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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.
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.
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?
Yes, Lotus Notes had it. Lotus notes also had a lot of things. Like syphillis. It's a good feature - the fact that it was pioneered on a stupid, stupid program is beside the point.
I'm just wondering when better newsgroup browsing is coming. Last time I used T-bird for newsgroups I found it just as cumbersome as OE.
For point 2, just right click on the folder you want to be checked, select "properties" and select "Check this folder for new messages".
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.
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 @.
Let me add..
4. Support for more attatchment types, ie what FreeAgent is best known for, so I can grab dem binaries on newsgroups. Thunderbird emulates Outlook Express a little TOO well, right down to the incredibly limited functionality for file encoding types seen on Usenet. I can't stand to use FreeAgent for it is WAY too complicated for a freakin' newsreader.
5. Remember my dang password if the news server I'm on(comcast's forgotten news server) out of the blue to ask me for my un/pw again. If it remembers the wrong password, I'll just erase and re-type it in. but pre-fill it out for me, please? Firefox does.
6. A useable 1-click add to killfile for usenet cooks?
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)
For point 2, just right click on the folder you want to be checked, select "properties" and select "Check this folder for new messages".
Good call! Thanks... I'd never found that - it isn't an option on Inbox, so I'd not looked elsewhere.
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.
There is also: mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new in your user.js (and this neat extensions which helps you do it about:config
"Be careful or be roadkill" - Calvin
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.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).
The beautiful thing about such an extension would be that each "tab" could be made visible via something like expose.
I agree, I've been waiting for something like that for a long time. Unfortunately, I expect that I'll be waiting for a long time yet.
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
Open a new tab in browser and you got yourself second window to access your emails :)
Try fluxbox.
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.
uh-oh ? it was all well up to this :
I ended up moving back to Outlook because I need full control over my data.
i'm not going over data format availability, software support and impact of these factors to data availability.
it's just that tb/mozilla keeps mails as plaintext mbox files. unless you are backing up incorrect directory, there must be serious job involved to back them up incorrectly.
care to elaborate on exact problems that are in tb in regard to backing up your mail ?
Rich
Agreed. When I right-click on a tab, I want an option to convert the tab to a new window. And I should be able to turn a window into a tab of another window. The latter is trickier, especially if you allow multiple applications in the same tab set. That implies tabs would be part of the window frame, and go above the application-specific menubar toolbar etc.
I.e. a window containing multiple tabs is logically multiple windows only one of which is visible at a time, and that are stacked on top of each other like a "deck".
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.
I refuse to use Thunderbird until they implement an Export function. Forcing users to dig into the email profile directory to copy raw data files that some other application hopefully supports is not my idea of user-friendly.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Sorry, until Thunderbird gets full MAPI support, it is not going to be popular, no matter what special features it has.
No, a MDI interface does not have tabs thus you had to use the menu to change views, also MDI let you resize each window seperatly, it was like a windowing envoronment in an app. Not that ms were the firt to do it anyway, they just made a framework for people to use.
Tabbed views, have tabs, these allow the user to quickly change tabs, thats the point TABS.
I will stress again tabbed views are about TABS.
+----------------- | What is the question!
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.
There's a Firefox plugin called Foxposé which does a quick tiling of tabs.
Sharpies don't just sniff themselves.
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!?
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.
~Yet still, that wouldn't integrate with the window manager..
Flamebait? This should be +5 Funny.
I agree - I've never used a Tabbed email /newsreading client but that is exactly what I was thinking when I first thought about it.
I often have many mail / news messages open at the same time that I am replying to or in the midst of typing. Sometimes I position a couple of message windows on the screen so that I can read info in one and type it (not necessarily word-for-word) in another message. So I would want to be able to open message windows as I do currently in TB, and have, probably in the top-right-corner a clickable icon for 'minimize to tab'. And therefore obviously, a way to easily make a already-tabbed message clickable to 'restore to (resizable) window'.
I don't want my web browser to be anything but a web browser.
The exception to that is if it's can interate nicely with the OS' file system (i.e. Konqueror).
Firefox is great. I'm baffled as to why Seamonkey exists.
Scott
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