Interview with Mozilla Lightning lead Mike Shaver

synopsis5 writes "The Lightning project (tight calendar integration into Mozilla Thunderbird) is one of the hottest things to come in the Mozilla world. In this interview Lightning lead developer Mike Shaver responds to questions from the Mozilla user community."

Comments

Re:Is Lightning the same thing as Sunbird?

[Adelbert]

I think Sunbird is the name for the seperate calendar. Lightning is the calendar integrated into Thunderbird.

I used Sunbird for a while, then gave up upon realising it was more convenient to use a pencil and paper. However, if it was brought into the mail sending environment, that would possibly make it more useful, as people will be able to check when they are free when planning a meeting etc. I look forward to seeing how this project turns out...

sync and invite messages DO THIS

[johnjones]

oh what a world we live in

apple wrote a sync engine named isync that works...
it is a syncML server and has proved thats what you need
(palm has a known way of sync and very much just for palmOS so target phones then palm not the other way round)

for standards please please
The standards that need to be addressed are RFC 2445 (iCalendar), RFC 2446 (iTIP), and RFC 2447 (iMIP)

read and make sure you can work with Evolution and lotus notes

regards

John Jones

Integration

[pyrrhonist]

Once Lightning is integrated with Thunderbird, the Mozilla Foundation will tackle the more difficult task of integrating Thunderbird with Firefox.

Once this is complete the integrated product will be called the, "Mozilla Suite".

Convert

[Seumas]

I still don't use calendar programs. We use them at work, as we develop one of the better known enterprise grade calendar servers, but I still don't make use of it. I don't make use of any kind of calendaring system whatsoever. I just remember things like a normal person.

However, I would gladly begin using one if there was a broader standard that was accepted and implemented that didn't lock me into one solution forever, could easily be synched or access from anywhere (no central server - maybe even let me just FTP it somewhere like the Firefox extension I use that automatically synchronizes my bookmarks anywhere I want using my FTP server).

This is a good step in that direction and as soon as something robust comes along (Sunbird) to fit in with the Firefox and Thunderbird family, I'll be all over it.

I used Sunbird awhile back. It's decent. Not solid enough for me to adopt it and start calendaring - but not bad, either.

Re:Is Lightning the same thing as Sunbird?

[synopsis5]

Sunbird is the standalone Calendar project from mozilla.org.

Lightning is a calendaring extension, which will be tightly integrated into Mozilla Thunderbird.

Both programs share most of their backend and some of their frontend code.