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?

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[caferace]

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

Re:The System Tray

[yulek]

try ALT-F4

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

[jsight]

There are several alternatives:
All Tray

KDocker (not kdes specific either)

Re:whine whine

[Matt Perry]

You know, there's KOrganizer

You assume we all run some form of Unix.

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.

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

[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

[gentlemoose]

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

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: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.

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?

[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?

[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...

[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)?

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.

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

[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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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.

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

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...

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.

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...

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?

[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:Looks like iCal...

[NutscrapeSucks]

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

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: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.