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Mozilla Thunderbird Gets Firefox-style Tabs

Posted by Zonk on from the now-if-they-can-make-lattes-i'll-be-set dept.

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. "

5 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by patio11 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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    1. Re:Why? by Short+Circuit · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Even in GMail, with its excellent thread support, I sometimes find I want more than one email easily accessible.

      Usually, it's when I'm composing a message containing a composite of information from a number of past emails. Happens most when I'm coordinating between different people.

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  2. one use by harmanjd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  3. Email tabs == good by digidave · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

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  4. Thunderbird Wishlist by roubles · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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 ...