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Mozilla Thunderbird Gets Firefox-style Tabs
daria42 writes "A developer has added tabbed browsing of e-mail messages to Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail client, mimicking one of the most popular features of the Firefox and Opera Web browsers." From the article: "It is unlikely the feature will be found in Mozilla's imminent release of Thunderbird 1.5 -- currently in testing -- but software developer Myk Melez has put test versions of Thunderbird online with the tabbed browsing feature included. However, there are doubts over the suitability of these downloads for production use as they are based on bleeding-edge 'unofficial' code. "
Hey, if you drink enough thunderbird, everything has tabs, man...
Link
It's Lotus Notes! *shudder*
I'm all for new features but can't really see a use case for this one. You can already switch between emails at the touch of a button, and unlike modern internet browsing you're almost working with multiple mail windows at once (and with email I presume you'd never tab over to another screen while waiting for a page to render, which is one of the main attractions of tabs for me). There also isn't a compelling need to auto-launch your favorite twelve emails when you open Thunderbird so you can, uh, re-read them again, like you would add your news sites to a tab-group in a browser.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Notes had it since 1988??
From the article it looks like they have replaced the preview pane with tabbed email views.
That looks like it would be confusing - especially if the list above doesn't tally with which email is visible.
I cannot quite see how this would help (tabbed browsing is easy to see the benefits), tabs for the sake of tabs seems pointless.
liqbase
Notes has had tabs for a very long time. It's nice to see that other people think that is a usefull feature.
Supplies!
The only thing I would like to se (and it is prolly there, but I just haven't looked for it) is heirarchical email display. Instead of showing me messages, show me entire threads as a single entity. Also, clean it up and make it look nice. That would be a greater asset.
One Use I could see for this (maybe) is with an rss feed or newsgroup reader. You could have each topic in the rss feed open in a seperate tab. For a newsgroup, you could get each thread in a seperate tab.
But for regular email? I don't open multiple email windows in thunderbird and never really had a desire to. So why would I need tabs?
From the related links: "Compare prices on Mozilla". Compare prices on free software? Are CoolTechZone running the ads on here?
There are only two comments above my threshold right now and both are negative, however, if you've tried the Opera email client you will know that tabs are a good thing. Email tabs are not quite as useful as web browser tabs, but they are equally as good as file manager tabs (Konqueror, anyone?).
Since I've switched from Opera to Kmail for my email it's the one thing I've missed. Don't knock it until you try it. With any luck, Thunderbird tabs will be implemented as well as Opera tabs.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Any plans to release this as an extension?
We have Lotus Notes at work. It is not uncommon for me to have more than two messages open at once, each under its own tab. Even my reply is under its own tab. Another example of a good use, I am reading an involved message and an urgent one comes to my attention. Open the new one in its tab and leaving the other's display undisturbed.
Bringing OSS applications up to the level of current business applications is key to gaining acceptance. As with any other feature it should be selectable. Now there are many OSS packages that have features I would love to see in the commercial applications I use by feature movement is much easier one way than the other.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Who can I complain to if Firefox screws me
Do you really think that you can complain to MS when IE screws you?
The best of luck, my poor deluded friend.
hehe
You think you can complain to Microsoft and they will actually DO something about it? They haven't had a new browser in 5 years. What makes you think they'll listen to your complaints and make a move?
Mozilla is an open-source product with huge community support. You're MUCH more likely to get a change-request addressed or bug-report fixed in Firefox than you are with Internet Explorer.
This is a good idea. I often finding myself futzing with windows so I can display two emails at the same time.
Now, if you could use thunderbird to filter out a person in usenet and replies to his post without taking out the entire thread, that would be cool too.
I like Thunderbird. But ever since those guys from Google made GMail, I can't imagine being tied to a desktop mail client.
I believe a web-based interface accessible from anywhere is the inevitable winner in e-mail clients. Just like Linux will inevitably be on all computers, eventually.
I have clicked on the link 5 separate times to no avail, is this some kind of conspiracy to get me to use Firefox?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
tabs are sort of redundant since the message headers are right there in the top half for selecting, i can understand tabs in a browser but not an email client, i hope it can be turned off or disabled if it is built-in or just optional as an extention...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The screen shot reminded me of an issue I have with Thunderbird's UI. That message summary area in Thunderbird 1.0 (subject, from and date) is a bit of pain. It's rather too limited. Clicking on the plus to expand it shows all headers, which can often take the height of the screen! I really want to see all of the recipients, be they to:, cc: or bcc:. I also want to see email addresses there. Does anybody know if this can be configured to show this?
1. Please, please, please can we get an updatable centralised (LDAP?) address book?
2. I wish I could configure Thunderbird to refresh all my Imap folders periodically? I've dozens and without selecting each in turn they sometimes don't refresh with new mails delivered to a folder.
3. I love the ease with which I can select between multiple sending email addresses - but I'd also like to be able to associate a particular email address with a particular destination address. This would make using the correct email address less error prone when posting to mailing lists... as well as avoiding confusing contacts who may only recognise me when I wear a specific "hat"
Don't you mean "Bloatus Goats?"
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Let me just refer to the checklist here...
X - Bashing Firefox and praising IE
X - Tabbed browsing is unnecessary
X - Firefox sucks because of some other application
X - I can sue Microsoft if something goes wrong
X - Closed source better than open source
0 - Posted anonymously
5/6...not a bad troll! Bravo, submitter. Next time try anonymous to seal the deal.
We might see this innvotive feature in Outlook for Vista since they had thought of it first.
One of the big items I miss at home. While the Lotus system sucks big time at work, (poor IT management) this is one of the few items that I love about Lotus.
After using linux for over ten years, Mozilla is the best thing that happened to FOSS.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
There are different reasons for tabs:
1) so you can centralize your web-browsing experience. i.e. so browsing doesn't take up your entire taskbar and you can easily switch to your (tabbed) IM window, etc. Just like virtual desktops/workspaces. Email is on workspace 2, browsing/IM on workspace 1, music on workspace 3, work on workspace 4. (I use them in a square so email is above work, so the left column is play and the right is work.)
2) Some people consider tabs like a pile -- you go to news.google.com and you middle-click to open all of the stories you'd like to read in tabs. that way you don't have to bother with them (since a new tab loads in the background) and they are ready for you when you are finished with the first article and you close that tab.
I mix the two. I rarely have more than one browser window open, unless a second (or third) window is meant for an explicit purpose -- like if i'm researching a particular topic. And I'm glad I use firefox. I currently have about 25 tabs open. I wouldn't want to have to deal with that many windows.
And to answer one of your questions, when you hover over a tab it tells you the title of the website. This isn't needed, though, when you don't have so many that you can still read the title in the tab.
And as for a multi-billion dollar company backing it? Then I guess you never use new products from anything but the most well-established companies.
A parallel can be drawn with GNU/linux systems. When I started using linux in 1996 there were already companies supporting it. I have no doubt that as corperations adopt gecko-based solutions they will either start offering support themselves or some other kind of support structure will pop up.
I think you're thinking about free software falsely, though. I trust popular free software because I trust that there is a large enough section of the tech-proficient population that is good that I can trust them to poke through the code. The population that gets to deal with IE's code is much smaller, so the chance of there being a decently sized ethical population among them is much smaller.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
I wish they'd get the basic features developed first - before implementing all this gold plating. I still cannot filter imap messages based on text in the body. I can do this with outlook, evolution, pine, to name a few ...
I use Gmail. Is there any reason I should go to the effort of configuring Thunderbird to pop3 into my Gmail account when the webmail interface is good enough? I used to use Thunderbird to post to Usenet, but Google is better for that too - it's easier to see replies to your posts using Google than Thunderbird (where there's apparantly no way of doing this except for clicking on your `sent` folder, then looking at the subject line and Usenet group, then locating those, looking for your post.... then back to your sent folder to start the whole process again for your second post etc etc. Google will send you an email when a string occurs in a post to Usenet, and the email contains a link to the post - couldn't be simpler).
Also, it's tedious to configure Thunderbird to talk to an ISP - you have to fuck about with port numbers and user names etc and I frequently forget whether username (for instance) includes or excludes the part of my email address left of the @.
It's a simple, good idea.
Currently Thunderbird opens a new window for every email I want open (not previewed, open - I will be working with info in there for the next hour). This change makes a tabbed MDI version so they all share a window. I like this sort of thing. It reduces my screen clutter.
[Why the hell am I reading so many whinges about how this is unnecessary?!]
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Browser identification only happens once an HTTP connection has been made. If you're not connecting to the server, it's not because of which browser you're using.
:)
More likely, it's slashdotted and configured to reject connections when under too high a load.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Plus, with windows IE, I have a billion dollar company standing behind my product. Who can I complain to if Firefox screws me.
You're so right. I mean, over the last five years, the billion dollar company has released so many updates to its browser, while Firefox has more or less been standing still. Clearly, the billion dollar company cared more about their product than those hippies at Mozilla. In fact, I care about IE as much as Microsoft does.
Je ne parle pas francais.
A programmer, working on an open source code base, adds tabs to a UI and it's news? lol!
I think the main reason I might find it useful (and this depends on how they've implemented tabs) is because I don't like having to open multiple windows in most applications. In Pine (which I still use at home) there are no "new windows" of course, the app's UI has multiple states - top menu, folder list, folder index, message view - and I navigate between those as needed. I personally find that to be neater than opening new windows all the time. Tabs offer similar possibilities.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
- Which account it's checking
- How big the message download is
- (optional)How long it will take to finish downloading it?
I use Thunderbird for mail, and I can't stand the "Receiving message: 1 of 125" at the bottom not knowing what account is being checked, and whether it's going to be there a looong time.I can't help but feel that it would be more in keeping with X11 GUI design for tabbing to be a function of the window manager. No, I don't mean PWM tabs where the GUI toolkit is unaware of their existence, I mean an ICCCM-like freedesktop.org spec could be drawn up for comms between the GUI toolkit and the WM, just like other "advanced" wm functionality (shading, iconify, vdesktops, etc.)...
I'd love to have tabs and then be able to pin the tabs in place so it would reappear after restarting the app. The reason is that I often want to leave an e-mail open when I get it so I can use that as my reminder to do something or reply. I use gmail online a lot right now and I use the star feature to take care of that now.
Maybe it wouldn't turn out to be practical, but my hat goes off to the guy for trying in any case.
I can't find a cache of this, and I know you can't link from slashdot to bugzilla, so copy and paste this:6 166
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=18
And that's right, I am no karma whore! Biz=atch!
And the feature was annoying and cluttery. Something like the standard Outlook Express/Thunderbird setup, but with tags, is perfect.
Mail client with tabs? Opera.
Opera opens everything in tabs, including views of mail folders, e-mail composing windows, etc. They're all saved in session as well.
Not to mention that you can write your own patch if you're upset with Firefox, but you can stick your thumb up your butt if you're upset with IE.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
Therefore it can't possibly be any good. We need Yet Another OSS Project to enumerate each feature in Lotus Notes to make sure mainstream OSS remains free of them. Come to think of it, Notes has address typeahead, and so does Mozilla. We'd better go purge that one, QUICKLY!
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Well, he can complain to MS :)
Whether the complaint will be thrown to the garbage or positively processed is a different matter.
homepage: www.tls.pl
signature: not found
Notes 6.5 is awesome. Earlier versions sucked (buggy, crashes, no tabs). Too bad, my workplace is migrating to Outlook 2003. :(
What's wrong with Notes?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I currently have about 25 tabs open. I wouldn't want to have to deal with that many windows.
That's a lot of pr0n. Care to share?
Because it's not nicely formatted for use on mobiles.
IMAP is where it's at - because I can access it from a client if want to, or from a web client if I'm somewhere I can't use a normal client from.
My Journal
I know this is blasphomy, but isn't the concept of tabbed actually something Microsoft pioneered with their multidocument views in MFC? They were so unpopular that Microsoft made subsequent version of word/excel use new windows for each document.
Open a new tab in browser and you got yourself second window to access your emails :)
I find using Microsoft Outlook 2003 / Microsoft Exchange to be pretty capable of handling my e-mail. I used to use G-Mail, but stopped because I found the interface to not be suited to my tastes (the drop down menus could be quite tedious at times.)
So, what I did was used a POP3 to forward to my Outlook (so I didn't have to globally change my e-mail address) and set up a Microsoft Exchange Server so I can have Desktop AND Web Mail that had an interface that fit how I work with e-mail.
I usually work with one e-mail at a time, replying to fans of a website I work on who ask questions about what the said site focuses on, so tabbed browsing really isn't for me (especially since I find the more tabs you use, the more the client hogs RAM, and I have enough RAM on my machine as it is.)
It would be nice if you could set all replies/forwards so they saved to the folder of the original message, instead of some generic "sent mail" space. Other mail clients can do this, but AFAIK Thunderbird can't at present. For all the nice things about TB, I really miss this option.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
What about the ability to run thunderbird, or a lite version of it, inside a firefox tab... I think that would be sweet.
i was unable to find anything like this in bugzilla - maybe you know bug# ? ;)
if there is none, maybe you should file it
Rich
I'm guessing that was a joke. :)
Earlier versions of Pegasus Mail could run under WINE, see Wine Application DB - Viewing App - Pegasus Mail, so I hope this will continue. See also Pegasus Mail on Linux (or an intro to WINE).
"A gun is a tool, Marian. No better, no worse than any other tool. An axe, a shovel, or anything." Shane (1953)
Yeah, I generally go through my sent-items folder once every week or two and move messages manually. It's a pain, but it's very useful later on when I'm looking for stuff.
Back when I was using Eudora, I had filters on outgoing mail that would automatically file messages I sent to my most frequent correspondents. That didn't seem to be available when I switched to Thunderbird (which was actually pre-1.0 -- I found a lot of import-from-Eudora bugs and helped test the fixes, but I really needed something that would keep the original MIME structure intact).
With 1.5 around the corner, it's probably time to design some new filters and see what they do to outgoing mail.
Your "tabs" in Internet Explorer are only available on the Window's platform. For those of us that use Apple's OS X or Linux the Window's task bar is not going to cut it. In addition I usually have 11 - 20 tabs open that reference various API documentation. Having 11-20 windows open can really clutter a desktop so even when I have to lower my standards and use a Windows workstation, I prefer to use Firefox tabbing to reduce the clutter from multiple open windows.
Sorry, until Thunderbird gets full MAPI support, it is not going to be popular, no matter what special features it has.
Why not have a second IE window open? At the bottom of windows you have the taskbar, you can tab from there.
The taskbar is for applications. When I have 10-15 browser sessions open, very quickly I either can't quickly "tab" to my other open apps, or all of my Internet Explorer windows are lumped together into the same taskbar item (depending on my settings) defeating the purpose entirely.
Also with Firefox I can middle click a link and it opens in a new tab without focus. This means I can do a google search and middle click all of the items that appear relevant without losing my origional google search. I can do this with new windows in IE by right clicking, but this is less convienient and the new windows steals the focus. New tabs also open much quicker than new windows.
I can then run down the tabs and as I encounter sites that really weren't relevent, I can middle click the tab to close it and be done.
Not to mention that I can drag and drop tabs to reorganize them.
Have they fixed that damn memory leak yet?
right now, I'm lookin' at 132,124KB RAM usage and 151,520KB Virtual Memory Usage JUST FROM THUNDERBIRD
My system isn't all that bad...
P4 2.4GHz
1024MB Shared RAM (32MB to video)
WinXP Home SP2 (yes... I do dual boot into Linux [Kubuntu to be specific])
Thunderbird 1.07
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
I like how "tabbed browsing" sounds better than "multiple document interface" - you know, what it really is, and which fans of old Netscape and IE laughed derisely at Opera for using.
My, how thing change. Or rather, don't.
I'm so glad someone did this. Now Microsoft is going to have to scramble to tab Outlook and OE.
Of course it won't be out until the two releases from now, but if you're a Microsoft lapdog you need not worry. As your open source friends are blowing your doors off, you can be safely assured that Uncle Bill loves you.
I looked at the screen shot, and it appears the tabs let you switch between e-mails. That's interesting, but not NEARLY as useful (for me) as it would be if you could have tabs open to either mail folders or mail accounts.
Right now I have three accounts that I actively read with the same instance of FireFox, and if I could switch between then with tabs, that would make life nicer. One of the accounts has normal messages going into the inbox and, via filters, messages from two developer mailing lists going into two other folders. It would be really neat to have a tab for the inbox and one for each of the two mailing list folders. It'd be even better if the tab could show how many unread messages were in that folder.
Another company copying Firefox! First Microsft, now this!! WHEN WILL IT END!?
What I really want... is the current Thuderbird interface/gui to be a tab inside of fire fox...
That would be shiznitbambappity... Or if they're gonna tab mail... make each mail box a tab...
let me hide it in the system tray, and display a number over the icon.
until which time, i'l be forced to use kmail.
how come system tray isn't a standard feature for modern gui email clients?
I wish they'd get on that. It would really cut down on spam annoyance if people had an easy way to integrate hashcash generation/verification for messages.
(Or is there a plugin I haven't found yet?)
ERROR 144 - REBOOT ?
#2 is my typical method. At the moment, I have 6 mozilla browsers open, each with half a dozen tabs (maybe more/less). I rarely have less then 4 browser sessions open. And if I'm multi-tasking, I may have as many as 10 browsers open, each with up to 20+ tabs.
Needless to say, when Mozilla takes a dump... I'm extremely put-out at all of the lost state that just went down the tubes. (And I've given up looking for an extension that can auto-save state while handling that level of browsers/tabs.)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Tabs for viewing email-messages is nothing new.
@Mail , a WebMail application that is built using XUL ( the same UI engine Thunderbird uses ) has had this feature for nearly 8 months.
Take a look at: http://atmail.com/images/tabs.gif for an example - Improved with the close button and navigation at the bottom, and nicer CSS
See an example online - http://demo.atmail.com/ under Firefox, IMHO this is better then Thunderbirds implementation.
~Flamebait? This should be +5 Funny.