elisp), KDE (dcop) (and Gnome - CORBA?), X-Chat (Perl, python) show. Everyone bakes its own bred. This should have been in since the start. AmigaOS did this 1992, however, based on a single global language.

See ? This is just the surface. No interoperability. Old strucutres. Other faces. Same surfaces.

But we could change that! Make it better. Make it beautiful !

The open source community got some really powerfull, state-of-the-art application derivates off from commercial porgrams in the last five years. All power-user conformant applications, all productivity and all glory:

• OpenOffice.org (was StarOffice)
• Mozilla (was Netscape Suite)

So, we have now a powerful:

• Word Processor
• Spreadsheet
• Vector Drawing program (could need more work)
• Presentation program
• Web Browser
• Mail/News program
• Calendar

• Now this fills most of the every-day Desktop needs. And even better: All these applications are being based fully or partial on XML ! This means, OpenOffice.org and Mozilla (derivates) both can process XML easily. And since both systems use document-formats in XML (their I/O so to say) they could be made interconnecting rather easily, I believe.

  Imagine, how nice it would be, if both worlds would be able to intercommunicate, bound tightly to each other by means of messaging and scripting.

  Both OpenOffices and Mozilla Menus/Toolbars are fully user-customizable (by ways of extensions for Moz). How nice would it be to have a Calendar, that administrates different data-resources, the typical calndar ones but also CRON events and todo lists ! Now add an Office productivity suite (think

Readable version

[Anonymous Coward]

http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/05/1 819207

Here's an often overlooked util

[Asphixiat]

http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php

this is what we are currently using. I is an awesome groupware calendar. exports in vcal/ical and allows you to view other users calendars overlayed with yours.

Full administration through the web interface (JS), all you need is apache and php - all our users love it. This is the perfect small business opensource calendar. A few small things I'd like, but hey - I can hack it to do what I want too :)

All this doesn't really matter

[esconsult1]

I'm a big Linux booster out here. A year ago, I convinced the "powers that be" to convert our shop to Linux desktops. They did, and we have some 40 desktops with about 10 (and shrinking) windows clients now.

Sure, we have Firefox and Openoffice and Evolution. But here's the kicker, there is no Exchange alternative (Opengroupware ain't there yet) that can work with Evolution, or for that matter no non-browser based collab software that works with Gnome (and lets be brutally, this is where the corp Linux desktop is headed).

Now the office really needs the functionality of Exchange as we live and die by meetings and tasks. I slapped myself hard in the head yesterday when I recommended that we install Exchange as a replacement for that really sweet Qmail/Vpopmail/IMAP setup that I installed two years ago. But I had no choice!!!

So every mention of another standalone calendar client with everyone still forgetting about that missing server-side link just drives me crazy! Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the effort, and the calendar client looks nice, but designing a front end without thought for collabaration on the ass end is a bit short sighted.

This is the piece of the puzzle that is preventing shops like mine from completely moving from the dark side. Microsoft knows this and charges through the nose for Exchange CAL and server licenses.

I can live without another story about Yet Another Standalone Calendar.

Re:All this doesn't really matter

[macserv]

If I could mod you up further, I would. Lack of a central groupware server powering these apps is a gross oversight. I've been saying the same thing about Apple's iCal product since it was released... An "iCal Server" product would make a great addition to the whole Mac OS X Server package.

Palm, wife tied...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a joke in there somewhere...

Tomboy (Re:Doesn't solve my problem)

[automatikzen]

Tomboy works well for this for me.

I have one note called "to-do" which links to a bunch of other notes with more details, code scraps, etc.

(It requires Mono, and it's not web-based-- if you're looking for full-blown wiki software, I have no idea.)

Can I sync my Win CE handheld?

[jcostantino]

I have an HP Jornada 540 and I use it very religiously. I have tried to sync it with my Mac using PocketMac but it screws up everything when it syncs - one time it even blew up my user and I've pretty much shelved the program.

The HPC syncs everything including Access databases so I really need to keep ActiveSync running. I haven't tried Sunbird yet but it sounds like it won't replace Outlook as a sync option. I figure if I could make Sunbird sync with ActiveSync, I could just use a WebDAV server to keep my PC and Mac machines updated.

Is there any way to let Sunbird sync through ActiveSync? I'm going to try to remote in to my desk at work and see if it will work but I have my doubts that it's mature enough to do it.

More webdav info?

[ferretworks]

So, using iCal and Sunbird leads me to wanting to create my own webdav setup with apache. Besides webdav.org, anyone else have alot of experience with such?

I'm lovin' it!

[bergeron76]

I've been looking forward to this for such a long time now. I tried previous Sunbird releases with expected "pre-beta" results.

I'm so stoked that this release is actually working as I hoped it could.

The day this hit's 1.0 (or 1.1) I will punt Outlook forever.

Praise Jesus! (okay, maybe not; he probably can't code for sh*t).

Much thanks to the Sunbird team for this! I've contributed financially to the Moz project; and I'm about to contribute more (well, a donation / firefox shirt hybrid)...

Much thanks guys! Sincerely.

The bad news for you, is that you're going to be held to the same quality of Thunderbird and FF. ;)

So what?

[TheKarateMaster]

I'm all for open-source software... I use Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice.org religiously, but seriously, what IS the big deal with this calendar? I haven't looked too hard, but I imagine there would be tons of free calendar apps similar to this one. I'm not saying this isn't a good program -- it is. I just don't think it's tha big of a deal. If it is better, somebody please explain why, that's all I ask.

Re:So what?

[JShadow]

Outlook has a calendar, and there is no other calendar that provides the scheduling that Outlook does. Trust me, I've looked... mainly because my company needs to use Outlook scheduling, but we can't afford a flippin exchange server. Yet it provides a good amount of scheduling coordination that is not available otherwise. :( With the ability to publish and share a calendar, Sunbird would finally rid us of the bane of Outlook! :)

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Matt Perry]

Theres always a big bruhaha whenever MS comes out with a product or feature not 100% origional and unique. Why ignore it when OSS does it (and blantantly so)?

Because OSS doesn't try to draw attention it itself as a great innovator. Microsoft takes credit for damn near everything in the computing world and act as if they had thought of it. In most cases they are either behind the curve or have bought another company that did the innovating before the buyout. Microsoft twists the facts or is outright dishonest about their innovation. The bruhaha is because people are calling them on it.

Re:Sunbird?

[FlyingPostman]

I thought Sunbird was made by Pontiac.

Re:Looks like iCal...

[prockcore]

it's possible to make iCal a lot better, but the groundwork is there.

Groundwork for who? iCal isn't opensource. I can't improve it. The only one who can improve it is Apple.. doesn't sound like decent groundwork to me.

Re:Palm Desktop 4.1.4 doesn't "require" a Palm dev

[Anonymous Coward]

the Palm Tungsten E is more or less the same size as the Vx. no wifi though

Re:What can be done Right and what can be done Wro

[binford2k]

(Paint.NET is Windows .NET only and "not there yet")

Microsoft "helped" them develop it, what do you expect?

(yes, I go to school with the developers)

Re:Looks like iCal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Err yes, and the window from Firefox is cribbed from the Mac OS X customise toolbar dialogue. Nearly word for word, and even the sliding sheet thing has been reimplemented on Firefox and Sunbird. Your point?

Re:Palm Desktop 4.1.4 doesn't "require" a Palm dev

[Trejkaz]

I heard that "No Wi-fi" was the new corporate slogan for PalmOne.

Calculating holidays

[SgtChaireBourne]

There are civil as well as religious uses for this -- e.g. in Maryland, Good Friday and the Monday after Easter are school holidays.

Once upon a time I had a program which knew Easter, Yom Kippur, Ramadan, the start and end of Daylight Savings Time, the phases of the Moon, and could convert all it to the Mayan calendar. One could Easily Manipulate and Add CalendarS. Can't think of the name, though. It will come to me presently.

Another major one is the lunar new year, which will be this Wednesday (coinciding this year with OpenOffice.org Regional Conference N. America and the Desktop Linux Summit this year).

The algorithms to calculated the holidays (not the Regicon) are publicly available and well documented. There are even ready made modules like Date::Cac to name the first one that comes to mind.