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Mozilla Lightning 0.1 Released
Mini-Geek writes "MozillaZine is reporting that Lightning 0.1 is released. Lightning is a new Mozilla-made calendar extension for Mozilla Thunderbird that will eventually (once it becomes more mature and stable) be built into Thunderbird. From the article: 'The Lightning Project is a redesign of the Calendar component. Its goal is to tightly integrate calendar functionality (scheduling, tasks, etc.) into Mozilla Thunderbird.'"
I'm using it at home already. Screenshots at my blog.
I thought lightning comes before thunder.
If I found in my own ranks that a certain number of guys wanted to cut my throat, I'd make sure that I cut their throat.
Why must calendar apps be merged with mail apps? Seriously?
Too bad my pocket PC will only properly sync with Outlook. Althoug to be honest Outlook 2003 is not that bad. I would still like to try an open source based e-mail client, but until it will sync with my PDA correctly I can't make the switch.
K Man
ConsultingFair.com
What ever happened to Mozilla Sunbird? That was a calendar project too.
Corporate functionality? I'll be quite a few IT people would love to see a viable open source E-mail/corporate calender program (though MSO is so entrenched in many systems it would be damn near impossible to uproot it now...). This could be a big plus for newer businesses.
At work we use GroupWise, and I find the integration most annoying. There is no connection between when I want to check my calendar, and when I want to send or read mail. Not to mention that I hate the GroupWise mail client, and use another when possible. I also hate the GroupWise calendar client, but I don't know if there are alternatives (I obviously need access to the information entered by our secretary, and she need to se the meetings I have entered).
I understand that the calendars for the people in the workgroup need to be synchronized, but is email really the best protocol for that? And if so, does it need to be integrated in the same client?
Well, Finchsync is a program that allows you to sync your contacts with Thunderbird, and apparently your appointments with Sunbird (though that was broken last time I tried it).
I just hope they don't make thunderbird suck in the process. All I really want is a program that does mail that doesn't suck, and thunderbird is currently the closest I can find.
I think you're kind of missing the big picture here, and that is cross platform capability. I use Kontact myself so I could care less about this but lets consider a company that is tired of MS Windows. Or better yet is stuck on legacy desktops that the newest version of MS Office won't support - that will be many of us soon. Well we could say, everyone stop - now we use Linux! Yay! But that shit doesn't happen because you're goiong to end up with a migration period, and that COULD be years!
By having something that lets people talk on OSX, Windows, BSD, Linux or whatever you, give a corperation an agnostic solution that lets them transition at their own pace. Personally I'm not convinced with the whole stuffing email/callandaring together, but some swear by it... which is why we have this in the first place.
Group sharing of contacts, resources, etc?
Scheduling with multiple complex calendars? Meeting invitations and e-mail reminders seemlessly included (and able to be sent from one outlook client to another)?
A lot of that is based on the fact that you're using outlook as an exchange client.
I definitely believe that Exchange is a steaming pile. It crashes frequently and has severe problems when the data in it exceeds a certain size for no good reason. Occasionally it corrupts itself.
It takes an expert in Exchange to administer despite the fact that the tasks that it is designed to handle are relatively simple concepts. (In contrast, SQL Server, which does something far more complicated to understand is actually easier to administer, IMHO, because it mostly works right).
However, at a lot of places we're all stuck with it, and with Outlook, until we've got a complete scheduling and e-mail solution that has features that are close.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
The next step is that Thunderbird+Lightning will be integrated into Firefox -- and then we'll finally have the Mozilla-based internet suite we've all been waiting for!
I personally do not need a calendar, and I would stall any thunderbird upgrade if it ever contains one.
Sleek, fast and trustworthy are a few keywords I put on the current thunderbird, and which is why I use it.
If they have to do it, make it optional as a plugin or extension, as with every other major non-mail related feature.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
I've seen it mentioned in this thread already, but I want to add my own emphasis.
At least for corporations, people are tied to the clock/calendar. You can't disrupt the old tool until you can work with the old tool. Or, at the very least, be able to send meeting requests and import old calendar information into your new tool.
It is the small things like the Calendar and PowerPoint and file formats which let expensive software cling to a corporation like a bad fungus.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
CL2 was discussed here more recently than that.
Discused on Slashdot this March 10th. Apparently it's in closed beta. (A beta beta?)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I'd like to see schedule templates for helping me organize my busy life. I suggest the following pre-made ones for typical Firefox users:
The Leveller
7:45AM-8:50AM - Worlds of Warcraft
8:50AM-8:53AM - Ninja fast shower, gotta get to work!
8:53AM-9:05AM - Drive to work, clock in late
9:05AM-11:30AM - Read and post to WoW forums from work computer
11:30AM-12:30PM - Lunch! Just enough time to get home and mob, try to get Enchanted Axe of Althar or something.
12:30PM-5:30PM - Do enough work to keep that ass boss off your back, sell some WoW gold on eBay.
5:30PM-6:00PM - Drive home, resolve to buy some groceries and make a real dinner
6:00PM-6:10PM - Realize that Jack in the Box is faster, just get something there.
6:10PM-1:00AM - Worlds of Warcraft
1:00AM-7:45AM - Fitful sleep, plagued by dreams where nobody can read your chat messages in game.
The GPLion
9:30AM - Wake up, play some TuxRacer.
9:32AM - Check for updates to KDE, hit slashdot.
9:50AM - Finish writing screed defending Stalman while untarring a new nightly build in the background.
9:55AM - Start a new kernel compiling, then head off to CS class.
10:00AM - Listen to stupid Microsoft-loving professor tell me about stuff I'll never need. What do I care about 'big-endian' crap, this is COMPUTER SCIENCE, not freakin' Gulliver's Travels.
11:15AM - Get out of class, eat the macaroni & cheese I brought in tupperware.
12:00PM-2:45PM - Various classes about stuff I'll never use. Why do I need an english class? I _SPEAK_ english!
3:00PM - 4:00PM - Spent telling the TA who runs the computer lab why their PSP is inferior to my Samsung phone that runs linux, demo java TuxRacer.
4:00PM-6:00PM - Kernel has finished compiling at home, spend time trying to get computer working again.
6:15PM - Post comment to blog about how easy it was to get the new kernel going, and how you don't understand the problems other people are having.
7:00PM-10:00PM - Xena marathon! Watch on my MythTV setup. With this transparent weather overlay over the screen, I can totally tell what the weather is like outside, even if the audio is out of sync, it's STILL better than a goddamned tivo.
10:00PM-11:00PM - Porn.
The Hipster
7:00AM - Wake up with gentle alarm clock
7:15AM - Bagel and LOX down at the coffee house.
8:00AM - Bicycle to work while listening to all my podcasts on my Apple iPod(tm)
9:00AM - Start work, be sure to check all my RSS feeds.
12:00PM - Lunch. Did someone say sushi?
1:00PM - Back to work, adjust my square DKNY glasses and buckle down for at least an hour of email, then back to websites.
2:00PM - Boba/Bubble tea break!
5:00PM - Outta work, begin bicycling home.
6:30PM - Get home.
7:00PM - Dinner time, zagats sez to try that place on 14th.
9:00PM - Start watching all my Tivo'd shows, all PBS of course. I don't keep the idiot box for anything but PBS. Oh, and maybe Lost, and the Simpsons, but don't tell.
Agreed. The only reason i'm using Outlook Webaccess on my slackware box at home as opposed to Thunderbird is those god damned calender requests i keep getting from co-workers.
This is an old, old problem with UNIX. In the beginning, there were pipes, which are unidirectional. There were signals, which were badly botched in early UNIX, resulting in several redesigns, all different, with the end result that nobody could trust signals. Then came sockets, which were bidirectional but oriented towards talking to services on remote machines, not interprocess peer to peer communication locally. There's still no standard, always-there way for one program in the UNIX world to call another and get an answer back. There are about five CORBA implementations, there's OpenRPC, there's Java RMI, and there are a few other schemes not used much. But mostly, there's not much talking back and forth, other than at the file and pipe level or to a remote server.
I often wonder how UNIX history might have been different if a facility for this had been there from the early days. In UNIX, one program can invoke another, passing a set of command line arguments and environment variables. But all that comes back is a return code. How different it might have been if you got back output arguments. Then programs could have called other programs as subroutines.
Or if UNIX/Linux had had good interprocess communication from the early days.
> Thunderbird that will eventually (once it becomes more mature and stable) be built into Thunderbird.
God I hope not. The whole point of splitting out Thunderbird and Firefox from the Uber Mozilla Suite was to keep each part simple, non bloated, and good at what they do on their own. Thunderbird is an email client, not a scheduling client. If people want to download an extension for scheduling, fine. But don't lather up Thunderbird with something that it probably doesn't need for most poeple.
Along the same lines, Firefox doesn't need to be a scheduling client either.
too late. I mean really, the calender in Mozilla sucked since it came out with Netscape Communicator 3.0 or so. There are other programs that fill the niche (Kalendar, evolution), but they are not perfect.
Having a good calendar application in Mozilla would certainly be nice. But at this glacial speed of development, I don't see it going mainstream any time soon.
Both IBM (PROFS) and UNISYS (OfisLink) had mainframe e-mail systems which combined both mail and meeting/calendar functionality a number of years before MS did it.
It's a functional expectation of old-school corporate e-mail, not an MS "innovation"...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
rephrase, "MS Made-it-popular/got-people-used-to-it at levels-other-than-big-business"